Lately I've been trying to optimize the screenshots section of the game pages to help reduce server strain. Some game pages have literally 1000s of screenshots and previously when a user went to view all screenshots, it would show up to 2500 of those screenshots all at once which is a lot of bandwidth for both the server and the user, makes the page take a while to load, can slow down a users browser and can potentially add strain to the server. I recently made it so that it'll only show up to 250 screenshots at a time and added a 'next page' link to allow the user to view the next 250 screenshots. However, I'm still not sure if this is the best way of going about handling screenshots so I came up with another option.

I spent a few hours yesterday researching and finding the best script to use for handling the sorting and navigation of screenshots and I found one that I think is perfect for my needs (it's also by the same developers of the MP3 player in the Video Game Music Room). Here's what it allows you to do:
-Click a Category to filter the screenshots based on that category
-Lets you search through the screenshots based on keywords in sub category and description
-Lets you also search based on user name
-Doesn't download all of the images at once, only downloads them once they've been loaded
-Only shows 25 screenshots at a time (clicking 'Load More' returns another 25); this number can be changed
-Supported by almost all browsers and mobile devices
-Highlighting screenshot shows the username of who submitted it
-Clicking a screenshot gives a full screen view within the same page
-After clicking a screenshot, you can navigate through them in that full screen mode by pressing the arrows

I'm not done with my modifications to it since I didn't want to continue it until I got feedback from users whether they like this new system but what I plan to do is make it so that a user can get more information about a screenshot when they click it (such as tagged characters, rating, date, etc) and from there they'll be able to rate it and maybe even leave a comment. I'd also make it so that the images displayed at a bigger size.

Here's a few examples of where you can see it in action:

Spider-Man for N64 which has only around 78 screenshots
Currently:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/spiderman-n64-nintendo-64-9217-user-screenshots#user-screenshots
With Image Gallery:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/spiderman-n64-nintendo-64-9217-user-screenshots&test=testing#user-screenshots

Pokemon Fire Red which has around 1958 screenshots
https://www.vizzed.com/play/pokemon-fire-red-gba-game-boy-advance-10644-user-screenshots#user-screenshots
With Image Gallery:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/pokemon-fire-red-gba-game-boy-advance-10644-user-screenshots&test=testing#user-screenshots
(try typing Pikachu in the search)

Anyways, what do you all think? Should I go with the Image Gallery or keep it as it is?

Staff : I'd also love your feedback as well.

EDIT: For those who want to see what script I got, you can see it here with all of its options (WARNING: They use semi-naked women in their examples):
http://www.webdesign-flash.ro/p/ugp/index.html
You can click any of the 5 main types above and you can also click the numbered thumbnail styles before to see variations of each of those 5 types. I'll most likely also put this script to use in other ways on the site.

I'm all in for the new gallery. It looks way better, and optimizes the use of space within the page. It may take a bit of time to load the screenshots (the link for Fire Red took two minutes to load), but still it's just a minor issue compared to all the benefits it has.

Davideo7 : Not only does it take up less space, but it also looks a lot more cleaner, organized, and compacted. I like this new one much more.

I just edited my post with a link to the script I'm using. That'll give users an idea of what options I have available and how I can further customize the script.

EX Palen : Yeah it can take a while to load it for games with a lot of screenshots for some users (mine took around 30 seconds on the first load for Pokemon Fire Red) but I can make it page based similar to what I did with the current screenshots view.

zanderlex : I definitely agree. It's able to display more screenshots at a time.

I love the look of when you highlight the screenshots to see who made them. That alone is enough of a reason for me to say I prefer the image gallery look. As EX Palen said though, the screenshots take a little while to load. If there's a way to make the images load faster, then I'd say without a doubt say the image gallery, but if there that isn't possible, then I'm torn between the two.

I like the look of it, but it seems to take a lot more time to load the gallery on the Pokemon page.

Can you make an example with less images loading to see if it takes less time to load?

I like the look of the new image gallery, and I like putting my mouse curser over the screenshots because I just find it interesting I guess. It could also enable people to guess who made what screenshot if they felt so inclined (and had too much time on their hands :p). But it does take a long while to load it all up, which I am not a fan of (obviously). People might think that the page is broken or whatever, and sometimes speed does go before content when the content doesn't make up for the speed. And with the long time it takes for the screenshots to load (especially for Pokemon) I'm leaning towards speed. If there's a way to speed it up, then I'd be all for the new image gallery.

