drzylvon wrote:A possible bug report :
-Although I set the sort order on Filename, it happens that all video files of a gallery are put first in the gallery. It displays correctly sorted in the panel view.
Example in
http://catbag.net/sylvain/photos/galleries/Chine2015/ - videos are named just like the picture : somename-[numbering].
Currently, this is how it works ... Videos are not really part of the gallery layout, and must display separately, either before all gallery images, or after.
Why? Because videos are HTML5 video tags embedded directly into the page, whereas images are clickable links that open in popup. We can't just add the videos into the specific gallery layout you are using, may it be justified, slideshow or grid. These layouts require images with dimensions so we can calculate the layout. Add the limitation that your server is not capable of creating thumbnails for videos, so this is how it is.
In the future, we will look into improving video support in X3. I would recommend separating videos, also because its better for the visitor to have videos and images clearly separated, so they know what they are clicking.
drzylvon wrote:-Also, I noticed the video files start buffering automatically. I personnaly find this unnecessary, could there be an option implemented so that video files aren't buffering automatically?
You are right. I should be able to fix this, as HTML5 video has a preload option. Expect this to be fixed in next release available this month.
drzylvon wrote:On the justified layout, it looks to me you're loading the next row of pictures "out of screen". Is it pure lazy loading within a virtual area or did you implement some sort of prefetch of "one row extra?"
Yes, it does start loading images that are within visible viewport + a certain margin below visible viewport.
drzylvon wrote:I'd be interestd in having a way to have some more prefetching. I find we see the "loading icon" pretty often even at a decent scrolling pace. Would it be possible to select how many more pictures one wants to prefetch? e.g. -10 pics & +30 pics ?
This would of course come at the cost that the "first" visible images loading will load and display slower. If the website has to load 10 images at the same time, instead of 5, then the 5 first images (usually the ones in viewport), will take twice as long to load. Add the fact that, unless you are using SSL, your web server normally only allows up to 6 simultaneous TCP connections. Increasing "prefetch" would likely make more of a difference if the visitor is not scrolling (yet), or scrolling very slowly .... but if they are scrolling at "decent" scrolling page (I assume you mean relatively fast?), there is no reason to believe that images will load faster since they are being loaded at max throttle from your server ... It just means the first images may take longer time to load since they are sharing bandwidth with the last images which are not in viewport yet.
Important
I would like to note, that if you are setting up a NEW X3 website, you need to take into consideration that images are being PROCESSED for the first time on server. This means that all images will be especially slow on first view, because they won't even start loading until your server has resized them, and started to ship them towards browser. Thus, if you scroll quickly through a NEW page, and the browser requests for example 10 images, your server needs to process the resized image before output, and loading will be relatively slow.
To get a feeling of how fast images will load after this initial phase, try this: Load a new page, scroll through all images, and wait for them all to load. THEN, refresh the page (in a private browser if you wish, to make sure images are not served from your browser cache), and you should see a substantial difference in the speed of images loaded.
This is a general rule of X3: When creating the website with lots of new pages and images, things will be a bit slow, because pages need to get processed and cached, and images need to get resized. Eventually, everything will speed up nicely.
drzylvon wrote:I saw on the carousel option that you allowed for a check box "lazy load", granted it's for a much smaller amount of pictures.
Yes, this is generally because the carousel is often used for crucial "presentation"-style features, where it's undesirable to have images load only after visitor navigates through the carousel.
We could possibly include two new lazy-load options:
Disable Lazy Load
This means ALL images on page will load into browser on page load. I don't like this feature, because it means the page document itself doesn't complete loading until all images are loaded. This is not good for pages with dozens of images which may be several MB in total ... Also, if a visitor arrives on a page with hundred images, and isn't really interested in viewing all images, they will still load.
Non-scroll Lazy Load
Another option is to still use a "lazy load", but simply load ALL images after page (document) load, regardless of scroll. It still means all images will always load, but it will not block document load ... slightly better.
All-in-all, a well-balanced, scroll-based lazy-load feature is the most "friendly" solution.