lightboxr.com - F.A.Q.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

FAQ

Why do I have to register? ↑top

You need an account so that only you can access the list of images that you have collected. Using your email address as your account name saves you having to make up or remember a user name and also allows us to send you important administrative messages (like when you forget your password).

What is the “nickname”? ↑top

The nickname you use to register is simply so we can address you in email messages and on screen messages with a name rather than using your email address or saying “hey you!, yeah you, sitting there in front of the screen.”

What browsers does Lightboxr work on? ↑top

This site has been tested with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2.0.4. In theory any of the Mozilla based browsers should also work. The browser must be set to run Javascript/JScript and must accept cookies in order to the site to function correctly.

How does Auto login work? ↑top

If you check the “log in automatically in future” checkbox on the login page, a cookie will be stored in your browser so that next time you return to the site you will be automatically logged in and taken to the boxes page. You will not be logged in automatically from another borwser on the same computer nor from any other computer. If you set auto login on another computer it will invalidate auto login on any other computers. If you log out by clicking on the “log out” link in the top navigation on the site, the cookiie is removed and you will not be logged in automatically.

How do I change my login email address? ↑top

If you want to change the email address you use to log onto the system, click on the “account: your name” link that appears in the top right of every page. This will take you to the settings page. There you can type in the new address you want to use and you must click the “save” button at the bottom of the page. This will send you an email message to the address you just entered. The message will contain a link which you must click in order to prove that you own the address. Once that has been confirmed you can log in with the new address. Until it is confirmed you must sign in with the old address.

How do I change my password? ↑top

If you want to change your password, click on the “account: your name” link that appears in the top right of every page. Click the button labelled “change password”. This will show you a different form with four blanks. You must enter the old password once and a new one twice. Click the “change” button to commit the change. You must then use your new password to log in.

I forgot my password, how can I log in? ↑top

If you forget your password, go to the login page and enter your email address, but leave the password blank and click the “Login” button. This will send you an email message with a link in it. Click the link and it will take you to the change password page. It enters a special code in the old password blank which will allow you to choose a new password.

Why doesn’t clicking on the search item reshow my last search automatically? ↑top

Clicking on the search item in the left-hand sidebar does not execute a search because it is more useful to be able to expand and collapse the search pane within the sidebar before and after searching. The field retain the last values so you can just click the find button again to resubmit the search. However, you may find it easier to use the “back” button in the browser toolbar or the browser history.

What is the “in tags and text” popup in the search pane for? ↑top

Pictures on flickr have a title and a description. Users can also add “tags” which are usually single words that describe the image and can be useful for searching. Sometimes where there are a lot of results you might want to limit the search to only uses in the tags, or only in the title and description. if you choose “all the tags” and you have entered more than one word in the blank, then a photo must have all of the words as tags to be found. If you choose “any of the tags” and have entered more than one word in the blank then any photo that has one or more of those words will be returned.

Can I search for images by the owner name? ↑top

Currently you cannot search by image owner name. We will add that later.

What are the “icense” checkbox and popup menu for? ↑top

These are part of the search pane and they allow you to limit the search result to only images with certain license. The licenses are worded specifying restrictions, the search values here are worded according to what is permitted. Generally the options higher in the popup will return more images because they will include more license variants. The ones lower will return fewer because they include fewer variants. Checking the “commercial use” checkbox will limit results to only commercial use licenses. leaving it unchecked will include both commercial and non-commercial licenses. Choosing “licensed and unlicensed” from the popup will return images regardless of their licensing type. For more information on licensing see the page on the Creative Commons license.

What is the “date taken/date uploaded” popup? ↑top

This popup in the search pane allows you to specify a date range or simply a start or end date for finding images. There are two significant dates: taken and uploaded. You might have looked for images on a certain date and now want to restrict the uploaded date to photos “uploaded” after the date you last search so that you do not see the same photos again. The popup is ignored unless dates are entered in the “after” and “before” blanks.

What are the “after” and “before” blanks? ↑top

These are the date fields used in conjunction with the “date taken/date uploaded” popup. You can enter dates in either or both blanks. If you enter two dates, be sure that the one in the “before” blank is later than the one in the “after” blank or you will be specifying a non-sensical period and will find no results. You can enter the dates using numbers and month names (or part thereof). If you only enter a single number it sill be assumed to be the day of the current month. Experiment to see if it understands your preferred mode of typing dates, and check after hitting “find” that it has got it right.

