News :: 15MR: Zoner Web Gallery v7.0.5000.15
Salutations and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Zoner Web Gallery version 7.0.5000.15 by ZONER Inc.—An application to simplify the creation of web galleries.
H2. Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“Zoner Web Gallery You take pictures for a reason – probably so you can show them to your friends, family, or business partners. And the best place for that is on the Web. Not familiar with Web technologies like HTML and FTP? No problem! Zoner Web Gallery guides you through the work with an easy wizard, based on a great set of easy-to-use templates.”
Quick Pros
- Wizard-style interface makes process fairly easy
- Program is decently quick
- Few of the themes do have decent level of customizability
- Resulting pages do work adequately and look nice
Quick Cons
- No drag and drop support
- Only 9 templates built-in; No extra templates through ‘Get More’ link
- Gallery designs a little outdated; minimal CSS
- Some designs a little more advanced for control than others
- Does not template settings between launches
- Does not explain what settings do on the template customization
Expansion
The application does work as advertised; The application is fairly simple using the wizard-style interface and decently quick while scaling images. The themes, while scarce, are customizable to varying degrees depending on which theme you selecr and result in decent looking pages.
However, while simplicity Is the name of the game here, it doesn’t seem to quite hit the mark. To start with, there is no drag and drop support on the photo page which makes you have to have all your photos sorted into one set of folders. To top this off, it also will not do subfolders either, requiring you to presort all your images before you hit this application. This increases the effort needed to get this application up and running.
The templates seem to be a fairly weak spot on this application; There are only 9 templates built into the application, and when you click on the ‘Get More’ link, you get moreso an informational page on the Web Galleries support of Web Photo Studio. You wade around some and you find a page stating that In time, this page will be home to additional sample galleries for generating Web galleries.—The page is apparently geared toward Zoner Photo Studio again but is 1 hop away from the page which you landed at from this application.
The templates available vary greatly in customizability. Some of them only allow basic modifications to the templates, others allow a full range of options. When I generate one, I found that the html was older-style, with minimal CSS built right into each page instead of referencing an external file for separate customization. My biggest quirk is that if you do make multiple gallery pages and want them to all look the same, with you changing the themes, you’re going to have to write down all the settings; The application does not save your selections between application launches, forcing you to rebuild the whole settings series by hand.
Final Verdict
While this application is geared at the beginner, there is a lot that veers this application from simple. With the lack of themes to choose from and no extras to download, mixed with the lack of ability to change your settings between application launch makes this application feel unpolished as well. For being as far along (as noted by its version number) in its development cycle, I figured there would be at least a decent selection of themes and some of the features worked out. If you plan on using the themes as-is or minimal changes, or don’t mind changing the theme each time, this may be an application to try for free. If the application was a little more developed, I would say it may be worth $9.99 (And at $9.99, it may still be a good application for many,) but for myself I do not feel it is worth it.
With the day of Flickr, Gallery 2.2 (and the many hosts who will set the whole thing up for you), and many other hostings, this application has a lot to battle, and needs to be top-notch. $9.99 isn’t a bad price point, if it were cleaned up some, simplified and had added many templates.
Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, April 02, 2007
