We just released Juicebox v1.3 and it’s a huge update! We’ve added a load of highly requested features including Search Engine Optimization, Social Sharing, Shopping Cart, Icon Fonts, JuiceboxBuilder improvements, over 20 new config options and more! Let’s jump right into some of the great new features.

Search Engine Optimization

An image gallery is only good if people are viewing the images. Historically Flash and JavaScript image galleries have had an SEO disadvantage versus a simple HTML list of images, since gallery images and text are hidden inside a config file.

Juicebox-Pro v1.3 now features 1-Click SEO support. Check the ‘Add SEO Content’ option to have JuiceboxBuilder-Pro automatically add a search engine readable version of gallery content including gallery title, description, image titles and descriptions and the images themselves.

SEO Content is added inside a <noscript> tag. This tag indicates it’s content should only be served to devices that do not support JavaScript. So humans get the JavaScript gallery and search engines get the HTML version. Since the <noscript> content is ignored by JavaScript capable devices, the images will not interfere with Juicebox’s smart image preloading. Another advantage of this approach is that devices that do not support JavaScript will see a plain HTML version of the gallery. View SEO Documentation.

Social Sharing

Another way to drive traffic to your image galleries is via social sharing. Juicebox-Pro v1.3 has built in support for the five most popular social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and Tumblr. Juicebox supports sharing of specific individual images within a gallery. Shared URLs will link back to that image displayed in the gallery.

Juicebox has all the required sharing code built in, which means you don’t need to load third-party social sharing widgets which are often surprisingly heavy in terms of filesize. Juicebox elegantly includes the share buttons in the main button bar. View Sharing Demo | View Sharing Documentation.

Shopping Cart

Juicebox has teamed up with our friends at Fotomoto to support selling images using a seamless shopping cart built into the gallery. Fotomoto is a well known e-commerce solution for handling credit card processing, printing and shipping of digital images. Fotomoto is a free service that collects a 22% transaction fee on each sale. There are also paid plans with reduced transaction fees. Fotomoto makes it easy to set up your virtual store and price your images.

View Shopping Cart Demo | View Shopping Cart Documentation

Icon Fonts

Previous versions of Juicebox have used PNGs for button icons. As high pixel density screens become more popular (e.g. retina screens), it becomes essential to use vector icons which remain sharp at any screen density. Juicebox v1.3 now uses vector icon fonts.

Using icon fonts also give us more freedom in terms of styling. We can now set the color of the button background and foreground, and change the button size. We’ve also added optional button hover colors. Creating custom icons is now supported via the free IcoMoon app. View Custom Icons Demo | View custom icons instructions.

JuiceboxBuilder Improvements

We made numerous improvements to the JuiceboxBuilder gallery creation desktop app. JuiceboxBuilder now uses a thumbnail view for the image list, which displays a lot more images on the screen. We fixed selection of multiple images, which makes sorting large galleries much easier. Just select and drag-and drop to re-order images.

Watermark handling has been improved. JuiceboxBuilder now stores a reference to the original image when adding watermarks which allows you to remove watermarks at a later point. Watermarks settings are now saved with galleries and presets so you dont need to re-set these options each time the gallery is loaded.

To improve Preset handling, we added a Preset dropdown menu on the Customize screen and added a selection of default presets that match the Juicebox-Pro demos.

Cross Fade Transition

We’ve added suppport for the much requested cross-fade image transition. I personally prefer the default fade in and out transition as I feel it gives a cleaner look. Cross-fades mean you get a soft blend between the 2 images which is unreadable for the length of the transition. However in certain cases a cross-fade may be more suitable so go nuts!

More Config Options

We have added over 20 new config items to allow improved fine-tuning of your gallery. These include:

• ‘languageList’ option to support translation of gallery text for non-English languages.
• Image and thumbnail area horizontal and vertical alignment options. View a  Top-Left aligned image gallery demo.
• Fine-grain thumb behavior options: showThumbsButton, showThumbsOnLoad, showSmallThumbsButton, showSmallThumbsOnLoad
• Other new options including: textShadowColor, showOverlayOnLoad, imageCornerRadius, imageNavPadding, topAreaHeight

View the full updated config list here.

Browser Support

We  have improved support for Internet Explorer 10 including handling Windows 8 specific touch gestures. On the flip side we have chosen to remove support for the rapidly dying Internet Explorer 6. Building and testing for IE6 was holding back development of new features so we reluctantly decided to pull the plug on this 11 year old browser. In case you were wondering, IE6 usage is now at around 0.2%.

