Search results for 'app:forums' matching tag 'network'

Re: Definite need for using photo folders on mapped drives/server shares

johnmil — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:00:00 GMT

As an aside, some of the reasons why network folders weren't supported in v. 1.0 are discussed in the thread http://community.research.microsoft.com/forums/t/1842.aspx. When networks are well-behaved, it's a relatively easy feature to support. It's the corner cases which make it difficult.

thanks for your feedback!

Re: Reluctant thumbs down...

johnmil — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Thank you for trying AutoCollage, and taking the time to make these feature suggestions. We've taken note of them, and will consider them for any future AutoCollage releases.

In creating version 1.0 of AutoCollage, we strived to provide a core set of features enabling easy collage creation. These features are designed to be easily accessible to a broad variety of users.

Every feature takes time to implement and test. Making a feature that works in ideal circumstances - such as using files over the network from a NAS on your LAN - is relatively straightforward. Making those features work or at least fail gracefully under less perfect conditions - for example accessing network files over a low-speed, unreliable link from a server that reboots in the middle of AutoCollage reading the files - is much more difficult. Further, features must be exposed in a way that doesn't confuse or distract those who don't wish to use those features.

Thank you again for your feedback, and for your suggestions!

Reluctant thumbs down...

tomp — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

What AutoCollage does, it does well. Unfortunately it's the omissions which sink it for me.

LIke many people these days, I've a lot of photos. They sit happily on a NAS, accessible by every other graphics software package I use. Even IrfanView, written by a lone student from the Balkans, can manage to access the NAS. But not AutoCollage.

Never mind, I thought. Just copy the pix I need across from the NAS to ...\My Documents\My Pictures\AutoCollage. It only takes time and we all have lots of that, don't we? Dreaming Spires, and so forth.

Now, a few pix lined up horizontally in AutoCollage, one deep, would make a nice web banner, wouldn't it? Or perhaps I could use it as a bit of visual punctuation at the top or bottom of an ephoto-album. No problem, AutoCollage can do clever stuff so it can easily cope with this. Wrong, there is a small problem; just 3 fixed sizes (in Imperial and no metric, though with landscape and portrait options) and one pixel size (full screen). None of these remotely correspond to a banner size. Next problem; AutoCollage can only blend 7 or more images - rather more than a banner would be comfortable with unless very closely packed. No truck with the 'small is beautiful' school here. Ah, well...

Never mind, it would be nice to give the kids a poster, say A3 size, for Christmas, wouldn't it? AutoCollage won't do small; surely it must do large? No it doesn't.

So, as an interesting research project demonstration, excellent.

As a useful tool, it won't do small, it won't do large, it won't do banners. It won't access my NAS, it won't do pixel sizes. I appreciate that there are tedious workarounds for all of these issues. But tedious workarounds don't add value. You're not planning to charge for this software, are you?

Re: One Minor Little Problem...

johnmil — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

We made a number of decisions while developing AutoCollage to try to ensure the program is stable and performs as well as possible. One of those decisions was to restrict images which can be collaged to locally available files. When the network is quick and working well, network images aren't a problem. However, a huge number of things can go wrong with accessing images over a network, which makes supporting network images consistently a significant work item.

Thank you for your feedback. We're making note of feature requests, and will ensure the ability to read images from the network is on the list.

One Minor Little Problem...

danacline — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

All of my photos are (as Microsoft recommends) safely stored (in duplicate, with backup) on Windows Home Server. However, when I try to get Auto Collage to open them, I get a message saying it cannot read photos from a network drive. Excuse me? Why? Can we get that fixed?

Dana Cline - Media Center MVP

network .pac file being used

chrisbean33 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Hi,

this is an issue for me, I can not let IE use auto detect for the network, this is on a corporat network, where we use an "automatic configuration script" see below:

I have run the most recent hotfix install, but it doesn't allow for this, any ideas?

thanks,
Chris