Tagged: photos RSS

  • Rastin Mehr 11:10 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
    Tags: , mootools, photos, usability   

    Anahita Photos 2.2 Provides New Usability Enhancements 

    The Anahita photos app is one of my most favorites and it is already using a lot of the usability and API enhancements of the Anahita 2.2 release. Here are some examples:

    Masonry Layout

    Anahita Photos Masonry Layout

    We have replaced the grid thumbnail layout with masonry layout. You can see an example of it on my photo feed. Having the right permissions, the viewer can like or delete photos from this list. This masonry layout is not using JQuery. It is in fact using the native Anahita/Mootools javascript library and default twitter bootstrap rows and spans and the final result is much leaner and lighter than the mainstream JQuery alternatives.

    Create Sets

    Anahita Photos - create a new set from the sets view

    Until now you could only create a new set after uploading a batch of photos or when you were assigning an individual photo to other sets. In the Photos 2.2 app you can create a new set right from the Sets view, drag’n drop thumbnails from your photo stream to your newly created set, reorder them, and publish the set.

    Organize Photos in a Set

    Anahita Photos - organize photos in a set

    We have improved the way you can organize your photos in a set so you can now just drag’n drop thumbnails from your photo stream to your set, remove photos from your set, and reorder them too.

    Photo to Set Assignment

    Anahita Photos - add a photo to one or many sets

    It is now a lot simpler to add an individual photo to one or many existing sets or you can create a new set from the same view.

    Stay Updated

    We will be posting more updates as we go. In the mean time do not forget to:

     
    • Bent Rune Skulevold 1:07 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink

      The Anahita Photos App is a piece of art :)

    • Rastin Mehr 11:52 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink

      Thank you @Bent

  • Rastin Mehr 7:24 pm on January 5, 2013 Permalink
    Tags: , , , mobile, photos, responsive,   

    Anahita 2.2 Birth release is now available for download 

    Sleepy faces but we have the Anahita 2.2 Birth release coming up

    We have just released the Anahita 2.2 Birth release packages for public to download. The Embryo packages were made available to the Anahita Premium tribes on the New Year’s Eve. This is officially the last release from the year 2012. We are already working on what is going to be the Anahita 3.0 codebase. More updates on that will be posted later. So what’s new in Anahita 2.2?

    Masonry Layout API

    Anahita Photos Masonry Layout

    You can see an example of the Masonry layout in the Anahita Photos app and on my photo feed. Masonry layout has been popularized by Pinterest.com and in comparison to a grid of square thumbnails, the masonry layout is a lot easier on the eye and more user friendly. Anahita is not using the common JQuery plugins written for this purpose and instead provides it’s own native masonry API written in Mootools which is somewhat lighter and takes up less code. Here is an example of how you can use the masonry infinit scroll to your layout:

    <div 
    data-behavior="InfinitScroll" 
    data-infinitscroll-options="{'numColumns':3,'url':'<?= @route('layout=masonry_list') ?>'}" 
    class="an-entities masonry">
    <?php foreach( $photos as $photo) : ?>
    <?= @view('photo')->layout('masonry')->photo($photo)->filter($filter) ?>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
    </div>

    and Anahita renders a responsive masonry layout for you automatically. The example that you see is from the Photos app. This is a new feature in Anahita and in the later releases we will be experimenting more with displaying media nodes in this format.

    Updated to Bootstrap 2.2.2

    We have updated the core less files to the latest Bootstrap version 2.2.2 and have made all the necessary adjustments. We were glad to see that a lot of custom styling that we had to develop for Anahita in the previous releases are now provided by default by the new Bootstrap library.

    Improved Styling of the UIs

    All the Anahita LESS files and application layouts have been rewritten to follow a more reusable pattern for displaying the entities. It is now easier than ever to style your UI elements when you develop Anahita apps. We have also taken major steps to make the Anahita template more responsive, because that is one of the many requirements for making Anahita mobile friendly. For the Anahita 2.2 we have switched off the responsive feature until other mobile friendly features of Anahita are implemented.

    Anahita Photos responsive mode on iPhone

    It is important to realize that in a CMS environment being responsive often equates to being mobile friendly, but in an application environment such as Anahita, being responsive is only one of the many conditions required for a mobile friendly experience. We yet have to develop other requirements in Anahita to reach a truly seamless mobile experience.

    More Scalable Profile Composer

    Anahita 2.2 Profile Composer

    In the previous release of Anahita the profile composers used tabs to display the forms for different apps. Tabs take up a lot of space and that could be problematic if we had many apps enabled on a profile. The new composer is using a drop down list which is not only able to handle more applications, but also function quite well in the responsive mode for mobile devices.

    Anahita Profile Composer in Responsive Mode

    Anahita Photos Composer in responsive mode

    No more dark theme in Anahita Shiraz template

    Until Anahita 2.1 release the Shiraz template was providing two styles of Light and Dark theme, but since styling and creating custom themes in Anahita is much easier than before, we have decides to take out the dark theme and stay with the default light theme instead. That saves us time and effort for every new release which can be invested in developing more high priority features in Anahita.

    Wrapping Up 2012

    Last year has been a very productive year for the Anahita project with 4 major releases of 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2. We are already working on the codebase for the Anahita 3.0 and the focus of this release will be adding a global search and taxonomy system. Year 2013, here we come!

    Stay Updated

    We will be posting more updates as we go. In the mean time do not forget to:

     
    • james 2:08 am on January 6, 2013 Permalink

      Super work in 2012, looking sharp guys and of course Anahita too!

    • Rastin Mehr 5:12 am on January 6, 2013 Permalink

      Thank you @james 2012 was a very productive year. We are looking forward to take on 2013.

    • Roni Mmi 8:56 am on January 6, 2013 Permalink

      I simply love the photo apps. i wish i could get premium tribe. so i can get it and use it . 2.2 so far the best ever released by Anahita.

    • Jen 12:56 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink

      Congratulations! Anahita is becoming more graceful and seductive with each release. :)

    • Rastin Mehr 12:52 am on January 10, 2013 Permalink

      Thank you @Jen

  • Rastin Mehr 2:32 am on December 22, 2012 Permalink
    Tags: , photos   

    Anahitapolis is updated to use the Anahita 2.2 codebase 

    We have updated the Anahitapolis.com website with Anahita 2.2 which will be available soon as a birth release.

    The Shiraz template is not quite mobile friendly yet, but we have taken steps in that direction to make the template more responsive. We also need to have mobile specific layouts in our views and that will be something for the Anahita 3.0 next year.

    Also you can check out the new Masonry layout that is used by our Photo sharing app. It it isn’t jquery, it is our custom code written in mootools which is actually a bit lighter than the common jquery plugins for this purpose.

     
  • Rastin Mehr 9:33 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink
    Tags: , , , , , , , photos, , , topics   

    So what is new in Anahita 2.0 

    Planning the upcoming  #Anahita 2.* releases

     

    Just over a day ago we started distributing the Anahita 2.0 Birth release package as well as 2 additional free social apps: Anahita Groups and Topics. We also have the Anahita 2.0 API documentation available for the hackers and developers out there who would like to learn what goes on inside the Anahita framework. It was 4:30 AM that we announced the availability of the 2.0 Birth release and I promised to do another blog post describing all the new aspects of the Anahita 2.0, so here we go:

     

    Completely Rewritten Framework

    We have taken all the knowledge and experience that we had gained from the Anahita 1.5 release and rewritten a lot of the framework code to be more reusable and efficient. Anahita now provides one of the most comprehensive APIs specialized for developing custom social apps and services. You can take a look at the Anahita API documentation for yourself.

