Now that Gallery 3.0 is in the beta phase of its software development, I feel it's safe to talk about the new features users can expect out of this open source web-based photo album organizer. Now I realize that Gallery is not a full content management system, but I also know there are plenty of people out there that think they need a CMS when perhaps what they really need is something a little simpler. For those that want to build a site to display and share their photography I recommend a look at Menalto's Gallery.
The philosophy behind Gallery 3 development is to make the web application easy and fun to customize with a big focus on usability. The developers have made every effort to make it much easier for the casual developer to hack on the product and do some really cool things with the software. The emphasis is on making simple, frequent tasks quick and easy.
New features and enhancements in Gallery 3 include:
- Support for upgrading to further releases
- Full HTTPS support
- Use the EXIF caption (information provided by your digital camera) as the photo description
- Photo and album names are editable
- Big improvements to the Organize (bulk editing) feature including drag and drop, mass rotation and album highlights
- Advanced settings editor
- Greatly improved permissions interface
- Gallery 2 to Gallery 3 import
- Tag management for admins
- Support for database table prefixes
- Random image block for the sidebar
- Added translation server and localization client
- Reimplemented the Flash uploader using SWFUpload
- RSS feed for comments
- RSS feed for new images or movies
- Add photos directly from the web server
- Support for uploading and viewing FLV movie files
- Boolean and full text search
- Item commenting, comment moderation
- Spam protection with Akismet and Recaptcha
- Image toolkit support for ImageMagick, GD, and GraphicsMagick
- Theme system, including separate admin theme.
- Module system to extend the functionality, and a series of existing modules
- Flash-powered slideshow (Cooliris)
- User group management (drag & drop interface)
- Admin dashboard with drag and drop blocks