benburleson » Photo

Comparing News Photo Galleries

benburleson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:39:42 +0000

I think the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe are the two news sources with photo galleries I see linked most often from digg.com. It’s strange how different the two sites are. Personally, I avoid chicagotribune.com photo galleries unless I’m very interested in the content. On the other hand, I’ll click on boston.com because they are usually very pleasing. Here’s why:

URL
- http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-090101-obama-pre-inauguration-photogallery,0,5684660.photogallery
- http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/inaugural_preparations.html
Layout
- Boston.com’s page is obviously about the photos. A small amount of text at the top to provide viewer context doesn’t distract from the goal of the site. The layout also wins because I don’t have to click to get through the gallery, simply scroll down.
- Chicagotribune.com’s page is obviously about the ads. Sure, the photo is in the middle, but it’s barely bigger than the largest ad on the page and total ad area dominates the real content. What are you trying to showcase here?
Photo Size
Boston.com wins again. I am here to see photos, don’t make me squint!
Photo Quality
This is where the Boston Globe really shines. I don’t know how they obtain all the quality photos they publish, but they are constantly impressive. Chicago Tribune, on the other hand, looks like they picked the best photos from a high school point-and-shoot photo project.

UCSB Tilt-shift

benburleson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:07:22 +0000

I don’t know why, but I love the tilt-shift effect. The site tiltshiftmaker.com allows geeks like me to make tilt-shift photos without knowing anything about them! I grabbed this photo from a Google image search.

Before:

UCSB Lagoon Before TiltShift

After:

UCSB Lagoon After TiltShift

Hide Image Source using CSS Sprite Technique via PHP and Javascript

benburleson — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:13:07 +0000

After thinking how silly it is to attempt to prevent people from downloading images by blocking the right-click functionality, I thought, “There must be a better way to do this!”

So, I came up with a technique to scramble the image and rearrange it using CSS so it looks normal.

I released it to Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/sprhide/

Check it out in action here: http://benburleson.com/sprhide/test.php5

Go ahead, try to steal the image!

(Without using a screengrab, jerk!)

It could use a lot of cleaning up and there are plenty of possibilities for improvement. I’m hoping the Open Source Community will pick it up!