ArticlesThis post is part of the Online Photo Database project documentation. Learn more about the project’s current status.
Which requirements does Julian’s Custom Software meet?
| Id | Pri | Requirement | Pass? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GEN1 | C | Accessible by a typical web-browser | Y | |
| GEN2 | I | Active development of new features | N | |
| OWN1 | C | Ownership of photos is retained by me. | Y | |
| OWN2 | C | Future-proofed against money running out: mine or yours | Y | |
| OWN3 | I | Ownership of meta-data is retained by me. | Y | |
| CAT1 | C | Photographs grouped into albums by event | Y | |
| CAT2 | C | Photographs tagged with people | Y | |
| CAT3 | I | Photographs tagged with locations, objects, activities | Y | |
| CAT4 | I | Performers tagged with real and stage names. | Y | |
| CAT5 | I | Attribution of photographer details | Y | |
| CAT6 | I | Attribution of copyright owner’s details | Y | |
| CAT7 | I | Rating of photographs | Y | |
| CAT8 | I | Sorting/Filtering by rating | Y | |
| CAT9 | D | Albums grouped by type | N | Prototyped, but never finished |
| CAT10 | D | Albums grouped by date | Y | |
| CAT11 | D | Areas or points of photograph tagged | N | |
| CAT12 | D | Simple contact management of subjects | Y | Not very good! |
| CAT13 | D | Hidden fields on contacts to distinguish like-named people | Y | |
| CAT14 | D | Tagging of anonymous people to enable searching | Y | |
| CAT15 | D | Corrections to names update everywhere | Y | |
| CAT16 | D | Attribution of copyright details | N | |
| CAT17 | D | Control over (default) ordering | Y | Very limited. Displayed in order they were published. |
| S+L1 | C | Link to other photos with same tag within an album | Y | |
| S+L2 | I | Associate URLs with subjects, that are displayed. | Y | |
| S+L3 | I | Link to other photos with same tag across my albums | Y | |
| S+L4 | I | Search of tags by keyword | Y | |
| S+L5 | I | Cross-promotion of other albums and sites. | Y | HTML snippet associated with each album. |
| S+L6 | D | Link to other photos with same tag across other photo sites | N | |
| S+L7 | D | Search of album names by keyword | N | |
| S+L8 | D | User-generatable URLs to search tags by keyword | Y | |
| COMM1 | D | Multi-user Tagging | N | |
| COMM2 | D | Notifications of appearance in photos | N | |
| COMM3 | D | Comments permitted | N | |
| COMM4 | D | Notification of comments | N | |
| COMM5 | D | RSS or Atom Feeds for comments | N | |
| COMM6 | D | RSS or Atom Feeds for subjects | N | |
| COMM7 | D | RSS or Atom Feeds for new photos | N | |
| PQ1 | C | Web-quality images shall be displayed by default. | Y | |
| PQ2 | I | Print-quality images shall be available. | Y | |
| PQ3 | I | Automatically generated thumbnail and web-quality versions. | Y | |
| PQ4 | D | Archive-quality images shall be stored. | N | PHP libraries/server memory limited to around 1.2 MB |
| PQ5 | D | Custom thumbnails (e.g. choosing to crop over shrinking.) | Y | But limited; requires DB-hacking |
| PQ6 | D | Support for short video | N | |
| PQ7 | D | Support for long video | N | |
| PERF1 | I | Quota > 0.5 TB, if any | Y | |
| PERF2 | I | Low-cost | Y | |
| PERF3 | I | Fast response time | Y | |
| PERF4 | I | Scale to thousands of tags | Y | Just barely. More work required. |
| PERF5 | I | < 1 minute face-time per photograph | Y | Just barely. More work required. |
| PERF6 | D | Free | Y | |
| UI1 | C | Forward/Backward navigation between photos in album. | N | Software doesn’t know which photo comes next |
| UI2 | D | Slideshows | N | |
| UI3 | D | Display of many thumbnails at once | Y | |
| PRIV1 | C | Their email address should never be published on the web. | Y | |
| PRIV2 | I | Registration and logging in not required for general use. | Y | |
| PRIV3 | I | Robust privacy features for photographs | N | Functionality never finished; Errs towards not displaying; some photos only I can see. |
| WF1 | I | Hint to original location on my harddrive | Y | |
| WF2 | I | Auto-complete or partial search on tags during input | Y | Partial tag search, plus standard browser auto-complete on text fields. |
| WF3 | D | Read EXIF data from image | N | |
| WF4 | D | Support unpublished draft state | Y | |
| MIGR1 | C | API to add photos | Y | Not formal API, but I know schema well! |
| MIGR2 | C | API to add tags | Y | Not formal API, but I know schema well! |
| MIGR3 | I | Tags can be non-specific to areas of photo | Y | |
| METR1 | D | “How many visitors?” metric | Y | Limited |
| METR2 | D | “How long does a visitor stay?†metric | N |
Summary
I am surprised at how well my site got through the requirements. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. It suggests to me that some of my priorities might need tweaking!
Unsurprisingly, it fails in that it isn’t as feature rich and isn’t continually improving as some of the team-based offerings. It does well in the “ownership” stakes, but completely fails the community requirements. The inability to store large images is disappointing. The inability to advance simply to the “next” photo is a serious drawback.
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Web Mentions
OddThinking » Online Photo DB: Stage 3 - Identify possible solutions
OddThinking » Online Photo Database Project - Status