How do I show or hide the info below the images? ↑top

If you expand the picture info pane by clicking on “picture info” in the sidebar, there are five checkboxes: rating, license, owner, date and title. If you check any of these the corresponding information is shown below the image in the gallery area. If you uncheck the checkbox the corresponsing information is not shown below the image. These settings are global and affect search results and the contents of any box. Note that the ratiing is not shown on images in search results.

Why can’t I rate or annotate a photo? ↑top

You cannot add or change information on an image until you have added it to your library or one of your boxes. You must drag an image onto an item in the sidebar to add it and then you can add notes and ratings.

How do I show the information for a photo in the “picture info”? ↑top

You must highlight one and only one image to see its details in the picture info. To highlight an image click on the image itself (not the frame or the text below it).

How do I highlight an image? ↑top

Each image is surrounded by a frame and the frame may also contain text for the title and owner of the image. In order to highlight an image you click on the image itself and not the frame or the text. Highlighted images have a blue border around the image.

How do I highlight more than one image? ↑top

When you click on an image, it will highlight that image but also un-highlights any image that was previously highlighted. To highlight a series of images that are next to each other, highlight the first in the series and then hold down the shift key on the keyboard while clicking the one at the other end of the series. This will highlight that image and all images between them. Note that images are like text on a page in that when the right edge of the row is reached the next image is the first one on the left of the line below.

If you want highlight images that are not next to each other, hold down the ALT key on the keyboard while clicking on the images. Any image that is not highlighted will be highlighted by the click and any image that was already highlighted when you click it will cease to be highlighted. You can use shift clicking and alt clicking in conjunction to quickly highlight the images you want.

How do I change the title of an image? ↑top

Choose the library or the user defined box that the image is in (you cannot retitle an image in the search results). Then click on the image itself to display its details in the “picture info” pane of the sidebar. If the picture info pane is not open click it in the sidebar to expand the pane. Click into the field below the “title” checkbox and edit the text. When you tab out of the field or click elsewhere the name is saved back to the server. Note that this title change only affects the title that you see, it is not saved at flickr and no one else will see it.

How do I add notes to an image? ↑top

Choose the library or the user defined box that the image is in (you cannot retitle an image in the search results). Then click on the image itself to display its details in the “picture info” pane of the sidebar. If the picture info pane is not open click it in the sidebar to expand the pane. Click into the lowest of the three fields and edit the text. When you tab out of the field or click elsewhere the name is saved back to the server. The notes field may initially contain information entered by the owner. You can add to this information or remove it. Note that this title change only affects the title that you see, it is not saved at flickr and no one else will see it.

How do I rate an image? ↑top

When an image is in your library or one of your boxes and it is the only image highlighted and the picture info pane is open in the sidebar, you can change the rating on the image by clicking on the star bar to the right of the “rating” checkbox. If you click and hold the mouse button down, you can drag left and right to decrease or increase the rating. The rating is saved immediately.

How do I remove a rating? ↑top

To set a rating to “no stars” follow the instructions for rating an image. But click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the left until no stars are showing. Then release the mouse button.

Why does the dots on sidebar spin? ↑top

This is an indicator that information is being exchanged with the server. It lets you know that your data is being saved or may indicate that you should wait for the result to return.

Why can’t I edit the tags? ↑top

The tags box (the middle box in the picture info pane) is read only. This is because there is currently no facility to search for images within your library and info you enter is not passed back to flickr so there is no point.

What is the import item in the sidebar for? ↑top

This allows you to add pictures to your library if you already have the flickr url (web address) of an image. To get that url you can copy it from the location blank when you are looking at a flickr photo page. You can also right-click on an image on a flickr page and choose “Copy Image Location” (Copy Link Location also works but is less efficient). You can also copy large chunks of html that contains links and references to flickr photos and paste it into the import field. You have to click the “import” button to start things off and it takes a few seconds to process the information but the images it has imported will then be shown in the gallery.

How do I see what I have imported? ↑top

The results of the import are shown automatically after you have clicked the import button. If you click it without entering any image addresses into the blank, it will show you any images you have added in the current session. Note that the import results also show any items you have added by dragging from search results into boxes too. You can also look in the library “box” and change the sort order to “reverse collected” to see the most recently added items.