Upgrading to v1.3

In addition to all the above we have fixed a number of bugs and added other improvements! See the full change log here.

As always, Juicebox-Pro upgrades are free within the same major version number, check here for upgrade information. Juicebox-Lite users can get the update here. Please report any issues in the support forum. Plugins and templates are all updated.

We reccomend you download this upgrade right away. If you have been holding off on purchasing Juicebox-Pro, now is a great time to try it out using our 30 day money back guarantee.

Juicebox-Pro is used by thousands of photographers, bloggers and web developers to build clean, responsive photo galleries. In this post we are going to showcase 3 great example websites built with Juicebox-Pro. We talked to each website creator to find out how they integrate Juicebox-Pro into their website. It’s interesting that each creator uses a different work-flow to manage their galleries.

First off is Maxwell Kruger Photography  by Maxwell Kruger, a commercial photographer based in Washington, DC. This great looking site uses wide-format images to give an immersive feel. Maxwell has created a custom theme to modify gallery icons, fonts and pre-loaders.

How do you create and manage your Juicebox Galleries?

I have separate Lightroom Collections for each gallery featured on my website. I manage these as though they are my final Juicebox galleries. Once I’m satisfied with the gallery and the order of photos, I use the Juicebox Lightroom Plugin to export the gallery using settings I’ve predefined that work well for my gallery.

How are you building the rest of the site and integrating Juicebox?

I have created a PHP backend that has one set of Juicebox files and simply changes directory where Juicebox reads photos and the config file. URL rewriting makes the URLs look nice and enables multiple galleries work with one set of Juicebox files in a very simple fashion. When I need to update a gallery, I simply update it in Lightroom, use the Lightroom Plugin to export the gallery, delete the Juicebox files except for the thumbs, images, and config files, and upload to my site. It’s painless management.

What features of Juicebox do you find especially useful?

I like how clean the interface is and it’s relatively easy to customize the theme. Updating a gallery is very easy using my Lightroom Workflow and I barely have to think of code anymore.

Any other comments or feedback?

Great product – love the simplicity, keep it up.

Next up is GalleriFinn by Finn Krogvig, a fine art photographer in Norway who specializes in abstracted atmospheric landscapes.

How do you create and manage your Juicebox Galleries?

My site is a WordPress site. I prefer to use the NextGen Gallery plugin for uploading and organizing images and galleries in the backend of WordPress. On the other hand NextGen is not the best plugin for displaying the images – so I use the Juicebox option for displaying existing NextGen galleries

How are you building the rest of the site and integrating Juicebox?

I am using the Simfo theme from Themify. This theme has built-in features for getting posts by category and displaying them in various ways and layouts. I put Juicebox galleries into posts assigned with categories that matches the images.

What features of Juicebox do you find especially useful?

Juicebox is elegant, it works really well, it is responsive and blends seamlessly into the site’s look. The galleries looks really nice on an iPhone. – and last but not least: its ability to display NextGen galleries.

Lastly we have Michael Jurick Photography from Michael Jurick, a photographer based in New York specializing in family photography. His website uses a white background to give a light, open feel. Michael is using a slider-style autoplay gallery on the home page to display featured images and a thumbnail gallery for each image category.

How do you create and manage your Juicebox Galleries?

To create new galleries, I use Juicebox Builder Pro. It’s so easy to use and intuitive.

What features of Juicebox do you find especially useful?

Saving templates, moving photos around in a gallery, easy drag-drop image / thumbnail resizing.

Any other comments?

As a photographer, I’ve always wanted to have a website that showcased my images in an elegant way, but had to be extremely fast. I’ve found it to be the most turn-key way to create, edit and manage photo galleries. It’s certainly one of the most elegant viewers – and the best part of all is that it displays lighting quick on all browsers and devices. I also love the I can customize the Juicebox galleries to my taste with minimal fuss in the coding of the pages.

Thank you Maxwell, Finn and Michael! Have you built a great website with Juicebox-Pro? If you’d like to submit your work to be featured in future posts, please let us know.

Also stay tuned for some exciting news in the next couple of weeks: we are almost ready to roll out the next version of Juicebox. Juicebox-Pro v1.3 will add some much requested features including: social sharing support, SEO support, fotomoto integration, icon fonts, increased customization options, cross-fades and more! Stay in touch via our newsletter and twitter feed below, or subscribe to our blog RSS up top.