Developing fluidly functioning mobile galleries for the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices is not an easy task; dealing with memory issues, different versions of operating systems and many different screen sizes makes it a very specialized job. We’ve put a lot of effort in this and we’re very happy with the result. Here’s a breakdown of the major new features and improvements.
The touch ‘swipe’ navigation is improved drastically. We’ve also added image titles and descriptions and a new interface design. There’s a slide show option and loading and unloading of images is optimized for the memory limit of mobile devices. But that’s not
all, we’ve generated special lighter mobile versions of your images to make them load faster for a smooth viewing experience, also for the slower mobile connections.
The gallery works on any browser and any screen size on any device. The option to put the gallery as an icon on your iPad’s home screen is great for if you want to view it later or show it to someone else. From your home screen the gallery opens without a browser bar for an even cleaner view.
I think we can say we now offer the best performing and cleanest mobile galleries around. Happy to hear your reactions below.
Wow — simply incredible looking update for viewing on my iPhone4 and iPad! The best keeps gettin’ better. Thank you. :-)
Comment by Alexander Wolf — March 17, 2011 @ 6:56 pm
The photos look amazing on my iPhone 4. I like the lack of browser bars when I added a gallery to the home screen as you suggested. Thank you!
Comment by Jason — March 18, 2011 @ 12:05 am
Well done, looks and works extremely well on the iPad. No Phone7 love yet?
Comment by John Hauschildt — March 18, 2011 @ 6:13 pm
Images still cannot be viewed on my BlackBerry but then I’d like to toss this device into the nearest swimming pool.
Nevertheless, the Apple/Android improvements sound grrreat.
Keep it up
Comment by Oscar Mitt — March 18, 2011 @ 7:27 pm
how does one go about adding a gallery as an icon on the iPad’s home screen
Comment by Rick Opiola — March 19, 2011 @ 12:00 am
Love the galleries and how smooth they are on the iPhone and how they fill the screen so perfectly. Wondering though if you can add an option to have the galleries present on grey or white background? Not only do photographs look best on a grey neutral background but I also have a lot of black and white photos that are very dark and would be nice to have a neutral background that doesn’t blend in with the images. Thanks for the update though, it truly is the best iOS photo site.
Comment by Michal — March 19, 2011 @ 7:03 am
Couple more things I’d love to see in the future. Would love it if the photos had a little space around them like a border and maybe if at all possible have the albums show up fullscreen, pushing away the clock bar and bottom toolbar as Stanza does when i read a book. Not sure if the last one is possible though.
thanks again and great job.
Comment by Michal — March 19, 2011 @ 10:51 am
Hi
great improvment , thought i’d like to have the choice of putting my own version of the resized images.
I’d love to have this oportunity if you’d go for a portfolio app as well.
Resizing images, especially ones with a lot of details can be a real mess and is not straightforward at all, and giving the possibility for the ones who knows how to do it to put their own resized images would just be an amazing way to improve the online portfolio quality.
I won’t mind uploading 3 or four versions of one file (HD, screen, ipad, iphone) if i know that my clients will have the best view of the pics…
thanks again for listening to all our sugestions
Comment by Olivier — March 22, 2011 @ 6:33 pm
love, love, LOVE. Home screen icon looks great, swipe is smooth and quick. I was just looking through the help and FAQ to see what I had to chenge to optimise for mobile devices and was very happy that you’ve already done it – you guys ROCK!!
Comment by Louise — March 28, 2011 @ 1:54 am
@Olivier We always display optimized resized versions for the iPad and iPhone. 480*480px for the iPhone3 and 1024*1024px for the iPad and iPhone4. Why would you want to have your own resized versions, I do not completely understand?
Comment by Rien // Viewbook.com — March 28, 2011 @ 4:25 pm
@Rick In Safari, tap the “Share” button and then select “Add to Home Screen” from the popup. The “Share” button is the one that looks like a box with an arrow coming out of it. It’s to the left of the address bar on the iPad and it’s the center button in the bottom toolbar on the iPhone.
Comment by Thijs van der Vossen — March 28, 2011 @ 7:25 pm
@Olivier Hi, I’m the developer of the new mobile gallery. Glad to hear you like it. :)
The actual pixel size at which the image is shown is different depending on the device orientation (portrait or landscape) and whether or not you’ve added the gallery to your Home Screen (because no toolbars are shown in that case).
This is only for a single device; the iPhone 4 has twice the naive resolution as the previous models and the iPad has yet another screen resolution.
This means that (depending on the aspect ratio of your image) you would have to upload 2 × 2 × 3 = 12 different versions to have absolute control on how your images are scaled. And that’s only for the devices from Apple. ;)
Also, mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad have rather strict limits on the amount of image data their browsers can handle. If the file size of the image files is too high (JPEG images with very little compression), they might stop loading new images.
