A simple photo viewer

[-ST-]

My Casual Photo Viewer

If you have a moment, please take a look at my casual photo viewer. The photos are just samples for testing. Here is the website. You can click any thumbnail and that will open in the full-screen viewer. That's where things get interesting.

The intent is just to put a few photos from the beach in there every day. It's unlikely I'd have more than 30 images in there at any time. I'd just add a few and purge the oldest. Simple. I'll change the name to something more appropriate if I decide to keep it. Then, I'll get off Instagram.

If you have any thoughts (including criticism) I’d be grateful to hear them.
Here is the website.

Thanks for looking!
ST

The rest of this post is back-story and not necessary unless you’re interested.

Why do this instead of using social media or a full-blown website?

I walk the Crescent Beach area every morning, and people can't help notice the big white 200-600 and 70-200. People ask me, "Where can I see your photos?". I set up an Instagram account, so I could have something to say. I had no interest in social media, but the early morning people at the beach are a community. I inadvertently became one of them. I thought an Instagram account would let me share some images easily. @CrescentBeachPhotos.

Over time, people would talk to me about my photos they had seen in my feed. They rarely comment online, but they do, in person. That's pretty gratifying.

But I've come to loathe the whole social media experience. It's too easy to start posting for the algorithm instead of the people. And it’s toxic for me to spend any time on Instagram, and if I post there I feel a responsibility to go online to respond to comments.

I don't need a full-featured e-commerce website. I had one of those site-in-a-box solutions for another project. That one is wound down now, and I could have converted it. But it's more than I need to share a few photos with nodding acquaintances.

With help from an AI, I spun up a tiny website last night. I already had the technology stack in place.

There's no posting/upload process. I just put some images into a folder, and they are immediately accessible.

The one-page site took about an hour to configure. The AI wrote the code for the page in moments. I went through a few iterations to get the behavior (tap/swipe) and include EXIF data. But the longest part was waiting for the DNS propagation. (No work, just waiting for the web to recognize that you're there). I’ve since spent a couple of hours fine-tuning things like:

• The days are in reverse chronological order (newest first), but within the days, the images are presented oldest to newest (the order in which I shot them). That’s important when I deliberately shot a sequence.
• Scrub bar navigation
• Disappearing user interface controls (2-sec auto-fade if no activity)
• Details (EXIF data) persist if you have chosen to click the Details button (no auto-fade)
• In full screen mode, swipe navigation left-right is back and forward, down returns to thumbnails view.

If this works well enough, I can finally get back to working 2:3 landscape instead of 4:5 portrait (for Instagram).


If you'd like to take a look, here is the website.

Thanks for your interest,

ST