We continue to update the uploader (swfUpload) as they upgrade and fix bugs.  This latest upgrade to the uploader and our implementation of it, fixes the upload errors Firefox was generating (particularly on a Mac).  F-Swap should now be fully mac (and Firefox) compatible!

Loading times have been reasonably quick and filtering virtually instantaneous but smaller events but with larger ones (several hundred to thousands of photos) there was a noticeable lag as you checked on and off different users, different dates or indicated photos as favorites.  That was the case, anyway.

We’ve made some major improvements in filtering and loading for large events.   The initial loading time should be much faster as we’ve reduced the size of the photo data xml file by nearly 60%.  Further, all the user-date combinations are now cached so filtering is now nearly instantaneous for all but the largest events, and even then the results start appearing within a second or two.  Finally, we’ve batched the filtering of favorites, so indicating an item as a favorite happens instantly and any delay (noticeable only on big events) only happens when switching to viewing only favorites after adding or removing a favorite.

Reduced, cached and batched.  Bottom-line: A much faster f-swap.

We’ve upgraded the upload tool so it is compatible with the latest flash plug-in (version 10) so users whose browser has this plug-in can continue to upload multiple files with ease. The upgrade involved installing an alternative approach to launching the photo selection dialog.  A “security fix” in the latest version of the flash plug-in broke our previous method of launching this dialog.  However, for all intents and purposes file uploading will work as it did previously.

Events can now be renewed annually.  Wait, your thinking, this didn’t exist before?  Well, the site hasn’t been around that long.  Our first paid accounts are just coming up for annual renewal in the next couple of weeks, so we didn’t need to finalize the event renewing functionality until now, but its done and along with it we’ve added a number of helpful tweaks like better messaging on the site when events are about to expire, have expired but can still be renewed, and finally, when all the event and all the photos have been removed.Now, you’ll always know what the status of your events are and you won’t miss out on the opportunity to renew your events for as long as you need them.

For users who have both created many events and participated in many events other people have created, the events page could be a little confusing.   What events are mine?  Whose events are all these other ones?  What happens when I click on the red X?  We’ve hopefully cleared up all these questions for our users.Now the events are separated into two lists.  Events you’ve created and events you’ve participated in.  Hit the red X on an event of yours and delete it completely, folders and all, so you have space to create more free events.   Click the red X on the events of others and it simply removes it from your list and stops alerting you about new photos.  And of course, the relevant information displayed is different between the two.  On the events of others, you want to know who created it, and care less about how close it is to its capacity.I hope this helps all our heavy users and makes participation easier for everyone.  On another note, keep watching for more improvements and upgrades this fall.  We’ve got a laundry list of features and fixes we are eager to complete.

We’ve made a slight improvement to the quality of the photos as displayed on the website for all new photos added from this post forward.   As always, when downloading the full-sized photos, you’ll still get the exact same quality as the original photo that was uploaded, but now the smaller versions of these photos that we display on the website will be less pixelated than previously.

This also applies to the “Download Smaller” feature.  Now any photos downloaded at smaller than their original size will be sharper than in the past.

We’ve completely re-written the download script to improve its performance.  You should no longer have the timeout issues posted about previously, so you can go ahead and download up to 50 photos at a time.  The download should start quicker than previously.

Interestingly, your download will start sooner when downloading the full sized photos than when downloading smaller photos (since they don’t have to be re-sized first) but even with this initial delay, the total download time will usually be faster because of the smaller file size of the re-sized photos.

We will continue to test the new download utility and hopefully be able to raise the 50 photo maximum per download.

This issue should now be resolved.  See  the Improved Download Performance post for details.

Lately there has been some issues with zip downloads of large numbers of files.  We are working on the issue.  For now, if a zip download of multiple files doesn’t work, try selecting a smaller number of files at a time, say 1 or 2 rows at a time.