Viewbook has done a great job balancing image size, quality, and loading time for the mobile versions they generate from your originals. In most cases, these really should give you the best result possible.
Comment by Thijs van der Vossen — March 28, 2011 @ 7:40 pm
@rien and @thijs
thanks you two of bothering about my really specific question.
In fact i am aware that it could be very annoying for a “generic solution” web site to take in acount the specific need of very special customer. I am working in a field were the images are really precise and it’s been a real pain for me to find a solution to resize my pic for the web or for my ipad book. In fact even a specific resizing for each image using photoshop was not satisfying. I had to find a specific plugin to do it. That’s why i now never let an automated solution resize my pics.
the problem is that for people that are used to see pictures on paper you are allways so disapointed when put on a screen concerning the loss of details ! Thats why i love the iphone and it’s retina display! But even on this case one must be very carefull when resizing for the iphone.
If you read frazer’s book about resizing (nearly 400p on this only subject) you’ll discover that a correct resizing depend on destination and especially destination resolution … and the resizing algorythm …. and if you make some test you’ll see he was right !!
If you’d never see the diffrence between a automatic resizing and a home made specific one for very detailed pic you can’t be aware on how striking could be the difference especially on some very detailed high resolution original pics.
But once you’ve seen it anybody serious about high ends quality could never go back to the first solution.
If you send me and email i’d be glad to send you an exemple.
of course i haven’t realize the fact of the 12 versions, but lets say if i have a full web HD , a small web (wich could be the same as ipad) and and iphone 4 without any toolbar, in the “right position” i meand turned the right way to be full screen each time i’d be happy to know that in most of the case the display is perfect.
and by the way are the file reprocessed if i download hd size picture to show them full size on the viewbook web site ??
again excuse me for bothering on all those very precise and specific issues. you ‘re whole solution is one of the best i have found on the web. I am just allways trying to have the best out of the best and i am very aware that i could be really annoying sometime.
Comment by Olivier — March 30, 2011 @ 8:48 pm
@Olivier You’re absolutely correct that you can get the very best result possible if you scale and sharpen your images for a specific output resolution. This applies to print, but equally well to screen display too.
I can’t speak for the whole of Viewbook, but the mobile gallery simply isn’t a good solution for when you want absolute control over the way your images are processed and displayed.
One more example to illustrate this: If you’re doing output sharpening as described in Frazer’s book then you’d certainly not want to save in a lossy format as JPEG but using a lossless format such as TIFF or PNG. This would however result in files of such large size that it would take much too long to download over a mobile connection.
If you really want (or need) this level of control over your output, you should probably consider creating your own site and/or and iPhone and iPad app.
Comment by Thijs van der Vossen — April 3, 2011 @ 7:37 pm
@Thijs @ Oliver: This is exactly why we created Viewbook. To make it easy to display your work everywhere, without worrying about technical issues like loading speed and optimization of images for different devices. Of course this means that we choose for a system that works best for most people.
Thanks for the feedback guys!
Comment by Rien — April 4, 2011 @ 1:39 pm
Hello,
Gallerie for Iphone… i am assuming there is an app! Aware of the only viewbook app on Itunes but it’s only for Ipad… missing something here!
Assistance is greatly apprciated!
Laurent
Comment by laurent pamela — January 19, 2012 @ 10:55 pm
There will be, pretty soon.
Comment by Rien // Viewbook.com — January 23, 2012 @ 3:40 pm
Hello
How do I get the ipad app to automatically sync when adding new photos to my viewbook image manager.
Please help right now.
I need my port updated for tomorrow morning
thanks!
;)
Comment by Candice — May 9, 2012 @ 5:04 am
You should see a Sync symbol (two arrows in a circle). Just press it and your Album will sync. We’re making this better in the coming releases of the iPad App.
Comment by Rien // Viewbook.com — May 11, 2012 @ 10:26 am
Hi
I’m using the Viewbook portfolio app for Ipad3. Up till now everything worked fine. But since I’ve made some changes in my Imagemanager, I am having problems with syncing like Candice I am not seeing a ‘Sync’ button like you described. Some things have changed automatically, some haven’t.
How can I solve this? I need this thing to work in two days..
Can you please let me know what to do?
Best Hanneke
Comment by Hanneke — June 10, 2012 @ 9:43 pm
@ Hanneke, these two days are already way behind us, but syncing has been totally reworked in the next release of the app, which is currently at the point of being submitted to the App Store and should be available shortly.
Comment by Paul // Viewbook.com — July 26, 2012 @ 4:04 pm
Update: The new version of Viewbook Portfolio for iPad is now available on the App Store.
Comment by Paul — August 10, 2012 @ 11:04 pm