4.1.4.1. General Scenarios

• A young couple just got married. His family shot 20 rolls of film at the wedding and the photographer they hired shot an additional 15 rolls. Now that the wedding is over, this couple must organize their photos. In addition to creating traditional, physical photo albums, they want to publish their photos on the web to share with friends and family all over the world.

  The couple scans the images they want to publish on the web. Most of the images were scanned from the negatives at processing time making it easy for the couple to obtain digital versions of their photographs. The couple creates a new photo album for their wedding, and then adds the following folders: "Engagement photo shoot," "Rehearsal dinner," "Ceremony," "Reception," and "Honeymoon." The honeymoon itself was spent in two different places. The couple creates subfolders for each of these places in their Honeymoon folder.

  Now the folder hierarchy looks like:

      
      - Wedding
          - Engagement Photo Shoot
          - Rehearsal Dinner
          - Ceremony
          - Reception
          - Honeymoon
              - Fiji - Big Island
              - Fiji - Tokoriki
            
  

  The couple now opens a folder, and uploads images. With each image, the couple can specify optional attributes such as the caption for the photo, the story behind the photo, and an identifier to help them locate the physical negatives at a later date.

  Once the images are uploaded, the couple decides to give their parents administrative access to a couple folders. Now their parents can upload additional photos to those folders or modify the attributes of any given photo.

   

• The administrator of the "Dogs of the World" subsite on the "All Furry Creatures" web sites wants to provide a way to show pictures of various dog breads. Since the admin is a busy person she doesn't want to upload and manage all of the images herself. She does, however, want to specify the general layout of the various albums and control who can upload images.

  She creates an instance of the photo album within her subsite. Then goes about creating a folder structure such as:

      
      - Dogs of the World
          -Hunting Dogs
          -Show Dogs
          -Lap Dogs
          -Yappy Dogs
          -Mutts(The coolest)
            
  

  She then designates certain users or groups of users that she trusts to manage a given folder and grants them permission to create albums within each folder. These users go about creating albums and uploading appropriate images as they see fit. They cannot create new subfolders, so the folder structure will not become fragmented and disorganized (the admin is both a control and neat freak).

  The admin later realizes that Lap Dogs and Yappy Dogs are basically the same thing so she consolidates the two folders into one called Trouble Dogs.

  Since the point of the dog album is to show off various dogs, she wants the world to be able to see them. She grants view access to all albums within her subsite to the general public.

4.1.6.1. Photo Requirements

A photo is a generic content item for user uploaded photos. Each photo will have image content items associated with it that store the actual binary files and any image specific attributes. Photo and image content items can accommodate multiple revisions.

• VI.A.10 System will store three images associated with a photo: the original image, thumbnail image, and a view-sized image.

• VI.A.20 System will maintain a revision history for the photos and record which revision is current for given situation.

• VI.A.30 Images shall be stored so that they can be served efficiently. The system should allow for storing the binary files in either the file system or the database. This should be controlled by a parameter. The initial implementation may only support one storage type, but it should be open to either storage type.

• VI.A.40 Photos and any revisions have attribute data associated with them. The method and structure for storing these attributes will be decided as part of the design and implementation.

  • VI.A.40.10 System specified attributes. Certain attributes will be specified and maintained by the system. These attributes will include: uploading_user, user_filename, original_file_size, original_width, original_height, original_path, thumb_width, thumb_height, thumb_file_size, thumb_path, view_width, view_height, view_file_size, view_path, caption, upload_date. Other attributes will be determined during the design process.

  • VI.A.40.20 Administrator specified attributes. The site administrator can specify custom attributes of photos and if these attributes are required/optional for uploaded photos. The initial system will not support admin customized attribute fields. However the system shall be designed so that it is open to adding this in the future.

  • VI.A.40.30 User Specified Attributes. The initial system will not support user customized attribute fields. However the system shall be designed so that it is open to adding user customized fields in the future.

• VI.A.50 System shall be open to adding server-backed image manipulation with a future version. This may include image rotation, cropping, and other simple editing. Since image manipulation can be a cpu-intensive process, many users manipulating many images at the same time could potentially slow a sites response time. Any implementation of these feature should support redirecting manipulation requests to an alternate server for processing images to alleviate the load on the main server.

4.1.6.2. Album Requirements

• VI.B.10 Album is a group of 0 or more photos.

  • VI.B.10.10 Photos have a distinct order within an album

  • VI.B.10.20 User with edit privileges can modify/reorder photos within album.

• VI.B.20 Album has page to display several thumbnail images in an album.

  • VI.B.20.10 Number of thumbnails per page is controlled in admin page. Display page must dynamically react to changes on the admin page.