What is the browse button in the import pane for? ↑top

If you have saved an html file containing links or references to flickr images to your hard disk, you can use the browse button to locate it on your hard disk and it will be uploaded when you click the import button and the image links will be extracted and the images added to your library.

How do I add images to a box? ↑top

The simplest way is to click and drag the image from the search results gallery and drop it on the name of a box or the “library” box in the side bar. You will see the dot on the box spin and then the number on the right will update to reflect the addition. You can also highlight more than one image (by holding down the shift or alt keys on the keyboard while clicking on them). You can then drag the group of images to a box in one go. In fact you don’t need to drag the images if that is too difficult or you cannot see the box and the highlighted images at the same time. Simply highlight the one or more images and then click on the box in the side bar. You will be asked if you want to move the images into the box and if you click OK it will add them to the box and show you the contents of the box. If you want to add an image but don’t want to see the box contents afterwards, hold down the shift key while you click on the box name in the sidebar and the images will be added without a dialog and without changing views (much as if you dropped them on the box).

How do I remove an image from a box? ↑top

To remove an image use the same drag and drop techniques as used to add images to a box, but drag them from a boxes gallery to the “rubbish” item in the sidebar. If the box has a yellow dot, dragging to the rubbish simply removes the image from that box but leaves it in the library and any other box it may be in. If the image is being dragged from the library gallery, then the image is removed from all boxes and the library. Images dragged from the library to the rubbish are then visible in the rubbish gallery until you drag them back out or click the “empty rubbish” button in the rubbish gallery.

Why do images sometime say “currently unavailable” and have no picture? ↑top

This usually means the flickr user who shared the image has either removed the image or changed its sharing setting so that it is not longer publicly visible. It may also be the case that you are viewing images at a size that is not available for that particular image. However this usually only applies to larger image sizes and not the small sizes used in the lightboxr galleries.

How do I create a new box? ↑top

Instead of dragging and dropping images on an existing box in the sidebar, drop them on the “new box” item and this will create a new box and add the photos to the new box. Also if there are highlighted images, simply clicking on the “new box” without dragging anything, will do the same. If you click “new box” when there is nothing highlighted a new box is created but no items will be added to it initially.

How do I rename a box? ↑top

Click on a box name to make it the current box. Then click the name again and it will go into edit mode. Edit the name and then tab out of the field or click anywhere else to save the new name.

How do I get to the flickr page for an image? ↑top

There is a checkbox in the picture info pane labelled “title”. If this is checked then the title of each image will appear below the image. Clicking on the title will open the flickr page for that image. If there is a single highlighted image in the gallery, then there will be a link next to the “title” checkbox in the picture info pane labelled “view at flickr” which also takes you to the flickr page for that image.

How do I get to the picture owners flickr page? ↑top

There is a checkbox in the picture info pane labelled “owner”. If this is checked then the owner of each image will appear below the image. Clicking on the owner name will open the flickr photostream page for that user. If there is a single highlighted image in the gallery, then the owner name will also appear as a link next to the “owner” checkbox in the picture info pane which also takes you to the flickr photostream page for that user.

Why are there numbers on the right side of the box names? ↑top

This number indicates the number of photos in each of the boxes.

Why do the numbers on boxes sometimes change when I click on them? ↑top

Usually the number of photos in a box is correct, however when images have been moved from the library to the rubbish (ie deleted) lightboxr does not update the box counts to reflect this until you select a box. This is for efficiency reasons and is not a bug.

What date is shown in the date info field and under photos? ↑top

The date take is shown in the info, the date uploaded is not shown anywhere.

How do I delete a box? ↑top

You can drag boxes in the sidebar and drop them on the rubbish item. You will be given a warning but then the box will be deleted. The photos within the box however, will remain in the library and any other box that they may be in.

Can a photo be in more than one box? ↑top

Yes, you can add an image from the search results to any number of boxes (one at a time). You can also drag images from the gallery of one box onto the box name in the sidebar of a different box to add it to the other box. It will not remove the image from the original box.

Does changing the info an image in one box change it everywhere? ↑top

Yes, there really is only one “copy” of the image information regardless of how many boxes you have copied it to and changing the title, rating or notes anywhere will change them everywhere else (cause its the same thing).

Why is the trash called rubbish? ↑top

That’s just the word we prefer to use here in England.

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