Photos layout for link shares

[grenzverkehr]

It should be possible to present photos via a public photo link in the photo gallery view. This is important for everyone who values the presentation of their photos. Up to now only the files view can be shared publicly.
This was possible in the Gallery app: instead of "/s/name" (Files view), the URLs were then called "apps/gallery/s/name" (Gallery view).

[dsiminiuk]

Without the gallery view from a shared URL this plugin I don't see the value of this plugin. I may as well share the folder the regular way.

hint: The old Gallery app was good at this.

[skjnldsv]

From my POV we should just make sure the photos app (same with other viewer) show on public shares.

Well, we have viewer on public page now, but not sure about having the photo view there 🤔
Thoughts @jancborchardt ?

[Boki4d]

@nickvergessen
I can't code, but I really need the "gallery" view for the shared links. How can I help?

Guess I need to learn to code... :/

[skjnldsv]

@Boki4d thank for your interest!

We could use a proper definition of what this issue is about. 😃
There is currently the files list view in folder sharing and the grid view.
The grid view is pretty close to what we already have in the albums view here in photos. What seems to be missing would be the timeline.

What would you like to see as a third sharing option then?
The album view with browsable folders or the unified view like the timeline? :)

[diamaunt]

If I, within nextcloud, go into the photos app, it is quite nice. I can click on an album, and then on a photo, and it displays the photo quite nicely, and allows for a slideshow.

However, I cannot share that view. All that can be shared is a file list, which does not allow viewing of photos, only downloading of them.

I want to be able to share the photo viewing/slideshow with others, via a share link, so that I can put that link on a website and share photos of events that our club has had.

In other words, it appears that Photos is a purely internal utility, which is fine for the files owner, but denied to everybody else.

[skjnldsv]

I want to be able to share the photo viewing/slideshow with others

This was already fixed and part of 18.0.3. See forum and other dedicated issues: #128 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/new-photo-app-in-nextcloud-18/69949/40?u=skjnldsv
This want aims to discuss the portage of the photos layout to link shares as well. :)

[derhagen]

We could use a proper definition of what this issue is about. smiley
There is currently the files list view in folder sharing and the grid view.
The grid view is pretty close to what we already have in the albums view here in photos. What seems to be missing would be the timeline.

Until now, I used public gallery links to send my relatives photos of my vacations. The semi-large thumbnails easily allowed to browse and explore the photos online without having to download them first. I agree, that the grid view does basically the same thing. Nevertheless, I would love to have the option to define a default view (and possibly default ordering). Otherwise I'll have to tell my grandparents 'click on this link and then click the tiny button in the upper right corner to see my photos'.

I can imagine three possiblities for an easy fix for my use case:

• If a shared folder contains only photos, show grid view by default
• Allow a GET parameter ?view=grid to open grid view by default
• Allow to set default viewing options while creating the shared link (probably not so trivial but more beautiful and more extensible)

As a plus, reintroducing the before-mentioned timeline/album view would be great. Also, being able to control the default ordering in the same way as I proposed for the view, would make sense.

If you have a look at Google Photos and the many options to present shared albums, this is probably what I would expect from an app like this as a gold standard, but I guess this is way out of scope for this issue.

[Boki4d]

I was pretty certain I'd read here it was going to do that in 18.0.4.

I'm pretty sure this was related to the preview of pictures without having to download them. This has been fixed.

[derhagen]

@dsiminiuk As @Boki4d explained and as it is explicitly mentioned by @skjnldsv, the issue that was fixed in 18.0.3 was #128, which is about the slideshow functionality. You will find this one working in your 18.0.4 installation. As it was said before, this issue is "Open" and "to develop". That means, the issue is not fixed yet but somebody will eventually take care of it.

It is not particularly helpful to step into an open issue and complain that it is not fixed yet. A workaround to install the gallery app has been published, so nobody forces you to use the photos app, for now.

[skjnldsv]

so my computer illiterate mother-in-law of 89 years can see what I intend her to see. Otherwise why have a NC server?

