i split up the previous entry into two entries... i also want to write a little more ... so hit the 'read more' for the entry posted yesterday, continue reading here for new stuff.

i locked myself in my room and spent 6 hours designing new UI systems for tabulas. i worked specifically on the gallery portions because i've always felt they were the weak points in terms of UI for tabulas.

i got out about 3-4 solid designs ... that i'm pretty happy with. i showed them to a few people, and i seemed to get a pretty good response from them. it's going to be a helluva lot of work to break it down to XHTML/CSS ... but once i get it up ... YAY!

oh hell. i'll upload them and show you guys ... three links below

link 1
link 2
link 3
edit: gah, the last two are slightly screwed up. the last one shouldn't have that image aligned towards the top ... the 2nd link displays the wrong box on the right side.

but i am much too tired to fix them up in photoshop. i will actuay take them to HTML tomorrow. wheeee. i'm tired. sleep time.


i've decided pretty much to segment tabulas into subprojects; i'm going to work on tabulas gallery 1.0 ... and release that. then i'll work on tabulas integration 1.0 ... then on tabulas journal 1.0. i think it makes it easier to manage the projects if i subdivide them into smaller projects.

i may also have a potentially large windfall coming in (financially) ... if i do, i can purchase a separate server for tabulas, but it'll have to be a short-term fix, as i will only have enough money to tide me for 4-5 months. which means that within 4-5 months of launching tabulas 1.0, i'll need to get enough subscriptions to tide me over.

if you're still reading this, i'll let you speak up. what features should be locked out of the free accounts? how much should you get for free? what should you get when you pay? ($20/year is the price i'm leaning towards). right now, the only feature i've locked out for sure is the hit logging; it is way too cpu intensive to give to everyone. also, i'll probably limit the gallery options; the existing 1px black border will probably be the only option for free users; paid users will get more styles (which i'm experimenting with now). i will also probably limit the ability to download your journal (backup) to once a month for free users as opposed to once a week for paid users. annnnndd of course, the gallery. i'm leaning towards 250 images for free users, 650 images for beta users, and 1000 for paid users. but then again, i may completely abandon that system and do a "pay for space" type deal.
Posted by roy on June 7, 2003 at 10:18 PM in Web Development | 9 Comments

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Comment posted on June 9th, 2003 at 12:58 PM
those mock-ups look good...

given any thought to a system of re-ording pics?

its a pain, yes i know... no defined easy way to do it.

perhaps, some sort of numbering system... if you show the images.

or if you don't show the images, then a combo box (not sure if thats the correct name?) where you can shift images up and down a list. however, that would require some sort of required/default name for each photo... which isn't currently required... could pose some problems...

i think the my yahoo portal uses that system of shifting things up and down (also ms access when you are ordering columns in one of the wizards)
Comment posted on June 9th, 2003 at 01:21 PM
actually i'm probably going to have a "rank" box for the images. when you load up an album, there will be a little box where you can order them yourself. it's the only quick and clean way i could do it. i'm not a big fan of the whole idea of "move image ahead" click by click because obviously for UI reasons it's a pain to do.
Comment posted on June 9th, 2003 at 07:57 PM
have you seen this?

http://www.tabulas.com/gallery/attach/19_3LPC1.jpg

or is exactly what you didn't want to do...?

the only problem with ranking is that you have to make sure that you don't get 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 9, etc...
Comment posted on June 9th, 2003 at 08:26 PM
yeah, i'm not a really big fan of that for images just because of hte problems you pointed out - names become a requirement. however, i think there will be an increasing dependency on image names with tabulas 1.0 ... but i'm not really comfortable with that system because it's not really intuitive enough.

as for the ranking, they will be user-input so it should be easily fixable...

hkt (guest)

Comment posted on June 9th, 2003 at 07:36 AM
i think they look real nice, streamlined and with good colors. i dun see any new functions, but i can't think of any new ones either.

as for the limit, i would suggest #. don't u have a script that automatically resizes them? if u use that, we wouldn't have to worry bout the "# or space" arguement, b/c all the pix would be ruffly the same size.

and a little bit after you relase 1.0, i would suggest having a template contest. you could award beta status to the ones w/ the free option. and i think it woudl increase activity, and make the community a little bit closer.

anyways, so far so good. i really think you could take on typepad with this. no lie.
Comment posted on June 9th, 2003 at 01:23 PM
Starting with Tabulas 1.0, I'm going to start also storing the full-size images as well.

And yes, a templating contest will happen :) Once Tabulas 1.0 comes out and I get standards for making templates documented, I will do it.
Comment posted on June 8th, 2003 at 10:56 PM
is it easier to limit the number of images a person can post.... or to limit the ammount of space they can use... because someone who wants to store images online, who has huge pictures can theoretically store a virtually unlimited number of images for free, using huge amounts of space on your servers... you should have either a image size cap (in MB of space needed per image) or just a set number of MB a person can have for pictures.... since the text won't hardly take up any space at all....

maybe you could also limit the styles and modifications free users can have... but give them most of the functionality that paid users have... that way you won't have to store a unique style set for each user and they can just have a choice of X number of styles they can have.
Comment posted on June 8th, 2003 at 11:13 PM
There's a 1280px limit on images right now. Anything bigger is rejected.

I can actively monitor both, but I've never been a fan of "quota by space" because it's so hard to gauge when people ask you, "so how many images is that?"

I find that using # of images as a meterstick is much more effective.

yeah, image styles is probably going to be a big point for paid users. hmm..
Comment posted on June 8th, 2003 at 01:39 PM
link 2 looks good...

as for the pay system, pay for space type deal sounds like a good reasonable deal, how much, it depends though. anyway, i dunno, maybe for free users, there can be no comments on their images? i cant think of any other, if i do i post up...