     

    It is faster

    Anahita 2.0 is about 30% faster now due to the improvements that we have done all the way from the low level system calls and database queries up to the user interfaces where pages are loaded and rendered. For those of you who are more technical:

    1. we are using the latest release of Nooku Framework which renders the layouts faster with APC on.
    2. Using technologies such as Twitter Bootstrap and LessCSS, Anahita now has a single compact CSS file which downloads very quickly and pages render quite fast.
    3. Stream paginations on the dashboard and profiles have been optimized to load and pre-load faster which results into a instantaneous and seamless user experience.

    Lighter and leaner social apps

    All the Anahita social apps have been rewritten using the new framework code and now contain on average 48% less code and that is while they perform faster and smoother than before.

    That means the custom social apps that you wil be developing require less code than before.

    Anahita 2.0 apps are on average %48 smaller in comparisons with the 1.5 ones

    How much smaller are the Anahita 2.0 apps in comparison with the 1.5 ones?

    • Anahita Pages: 39%
    • Anahita Todos: 39%
    • Anahita Photos: 37%
    • Anahita Groups: 84%
    • Anahita Topics: 66%
    • Anahita Connect: 22%

    Improved Story Feeds

    The logic in the story feed has been greatly improved in comparison with the 1.5 release also a lot of the data grouping and preparation that used to happen at the application level are now happening at the database query level.

     

    Improved Composers

    Until now, the composers on the dashboards and profiles could only be used for posting stories. In the Anahita 2.0, the composers can be used for posting all types of media such as photos, topics, pages, etc. The Anahita framework also provides a very easy to use API for you to create your own custom composer for the social apps that you are developing.

    Anahita composers

     

    Improved Actor Profiles

    The actor profile layout has been redesigned to be less cluttered and it provides more room for additional applications and modules.

    Anahita Actor Profile
    The Edit Profile user interface has also been completely redesigned so all the profile administration task can be done in one place. Anahita framework provides the necessary APIs for your custom app to include additional tabs into the edit profile area.

     

    Notifications System

    Anahita now has a notification system to alert the viewer about all the new comments, likes, and other events that they should be notified about.

     

    Twitter Bootstrap & LessCSS

    We have used and extended the Twitter Bootstrap 2.0 library with the Anahita set of styling libraries in order to construct and style the user interfaces. Anahita 2.0 also comes with a built-in LessCSS compiler so let’s say if you wanted to customize the Anahita Shiraz template, just switch on the debug mode, modify the Less files or include new ones, then refresh the browser and Anahita will compile a single compact css file that contains all the Boostrap library as well as Anahita libraries.

    Important Note: We are still using the grid system provided by the Gantry Framework rather than using the fluid grid system provided by the Bootstrap. We will soon be discarding the Gantry framework and use the native Anahita template engine which will be using the Bootstrap responsive grid. As soon as we are done, the update will be available for free.

    What’s next?

    The 2.0 Birth release has opened a new chapter for the Anahita project and we have a whole new journey ahead of us. Our main focus for the upcoming 2.* releases will be: Search, content curation, and mobile accessibility.

     
    • James 1:19 pm on July 19, 2012 Permalink

      Super super work guys, looking forward to seeing what is beyond version 2.0 ;)

    • Rastin Mehr 5:56 pm on July 19, 2012 Permalink

      Thank you @James the work has already begun. I am drafting a list of what the vision going to be for the 2.* releases.

    • kostas 4:06 pm on July 21, 2012 Permalink

      well done guys ;-)

    • Claude Gelinas 10:11 am on July 22, 2012 Permalink

      Looks like a nice start, 2.0-wise!

    • Andre 12:43 pm on July 26, 2012 Permalink

      Well done guys. Love it

  • Rastin Mehr 9:15 pm on September 4, 2011 Permalink
    Tags: , , , , photos, ,   

    Anahita 1.5.11 Birth Release Update Available for Download 

    You can receive this updates either from the Anahita Bazaar in the administration back-end of your Anahita installation, or by downloading and installing the Anahita update and application packages one by one.

    DO MAKE SURE to make both file and database backups before applying the updates to your Anahita installation.