  • VI.B.20.20 Thumbnail display can scroll through next and previous pages, next / previous page group, or click on page number.

  • VI.B.20.30 Clicking on thumbnail calls view-size display page.

  • VI.B.20.40 Attributes can be displayed with thumbnails. Display controlled in admin page or in template page.

• VI.B.30 Album has page to display single view-size image.

  • VI.B.30.10 When viewing one image user can navigate to next and previous photo or return to thumbnail page.

  • VI.B.30.20 Viewer can display attributes of photo. Display controlled in admin page or in template page.

• VI.B.40 The display pages should use templates for designating layout and formatting. The templates should be able to accommodate parameter changes made through the admin pages. So if the admin changes the albums from displaying 4 200x200 thumbnails at a time to 6 100x100 thumbnails, the display pages should reformat accordingly with minimal changes to the display templates

• VI.B.50 Potential page to display the original images. Such a page would allow the user to view and save the original size high-resolution version of the photo instead of the lower resolution and smaller sized viewer and thumbnail images. Since some sites and admins may not want users to have access to the high-resolution originals, the admin must be able to toggle the availability of such page.

• VI.B.60 User with edit privilege can do following:

  • VI.B.60.10 Upload new photos to an album and specify attributes during upload process.

  • VI.B.60.20 Photos can be moved to different albums within same hierarchy.

  • VI.B.60.30 Photos can be deleted from an album.

  • VI.B.60.40 Edit photo attribute information

4.1.6.3. Album Hierarchy

• VI.C.10 Albums can be grouped in a hierarchy of arbitrary depth.

• VI.C.20 Display/sorting of hierarchy controlled on the page level but order field included to support arbitrary sorting.

• VI.C.30 Admin (exact permission required, to be determined) can add/consolidate hierarchy levels.

• VI.C.40 Admin (exact permission required, to be determined) can move items around in hierarchy.

• VI.C.50 Admin (exact permission required, to be determined) can resrict the creation of new hierarchy levels.

4.1.6.4. Administrative Control

• VI.D.10 Number of thumbnail to be displayed at a time on the page described in VI.B.20 specified in by a sub-site admin. Number of thumbnails pre page can be changed by the admin at any time and display pages react accordingly.

• VI.D.20 Thumbnail and view-size specified by sub-site admin.

  • VI.D.20.10 Thumbnail and view-size can be changed by sub-site-admin. Two options are allowed for size changes, proactive and retroactive.

    • VI.D.20.10.10 Proactive change will only change new photo uploads. Any changes will take affect immediately. Previously uploaded photos will maintain original thumbnail and view-size images until photo is revised.

    • VI.D.20.10.20 Retroactive changes will change new photo uploads and resize all previously uploaded photos. Since the time to complete such revision will vary with the number of photos uploaded, the system shall provides an estimate of how long it will take and asks if admin wishes to continue. If yes it schedule conversion process to run during low bandwidth times, and provides daily email updates if process will take longer than a day. Also checks for server crashes/restarts that would hinder conversion. (This requirement will be delayed until a future version)

• VI.D.30 Admin can edit other people's albums.

• VI.D.40 Admin designates default permissions for hierarchy levels. So various users can view, create, edit, and upload to different levels.

• VI.D.50 Admin can allow user to access the page displaying the original size high-resolution version of a photo described in VI.B.50

4.1.6.5. Photo Upload

• VI.E.10 Photos uploaded one at a time through an html form. Form shall provide ability to specify attribute information.

• VI.E.20 Upload system shall support uploading to separate dedicated server(s). Creating the thumbnail and viewer size images of a photo can be a cpu-intensive process. Many users uploading many photos simultaneously can potentially slow a sites response time. Redirecting upload requests to an alternate server for processing images can lessen the load on the main server. (Implementation of this will be delayed until a future release).

• VI.E.30 Future version to support bulk upload.

4.1.6.6. General Requirements

• VI.F.10 System to support sub-sites. Admin shall be able to add album implementation to multiple sub-sites on a web service.

• VI.F.20 System shall be able to scale to at least the service level experienced by IluvCamp during summer 2000.

• VI.F.30 Design to accommodate future integration of photo print and purchase capabilities as demonstrated on the IluvCamp Client sites.

4.1.6.7. Requirements delayed until future version

• VI.G.10 Purchase and printing of photo through ecommerce package and photo printing vendor.

• VI.G.20 Server backed image manipulation

• VI.G.30 Bulk upload tool

• VI.G.40 User specified attributes

• VI.G.50 Upload quotas

• VI.G.60 Admin notification of file space limitations.

• VI.G.70 Search and retrieval of photos and albums based on attributes or key words.

• VI.G.80 Admin specified attributes

• VI.G.90 Photo upload/manipulaion support for separate server.