Features / Usability

I'm not looking at the module right now, and haven't for a few days, but --

building a gallery simply involves uploading the images. The database then uses the location of those images, the URLs, to display the images.

The problem is, the current module is hiding the database info from us. It's doing this because the code assumes that we're using the tikiwiki database. That's a stupid assumption. Why on earth wouldn't I want to pull images from elsewhere?

All we have to do is allow us to specify the URL of an image to add it to the database. Done deal. It's actually a lot simpler than the current approach.

Simple image gallery: add the URL for the image. Bells and whistles: specify number of rows and columns, specify heights and widths, specify default thumbnail size.

Complicated image gallery: build a database by uploading images, behind the scenes (like some micro$t app) the database will assign and manipulate URLs for these images as if we're too stupid to be bothered with such technicalities (I'm sure they're in the correct, logical place and of course it's easy to find). Bells and whistles: etc etc.

I don't mean to be hostile at all. I love tikiwiki and all the doc, support and super community you have for it. I tend to be harsh with my words just because I'm thick-skinned myself and even more brutal criticizing myself. I'm also pretty incompetent at all tasks on a computer, so there's a reasonable chance I'm completely wrong in my perspective here.

But I don't think so. The image gallery does work by populating a database with images, and it does use the URLs of those images to manage and display the data. So why not just let us input the URL? Then the trick is done.