    This minor update provides a number of bug fixes in the core libraries as well as a number of user interface and usability improvements. To name a few:

    We have added a Visual and HTML editor API which is reusable in Anahita Apps. This editor is custom developed for the social networking posts and only provides the type of tags that are most commonly used in comments, topics, pages, and etc. within the body of the user generated content.

    Anahita Visual Editor

    Anahita Visual Editor

    Anahita HTML Editor

    Anahita HTML Editor

    Currently Anahita ™ Discussions and Pages apps are using the editor which makes it a lot easier for all types of users to add bold, italic, block quote, and other types of stylings in their posts.

    Anahita Comments

    More minimalist and user friendly comments

    We have also changed the way comments are displayed so they take up less height. Before users had to go to the action list on top of the comment list and click on the “Comment” action before they could comment. Now they can go to the bottom of the comment list and click on the highlighted “Add a comment” area for the commenting box to appear.

    New Photos and Album Stories

    New Photos and Album Stories

    When you upload new photos or create a new album, this is how the new stories are displayed. Of course the story items can be commented on.

    What else should be updated?

    We recommend that after you update the Anahita Social Networking Engine, you also update Anahita Shiraz template and the apps: Groups, Discussions, Photos, and Todos.

    If you are using a template other than shiraz or a custom social app that you have developed yourself, you’ll probably have to update them too.

    Change Logs

    The following are the change logs.

    Legend:

    * -> Security Fix
    # -> Bug Fix
    $ -> Language fix or change
    + -> Addition
    ^ -> Change
    - -> Removed
    ! -> Note

    Anahita Social Networking Engine

    ===Version 1.5.11===
    + Added a ptag filter for text-based HTML editor
    ^ the @content( method used to prepare node description fields is now wrapping text blocks in p tags
    + ul and ol tags inside the story body now have left padding
    # large images within comments now have max-width styling
    + Added html/quick tag editor
    + Added overtext to add comment
    # Fix playing flash video in IE
    # An actor list view always show regardless of the profile privacy. This allows for the socialgraph actions to render even if an actor profile is not visable
    # Privacy Form display an activity indicator when submting in ajax post
    + Added comment prompt for when a user can't comment either because they're guest/not following or the comment is closed
    - checking for the banners folder was removed from the systeminfo in the back-end
    + profile actor info fields now recognize endline in the sentences
    + profile actor info fields textarea now have a height of 100px
    ^ Person date of birth no longer has endlines before and after it
    ^ instances of "My" are changed to "Viewer's" in the menu item entry points to the com_socialengine
    ^ search now happens in the nobe body as well as the name or title
    ^ css class .an-se-medium-description in socialengine.css now has word-wrap: break-word

    Anahita Groups

    ===Version 1.3.2===
    # pagination link was constructed wrong. It is fixed now

    Anahita Discussions

    ===Version 1.2.3===
    ^ all description fields are now using @content
    - white-space: pre-wrap; has been removed from the discussions.css for styling the description fields
    ^ topic form is now 380px height
    - RSS link from the board view has been removed
    ^ if no boards are created, no boards selector shows on the topic form
    ^ comment story item now includes the name of the owner as well

    Anahita Photos

    ===Version 1.4.2===
    ^ all description fields are using @content( to render
    ^ on photo read view the names of author and editor are now shown in the additional info area
    ^ images within the story feed are now larger
    ^ new album story is now showing the medium size cover and up to 5 image square thumbnails in the album
    + in upload.js timeLimit has been increased to 60 and the fileListMax is limited to 10
    ^ profile gadget translation has changed. Instead of "Photo Stream" it says "Photos"
    + Added a photo uploader HTML fallback
    # Fixed the photo count after a photo delete

    Anahita Todos

    ===Version 1.2===
    ^ all description fields are now using @content(
    - an-se-text-body class tag has been removed for all the description fields
    ^ milestones are sorted by endDate DESC
    + added blank component module to the todo-item default view
    # closing and openning todo-items without parents was causing an error.

     
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