Whip Gallery Into Shape

For too long this site has been beautiful XHTML 1.1 served with the correct DOCTYPE and MIME type save for one section. One major section, with thousands of pages. The photolog. Part of it has been that Gallery is so inflexible I have to make extensive modifications just to get it to look like the rest of the site. The logic and presentation is all a mess in the code, and it’s quite invalid out of the box. Well, version 1.4 has just been released, and I can live with that until 2 comes out, so I’m going to use 1.4 as my baseline and get it 100% valid to the point I can serve the pages with application/xhtml+xml without fear of the pages not working. Wish me luck. The photolog may look quite funny during the process, but give it time and it should be back to its rosy and frequently updated self.

5 thoughts on “Whip Gallery Into Shape

  1. Any chance you will submit the revised code back to the gallery team for inclusion. Are there any other efforts to make Gallery validate?

  2. It’s something I’ve thought about. On one hand it’s something the project could really use, as much of the HTML is atrocious and inconsistent even within functions. On the other hand, the changes I’m making are pretty sweeping and in some cases specific to my site. Once I finish (I’m almost there) I’ll be happy to make the code available to anyone who requests it, of course.

  3. Hey Matt, I managed to get an earlier version of G1 (1.3 something or other) to HTML 4.1 transitional without tooooo much of an effort, so I think with the newer version it’ll be even easier. I’m working on it now actually (as well I am one of the Gallery Team Members). Long range plan is to have the HTML cleaned up and validating for somewhere in version 1.5. Check out the G1 Project Plan if you’re interested. There were substantial changes made this time around, the big one being the multi-language capabilities. Feel free to stop by the forums sometime, we’re a pretty friendly bunch of people. 😉

  4. Hey Gaile, Thanks for sharing the information. Looks like there are some good things planned for the future in Gallery.

  5. I’ve just downloaded Gallery 1.4.3 and will start sanitizing the code tomorrow… Any change you’ve got some work already done? Or guidelines on how to do this best? Any advice on things you learned the hard way are welcome too, of course.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS