Our Season of Usability project for this Summer has finally come to a close, and we couldn't be happier with the results! Jakob Hilden worked with the Gallery team and Katrin Goetzer from OpenUsability to work on improving the image upload tools of Gallery. He did a comparative analysis, created mockups for a new image upload tool, and documented his entire project in our documentation site. At our annual developer meet-up, Jakob joined with us discussing the future of the project, and has decided to stick around and help us out with whatever comes next. (More on this in a future story!) This fall, he is mentoring two usability projects related to Gallery at a design course at the University of Michigan's School of Information.

You can find Jakob's full report on openusability.org.

Gallery 2.3 RC2 is now available for download! This is second and last release candidate before Gallery 2.3 will be complete. A release candidate helps users like you test out new features and provide feedback so that the final version has as many possible issues resolved. This release candidate includes the same security fixes as Gallery 2.2.6, so anyone using RC1 is strongly encouraged to upgrade to RC2. We have 6 different packages for you to choose from. You can read all about it on our Gallery 2 Download Page.

As always before you ask for help, please, please read the README and the installation docs -- we've made an effort to answer all of your questions there. Also consider looking at the known issues. Upgrading is quick and easy. There are a few things you should know first so be sure to scan the upgrading instructions. Then head on over to the Gallery 2.3-RC-2 Forum Topic and let us know what you think!

Thanks for your continued support! Read on for more details...

Usability is an area that we always seem to be a few steps behind in, but now is your chance to help us out to fix that. Two groups of students at the University of Michigan's School of Information are spending the semester working on ways to improve Gallery's usability, and they NEED your help! They are seeking some volunteers who are currently using Gallery and are willing to spend 30-45 minutes on the phone (or in person if you live in Ann Arbor, Michigan). As a small token of appreciation for your time, you'll get that warm fuzzy feeling for helping out an open source project and a $10 or more Amazon Gift Card.

This is your chance to voice your opinion and help thousands of Gallery users around the world create more enjoyable photo albums. Please email us the team at gallery [at] ctools.umich.edu with your phone number and available time slots for an interview. They will be conducting interviews between September 12 and September 24 2008. In addition, if you happen to be in Ann Arbor, Michigan, please let them know so they can conduct a face-to-face interview. If you have friends who use Gallery and have comments on their experiences, please refer this message to them. The team would love to talk to them as well.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email them or visit their project website at http://www.adamatorres.com/gallery-project/.

After many months of refinement on the alpha versions, Gallery 1.6 Release Candidate 2 is here. This is the second of at least 2 Release Candidates before Gallery 1.6 will be release and recommended for production sites. A release candidate helps users like you test out new features and provide feedback so that the final version has as many possible issues resolved. Please notice that while this release comes with some great new features (e.g. Group Support, Captcha), it contains incompatible changes with older versions of Gallery 1.

This release introduces large changes to CSS and layout, which are incompatible with any previous Gallery 1.x installation. None of your modifications of your Gallery 1.5.x will work in Gallery 1.6! You can of course use your current albums and photos etc, but we suggest a fresh install and then port your mods over. We encourage you to try it out and report any problems you have because the more people who give us feedback, the better the final product will be. You can get Gallery 1.6-RC1 from the download page on SourceForge.

This release also includes the same security fixes as Gallery 1.5.8 and Gallery 1.5.9 so if you are using one of the Gallery 1.6 alpha releases or first release candidate, we highly recommend that you upgrade to Gallery 1.6-RC2 to protect your installation.