Problems with the Gallery Demo...

[FishIndex]

When I attempt to view the animals demo gallery, only about the 1st 4 rows of images loads -- the rest are just placeholders. So, if I switch to view 30 images or 90, etc., I get the problem. According to the load status at the bottom of the browser, the page never finishes loading.

It seems like IE is being overrun, since after that, all graphics have trouble & I have to quit and relaunch. I would have posted this in the troubleshooting section, but I don't have access. When I try viewing the "nature" gallery, the problem doesn't happen.

Any idea what might be causing this? Could there be a corrupted image?

The browser I am using is IE5.5, plenty of available RAM & disk space.

Thanks.

[ConqSoft]

Strange... They all show for me. (IE6)

[KW802]

FishIndex,

Would you mind giving the exact link you where at when you saw the problem?

Thanks

[FishIndex]

Sure - I know it's a little strange...but not sure why it's happening...

Here's the link:

Animal Gallery Demo

Ah, the file it gets stuck on is /gallery/files/0/127.gif.

Errm...no attachments allowed? Why not?

OK...here it is the hard way:
Animal Gallery Screen Dump

Hope this helps...I'll see if it's repeatable on the same image.

[FishIndex]

Hmm...still hung with 78 items remaining, except that this time, it was:

/gallery/files/8/8/2/3/cat_thumb.jpg

Attempt #3, 78 items remaining, hung at:

/gallery/files/1/1-101_0115_thumb.jpg

Attempt #4, 77 items remaining, hung at:
/gallery/files/1/1-101_0113_thumb.jpg

cat_thumb.jpg may be a culprit...didn't load this time either...

[KW802]

Hate to say it but it looks like either your internet connection or your browser is timing out.

[mholtum]

works fine for me.

[FishIndex]

Hmmm...it doesn't seem like a timeout problem on my side. I have no trouble showing the Nature Demo Gallery which has 12 rows of images.

I think it has to do with the thumbnails. Is it possible that there is some image format difference (or minor corruption or header info omission) which IE6 can handle that IE5.5 can't?

Also, I have no trouble with Google's thumbnail spewing on their image search.

Any other ideas? Is it possible this is a web server issue on the vbadvanced side?

[FishIndex]

OK...taking another approach. I tried manually downloading the cat_thumb.jpg file:

cat_thumb.jpg

It downloaded, but it took a long time - something on the server side, not my side -- maybe a GD issue?

Anyway, after caching that image, I was able to load the whole gallery without any trouble.

There is something different or wrong with the file:
/gallery/files/8/8/2/3/cat_thumb.jpg

...in combination with IE5.5

Confirmed: without cat_thumb.jpg, the page load hangs, with the file cached, the page loads normally. Something is up with serving that thumbnail to IE5.5 simultaneously with others...

[mholtum]

Originally Posted by FishIndex

OK...taking another approach. I tried manually downloading the cat_thumb.jpg file:

cat_thumb.jpg

Took me about 1 second to dl that image dirtectly. Took about 3 seconds to download the actual page with all images. I think it is on your side. Done with both IE 6 and Firefox.

[FishIndex]

It looks like it has to do with the EXIF header data in cat_thumb.jpg. It's not a problem on my side -- other than possibly and anomaly with IE5.5 and EXIF data. cat_thumb.jpg is the only image that seems to have EXIF and the only image that seems to choke the browser.

[KW802]

FishIndex, I don't *think* I have any IE 5.5 machines around here anymore but I'll see if I can find one.

[FishIndex]

The cat_thumb.jpg is 101x150, but the embedded EXIF data reports it as 339x505. Besides the fact that the thumbnail is not 339x505, if scaled up from 101x150, it would be 339x503. Should EXIF data be stripped when generating the thumbnails? If so, then when vbaGallery generates the thumbnails, wouldn't this be a bug?

Anyway...I don't mess around with EXIF too much. Just trying to figure out why the gallery doesn't load.

- Dave

[KW802]

OK, Mozilla 1.4.3 on Linux works..... Still haven't found a 5.5 box yet though.

[FishIndex]

This is the reason for the problem:

Photoshop 7 JPEG Files and Browser Incompatibilities

The EXIF data in cat_thumb.jpg also indicates that it was created by Photoshop 7 (probably not with the "save for web" feature). So, that explains the problem. The symptoms of choking the browser and having to quit and relaunch is exactly how my version of IE5.5 was behaving. I do my IE6 testing on another box. I don't upgrade this one for exactly this kind of reason.

You might want to consider how to handle this issue within vbaGallery, particularly when you generate thumbnails, if you feel it impacts the robustness of the product. I don't know what other browsers this might affect or related situations where this kind of problem might occur. It's probably worth some research time on the development side to gain a better understanding of how EXIF and embedded preview data might help or hurt your product. It looks like many of the cutting-edge digital products and software are leaning this way...

Anyway...I hope this has helped.

- Dave

ps. Also, it may specifically be with the embedded preview data where the problem exists, not with the resolution info.

[FishIndex]

I've done a little more poking around and this definitely seems like an issue for you if you want to maintain maximum browser compatibility. The image upload process should probably go something like this:

1. Parse the EXIF/JPG header data
2. Populate db text fields
3. Strip embedded preview/EXIF data (perhaps saving it to a private db field for later reconstitution by the owner of the image)
4. Generate and store the thumbnail (no embedded data)
5. Store the full res image (no embedded data)

This would ensure that anyone viewing either the thumbnail or main image would not suffer the browser choke problem.

Also, for direct uploads, you should have a scan tool that can bulk-process gallery images/thumbnails and do the stripping after the fact.

Just some suggestions for absolutely clean browser/gallery compatibility...

[KW802]

Stripping the EXIF data from the thumbnail would be the right thing to do, stripping EXIF from the original images defeats the whole purpose of having EXIF data in the original image.

[FishIndex]

...probably not if you save it for later reconstruction. Someone browsing the gallery has no use for the EXIF data -- especially if you parse it and populate essential text fields. The only person who might theoretically need it is the owner if they are using vbaGallery as their main hi-res image archive with additional scaled-down versions. But...there are probably a bunch of privilege, security, (and perhaps paid) features that would need to go into place before that could happen.

Anyway, if the photo owner has the original image archived with full headers and has a lower res one for the gallery with its thumbnail, neither thumbnail nor web view needs the extra header data. I would need to have a look at the data structure and think about it a little more, however. This is just my initial reaction in trying to think practically about how people use your product based on its current capabilities.

Do you currently parse and display EXIF data, or are all the extra fields user-entered?

[KW802]

Anybody who runs a photography related website would be joining a lynch mob going after Brian if he started touching the original image, especially the EXIF information.

The EXIF info is parsed from the original file and stored in tables.

Before you go full-force into this just wait until Brian has a chance to take a look at this thread and go from there; if the EXIF info is being preserved into the artificially created thumbnail then most likely the solution is to change that as there is no need for EXIF in the thumbnail.

[FishIndex]

Just thinking out loud - these are really just suggestions...

I definitely agree with you about the thumbnail. The question is what happens to browsers viewing larger size images with the embedded data?

...just trying to help out while checking out the goods.