I'm pretty sure most people using NC are not here because they're sharing pictures with their 89 years-old illiterate grandma 🤷‍♀️

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Last reminder before I lock this topic, everything have been thoroughly discussed already. If you're just here to complain, you can pass by and go somewhere else. Thank you.

[GitWidi]

@derhagen Thanks for your engagement here. I fully support your opinion.
I have also used the gallery app as an electronic photo album so far. We organize mountain tours with changing groups of participants. After a tour I collect the photos (shared link with write permission), organize them in a photo album and send the link of the photo album by mail to the participants, most of whom have no account in the cloud.
I love the possibility to customize the design of the photo album in the file gallery.cnf. Also, I often have panoramic shots that are not taken into account in the grid view of the photos app. The panorama image is reduced to a small, square thumbnail which shows only an insufficient part of the whole image. For me the grid view is just a bad workaround compared to that was already possible in the gallery app.

@skjnldsv Yes, the most people using NC would not need this feature. But for some users, this change from NC 17 to NC 18 means a significant step backwards in the usability of Nextcloud.
For me, this is a key feature. Therefore I still hesiate the upgrade to NC 18. If there is no other way, I hope I can still disable the fotos app and install the gallery app instead. Of course, it would be much nicer if this function was included in the standard installation again.

[skjnldsv]

@skjnldsv Yes, the most people using NC would not need this feature.

I never said this, I can completely understand that lots os uses would like this feature in :)
It's labelled as to develop, so we agree 😉

[maltokyo]

What I don't understand is, why not just bring back the gallery app? I use it via the hack already posted. But why not bring it back officially? (Until photos does at least the same thing)

[skjnldsv]

everything have been thoroughly discussed already.

Like said, check forum, check other issues. Been answered multiple times

[maltokyo]

I did search. Can't find any valid reasoning for doing that. Care to share?

[Boki4d]

I did search. Can't find any valid reasoning for doing that. Care to share?

As far as I remember, the old Gallery app was getting harder and harder to maintain and would have needed a major rework. So they made a decision to ditch it in favor of the new Photos app.
Unfortunately I can't find the offical post, so it's only a memory log without any claim to completeness/correctness.

[maltokyo]

I get the need to replace it. Makes fully sense if it's hard to maintain. I don't think anyone opposes that. The only ask from many here is to leave gallery in place until that replacement app is ready. No need to update and maintain gallery. Just leave it working how it was(!) - the reason why that's not possible, I don't understand.

[jancborchardt]

Locking this issue to contributors only cause of too much irrelevant off-topic discussion.

Clear and concise design proposal still stands from my comment above at #236 (comment)

[jospoortvliet]

I get the need to replace it. Makes fully sense if it's hard to maintain. I don't think anyone opposes that. The only ask from many here is to leave gallery in place until that replacement app is ready. No need to update and maintain gallery. Just leave it working how it was(!) - the reason why that's not possible, I don't understand.

It had security issues, a huge performance issue for large instances and other problems, so while it might be 'good enough' and even 'better than photos' for some, it was worse than photos for many others. That's the problem of course with every time you write a new app to replace an old one, you will always do somethings better and some things worse. We try to fix the things we do better and keep what we did worse, but it will be a long time between 'it is better for most people' (where I think it was with 18) and 'it is better for EVERYONE'.

Now it would've been better if we had made the old gallery app available in the app store, agreed... Then again, that would have been more work, especially as we would have to fix at least the security problem, meaning less time to make Photos better.

Developing software is about trade-offs and often you can't just make everyone happy. Luckily Nextcloud is open source, so one solution for that is that everyone who is unhappy helps fix or add the things they are missing. But if they are unwilling or unable to do that, then yes, there is not much to do.

But the problem now, after all the complaints and anger, is that the motivation of people to work on the Photos app is pretty much disappeared, so the people who complained have achieved the exact opposite of what they wanted: this feature is still not done because unhappy developer = unproductive developer.

If only all that energy spend on demotivating the contributors who worked on the app would have been used to learn PHP and help make the app better...

(oh, and last but not least, while I would also love this feature, for me Photos is at least an improvement to gallery, which just took way too long to load)

[szaimen]

This is now possible via the albums feature which allows to share pictures via a link. So I'd say this is fixed?