Why a dedicated section for this quite obvious module?
Everyone understands that photos, video files and documents are, from a computer’s point of view, just files. How they are used is decided by the program that uses them.
The least obvious thing for “ordinary” people (non-IT specialists) is: why must this file sit on a server if I can send it by email? …or put it on a flash drive? …or on an optical disc?
The answer: if you want to use the file in documents generated from the system, put it on your website, or load it into the “cloud”, you first have to store it somewhere. On the internet that somewhere is a server available 24 hours a day.
To make this process easier and simpler we built dedicated software — the SYS7 gallery module. It lets you:
- store files — in any format and any size (within reason)
- build a file library — both an image library and a document library
- group files into galleries
- build gallery groups
- create photo thumbnails automatically
- protect images automatically with watermarks
- do simple pre-publication work on images — resize, rotate 90/180/270 degrees
What are photo thumbnails?
If you have walked around the web (we do not doubt it), you have seen photos, video clips and documents for download everywhere. That is organised with live links: click and either a larger picture opens, or a dialogue offers to save the file on your computer. The link sits under text, for example click here, or under a small image usually called an icon (not quite a Latvian word). Those small “icons” are also thumbnails.
Why make thumbnails? A photo can be a fairly large file that takes several seconds to load over the internet. If you do not plan to view it full size or save it for later, loading the full image is wasted resources and load on the computer. So several thumbnail sizes are usually prepared for one image. They load many times faster (fractions of a second) than a full-size photo. Is one thumbnail enough? Yes, but you can plan a medium-size picture for the mobile version, a slightly larger one for tablets, and so on.
Is that a problem? Yes, it really is. If a visitor has to wait for a small attached picture to load before they can read five sentences of news, it makes me sorry for the site builders and want to call the owner and offer to fix it. Other visitors would want to close the site, or call their ISP to complain about internet speed. In SYS this is solved simply — you can set several default thumbnail sizes: global, per gallery group, per gallery. Once that is done, everything happens automatically. And depending on the gallery group, thumbnail sizes can differ. The fact that gallery groups also sit under pages or product categories will be a pleasant surprise for anyone who has worked with various CMS systems and online product catalogues.
What are watermarks and why are they needed?
If you hold a banknote up to the light and look carefully, you can see symbols that are not visible in normal (reflected) light. Those are called watermarks. On banknotes they are one of the anti-counterfeit layers.
What are watermarks in SYS? If your website has original photographs you would rather not see on other sites, SYS can put a semi-transparent logo watermark on the photos. If someone “borrows” the photograph from your site and puts it on theirs, every visitor to that page will see who the photograph really belongs to.
How secure is this watermark? Can it be taken out of the picture? Honestly — watermarks of this kind can of course be erased or cleaned. It will just cost much more than taking new photographs. Our clients value this photo-stamping option highly, because one of the largest costs of building an online product catalogue is producing quality photographs. Nobody wants to pay for photos that competitors then use in their shops.
Files or images?
If someone asks us “can we put a document on the page for download?”, we answer — yes.
Because every image (photograph) is a file; the only difference from other files is that its nature is “image”. Every file has a nature — it may be a document (DOCX or PDF), an archive, or an Excel table — and you can put any file in a SYS7 gallery. Automatic link creation is even provided. To show files on a page as a gallery or thumbnails, or even to drop all thumbnails onto the page, the user does not need to know HTML, JavaScript or PHP. Tick the relevant box and it happens by itself.
For more information please write to us.