Juicebox v1.4 Released!

It’s been a while, but rest assured we have been busy here cranking on the latest version of Juicebox Gallery. Juicebox v1.4.0 is fresh out of the oven and we have baked in some tasty improvements.

Juicebox v1.4

A Multi-Size Image Gallery

Multi-Size Image Support

The web is now viewed on many different sized screens – from phones and tablets to huge cinema displays. Add in ‘retina’ displays and you have a wide range of pixel dimensions to handle. To best handle this situation, Juicebox 1.4 now supports multi-size images. This means multiple sizes of the same image are stored on the server, and the most suitable image size is selected and served to the user, thus optimizing display quality and download time.

JuiceboxBuilder-Pro Multi-Size Image Support

JuiceboxBuilder-Pro Multi-Size Image Support

Juicebox-Pro now supports 3 customizable sizes of images: small, medium and large. JuiceboxBuilder-Pro will automatically generate multiple versions of an image and save them in the gallery folder for display as required. Read more here.

Improved iPhone Layout

The iOS 7.1 Safari update includes support for the ‘minimal-ui’ viewport tag which hides browser chrome and leaves more of the screen for website content. Juicebox now supports this tag, and we have improved the iPhone default layout to take advantage of the increased screen space. Check out the comparison below between Juicebox v1.3 and v1.4. Notice that we can now display twice as many thumbnails in portrait mode.

Juicebox iPhone Layout Comparison

Juicebox iPhone Layout Comparison

More Styling Options and Improved API Support

We added new fine-grain color options and small screen mode layout options. There are new API methods to allow better integration with your site. We also added support for custom purchase URLS to allow you to specify custom links for the buy button.

Improved Core Performance

We have re-built the Juicebox core rendering engine to improve performance across the board. This means snappier transitions, faster repaints and a smoother UI. We have especially focussed on improving mobile performance, including using CSS transforms over JavaScript tweens where supported.

Lots of Bug Fixes

As the web platform advances there are continuous changes to device and browser functionality. The Juicebox code base is continually updated to accommodate these changes, handling new browser bugs and features. See the full change log here.

Upgrading to v1.4

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 have been updated.

We recommend 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 v1.3.3 Hotfix Released

We have just released a minor update to Juicebox. This update is specifically to fix some gallery sizing issues on iOS 7. Since iOS 7 adoption is rapidly increasing, we thought it was worth putting out a hot-fix for this issue.

Juicebox-Pro customers can view upgrade instructions here. Juicebox-Lite users can get the update here. Please report any issues in the support forum. Plugins and templates will be updated shortly.

New Flat Design Gallery Demo

The ‘Flat Design’ web site design trend is really gaining momentum right now. Websites are losing a lot of design frills such as drop shadows, bevels and faux-3D effects. Read more about flat design here.

Juicebox is pretty minimal and flat by default, but we can make it flatter! With Juicebox-Pro we can easily create a clean and minimal flat design gallery.

flat1

This gallery is built with a Juicebox-Pro custom theme. Read how to make your own here. Here we are using a custom preloader gif from preloaders.net, and the free ‘Quicksand’ Google font. Images are displayed at 1024 px width by default and resize downwards to fit smaller browser windows. The Expand button uses Fullscreen expand on desktops and displays the images at 1280 px width. Download the flat Juicebox-Pro preset here. Photos kindly provided by Paul Jarvis

Fotomoto Update

UPDATE (July 29 2013) – Fotomoto is back and under new management! Normal service has been resumed. Read details here.

Juicebox teamed up with Fotomoto earlier this year in order to support printing and selling photos. Unfortunately it appears that Fotomoto have gone offline and are not responding to emails. There are reports of Fotomoto customers unable to login to their accounts. This seems to be related to legal issues between Fotomoto and it’s parent company LiveBooks.

Juicebox v1.3 Released!

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: FacebookTwitterGoogle PlusPinterest 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.

facebook_share

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

fotomoto

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.

iconfonts

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.

imagespanel

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, showOverlayOnLoadimageCornerRadius, 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.