Gander

A picture gallery system that works without requiring anything other than some media to show.

No databases, no screwing about with config. Put files in a directory and open the browser.

Gander provides a fully-featured Web 2.0 based picture viewer in the style of ACDSee for Windows or gThumb or Geeqie for Linux. The intention is to replicate all features from a desktop picture viewing program entirely in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Features:

• Zero setup - Dump it in a directory and open the webpage. No databases or any other configuration.
• Fully-featured - bindable controls for just about every feature of a gallery system.
• Scalable - Designed for very-large folders full of images.
• Forward and reverse caching of images - designed to keep the waiting at a minimum
• Thumbnailer system built in - No third-party tools or building thumbnails required.
• Configurable CSS styles and page layouts
• Advanced navigation - Move around folder tree's without leaving your keyboard

How it works & What you need

While the majority of Gander is entirely client based (HTML, CSS + JavaScript) unfortunately there are a few things that are still not possible in JavaScript alone.

To provide access to your server you will need to install a fairly simple PHP script somewhere on your server. The job of this script is to perform file level opeations such as generating thumbnails and working on the file itself (e.g. renaming, deleting etc).

Known issues

• Caching doesnt work with filtering (needs to read :visible status like $.gander.select('next') does)
• When viewing recursively, thumbnails dont load in the sort order
• select() doesnt work if two files have the same name in different cases e.g. 'one.jpg', 'One.jpg'

TODO list

• Optimize loading from the server if filtering by stars
• When loading directory contents that are too large throw up a 'loading' message if it takes more than a few seconds
• Binding for key to alternate to last viewed directory
• Star icon next to directory icons where meta-information is available
• Natural sort
• Thumb-zoom implementation in menus / shortcuts
• Open directory in new tab
• Move, Copy, Paste, Rename, Change permission, Touch, Delete file functionality
• Image panning
• Throbber should be more subtle - perhaps move it to one of the screen corners or use Growl
• Emblems: Link
• Comments / description for images
• List view and column view of items
• Multiple image list tabs
• Star image - implies view by starred or filter by starred
• Track image views - Save the last time an image was accessed
• Thumbnail for folders - 'Set as folder thumbnail' option
• In-image thumbnail quick navigation bar to show siblings
• Image transitions
• View other file types - e.g. text files, sound, movies
• Functionality to remember preferred zoom and position of image and restore it on next load
• Zoom via mouse wheel functionality (maybe hold down a modifier key?)
• Screen splitting (VIM style)
• A maximum limit on number of files loaded recursively