Davideo7 :

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It looks a lot more professional and neat when you see the gallery with the screenshots in it. I really like how it is laid out. For it is better this way. So that the pictures are not a little messy to see. Or when you are looking at certain ones as well. I really love how this is coming along.

ZeroTails :
gamerforlifeforever2 : I'll figure out a solution to the loading problem. I wouldn't make it live until I did.

Vanelan : I provided an example using Spiderman which had less than 100 screenshots.


Yuna1000 : It's not too late to use and find a different gallery but I've already invested more time than I probably should have into this one so if I was to go with a different one, it probably wouldn't be for quite a long time. This is pretty customizable though and you can see all of the various options available to me from the last link I posted.

1. I have to avoid allowing the page to load all of the screenshots at once for all of the reasons I mentioned in my previous post. I can make it so that it loads more than 25 at a time (the only reason I chose 25 was because it all fit on a single screen for my monitor).

2. I've never thought of it but I actually could make a script that we could use to find duplicate screenshots. Basically all it'd have to do is find screenshots that have the same exact file size since duplicate screenshots almost always have the same exact file size.

I can make it so that there is more information below a screenshot. If this is what users want then this is what I can do. Being able to sort by username already is an option, go ahead and type in someone's username in the search.

3. As I mentioned earlier in my post, I'm working on finding a solution to the slow loading and I wouldn't launch it until I had a good solution. I'm not sure if the current script would support filtering screenshots based on rating.



If anyone is curious to see all 5 scripts that I narrowed my research down to, here they are:
http://yiotis.net/filterizr/

http://www.queness.com/resources/html/simple-portfolio-page/index.html

http://www.davidbo.dreamhosters.com/plugins/mediaBoxes/example/multiple_filters.html

http://www.webdesign-flash.ro/p/ugp/cv-4.html
(the one we currently have)

http://codepen.io/desandro/pen/nFrte and http://codepen.io/desandro/pen/wfaGu
(both are from the same script, just different examples; this one is the most powerful with most options)

i like the new image gallery, its more organized and i don't have to scroll down to find a image. although the new one did lag for me when i try to look up the pokemon fire red pictures, while the current one load all of them without problem. i looked at the website to make sure its not me, all 35 image loaded fast. so i think the only problem is "Ultimate Grid Pro" can't handle loading so many images. don't know if any other scripts will do the same without testing them.

Davideo7 : I saw that Spiderman had less images, but it loads all of them.
I was wondering if you could make one of the pages load like... 10 images to see if it loads faster. Then "Load More Screenshots" loads another 20 or so (currently it loads another 100).

Vanelan : Actually I had it set as 25 but I changed it to 100 yesterday as I was playing around and forgot to change it back. How many it displays doesn't seem to matter, what does matter is how many total screenshots it has to load. I've done quite a few tests and basically the more screenshots a game has in the database, the longer it takes to load and this is because the current script literally loads all of the images into HTML into the page (and it does this so that a user can search and filter the screenshots quickly and so that they display quickly). Isotope, which is the script used in the last links, loads content a lot faster.

Maybe I just caught the site at a bad time when I first tried it.
Spiderman seemed to load really slow when I first asked. if you could set it to load less.

Vanelan : I just set it to 10. Let me know if that makes a difference (it doesn't for me but for some reason it might for you I suppose). Be sure to do a hard refresh so that you're not getting a cache.

I'm all for the new layout system. Some game pages have so many screenshots on them, it's not even funny. Hard to look through them all the way the current system is. I think anything that reduces the strain for users and on the server is one I'm more than open to.

Vanelan : Did you notice a difference? If not, I'm going to set it back to 25.

Jordanv78 : I might end up going with a new script possibly but the results will mostly be the same.

It seems like its a lot faster to me.
Is there a way to have the images just fully load instead of the animation before they pop up?

Vanelan : Did you make sure to do a hard refresh? Because otherwise it'd just be caching everything and therefore loading it faster.

I don't think that's possible with the current script.

Do you know if either of the scripts doesn't pre-load the pics?
I have a fast connection, but I imagine if someone has a slower one, it would take forever to load...