A couple of years ago, I wrote some documentation on How to browse pictures and albums on earthli. The article below extends those instructions to explain how to use a new mobile mode.

New Features

Mobile Mode

There is a new browsing mode on earthli that provides a read-only view of individual entries (like articles, pictures, journals, etc.) that is much more mobile-friendly. This mode is available for all applications (e.g. Recipes or News) but is most useful for the Albums where the mode is now the default for picture-browsing. Each application tracks mobile mode separately.

Better Photo-sizing

Full-size pictures are now sized to the browser window without artificial constraint. Instead of clicking a picture to see the full-size view, use “Open Image in New Tab” on a device with a mouse or trackpad or pinch-to-zoom on a mobile device.

Key Photo per Day

The calendar now includes thumbnails of the key picture for each day with pictures. An editor can set any photo to be the key photo for the day from the photo’s command menu.

Browsing thumbnails

The basic thumbnail browser is already mobile-friendly enough. [1] You can see the thumbnail browser in the screenshot below. In it, you can see that the calendar button is more prominent on each album home page.

Opening the Calendar

Calendar View

If you click that button, it takes you to the calendar view, shown below. The calendar now shows the key photo for each day. [2] As before, the calendar shows the number of journals and pictures on a given day, showing the full title of a picture or journal if it’s the sole entry of that type for that day.

Calendar View

• Click “# Pictures” at the bottom of a day to jump to the thumbnail browser for that day.
• Click a day’s key photo to jump directly to the full-size picture navigator.
• Click the title at the top of the day for the journal entry (you can get to the pictures for day from there, too)

Navigating in Mobile Mode

Once you get to a picture, you’re in the mobile-browsing mode, by default. This mode clears away the standard header, breadcrumbs and toolbar, replacing it with just the title of the item (e.g. a picture) and a small drop-down menu with navigation commands and a command to get back out of mobile mode.

Mobile-mode Menu

Since the navigation toolbar is hidden, you can’t use the mouse to navigate. Instead, swipe to move back and forth on a mobile device [3] or use the left and right keys on a device with a keyboard.

Click the little down-arrow button in the top-left corner to show a menu.

• The top button closes mobile-browsing mode and goes back to the “classic” browsing mode (shown below)
• The other links go back to

  • the thumbnail browser for that day
  • or the calendar
  • or the thumbnail browser for the main album
  • or other albums

Navigating in Classic Mode

Navigating in the Classic View

From here, you can use the regular breadcrumbs above the toolbar to navigate as you would with the menu in mobile mode. Click the “Show Mobile Mode” button in the toolbar buttons to get back to the mobile mode.

I’m going to use a recent example for the screenshots below. The orange text and arrows in the screenshots are instructions. Click any of the pictures to see a bigger version.

I published two journals describing the two big days that I had in the mountains:

• Engadin Radmarathon
• Private Granfondo San Gottardo

To continue, right-click “Private Granfondo San Gottardo” above and select “Open in New Window”. When you’re ready, you should have this document open in one window and the journal for “Private Granfondo San Gottardo” open in another window.

You should see something like the screenshot below in the second window:

You can read the journal and see a few small pictures. To see more pictures, do as the screenshot says and scroll down. Now you should see the following:

You can see the so-called thumbnails for several pictures, but to see bigger versions, you have to click one of them. Once you have, you should see something like the image below.

From here, you can navigate the other pictures you saw in the grid on the previous page by clicking the left and right arrows to go to the previous and next pictures, respectively.

You can also show more context by clicking “Show list”. Do that now to see something like the image below.

The list at the top shows the other pictures in this set. You can click the links directly to jump around to pictures that sound interesting (instead of just advancing from one to the next).

Next we’re going to take a look at how to navigate on earthli. The image below shows some detail on the navigation menu. The navigation menu is at the top of the page and shows that you are looking at a single picture called “Olli and Marco at the Furkapass” in the “Granfondo San Gottardo” album in the year “2017” for “Marco and Kathy”.

Click the “Granfondo San Gottardo” link to see the image below.

We’re now looking at the list of journals for the “Granfondo San Gottardo” album. This is because we started off looking at a journal (way back at the beginning of this guide). We’re interested in pictures, though, so click the “Pictures” link to see the image below.

Now you can see all of the pictures in this album (rather than just the pictures for a single journal/day). If you click a picture, you’ll jump right back in to looking at pictures and can use the navigator, as described above.

Instead, let’s see all albums for 2017. Click “2017” in the navigation menu at the top, as shown above, to see the image below.

Now that’s odd, isn’t it? You can’t see any pictures. That’s because the “2017” album doesn’t contain any pictures of its own. You can see near the bottom that earthli says “This list is empty”.

This is the same thing that happened when we were looking at journals instead of pictures. Now we’re looking at pictures instead of albums. Click the “Albums” link to show albums instead. You should see the image below.

From here, you see that I’ve published four albums so far this year. If you click a picture, you’ll jump back to that album. Instead, let’s follow the instructions and click “Years” in the navigation menu to see the image below.

As before with the albums for 2017, you can now jump to another year by clicking the year (as shown in the screenshot). However, let’s navigate a bit farther by clicking “Albums” as instructed to see the image below.

Now you should be getting an idea of how the albums are structured: there are people (or rabbits) at the very top of the hierarchy and each person (or rabbit) has a bunch of albums, organized into a structure. In the screenshot above, you can see “Pierre & Louis” as well as “Marco and Kathy” and even “d von Ballmoos” (although she hasn’t published pictures in a long time). Clicking any one of them will navigate to their albums where you can use what you learned above to get around.

Instead, let’s jump out just one more level by clicking “earthli”, as instructed, to show the image below.

As the screenshot notes, you’re now on the earthli home page—the same place you get to when you type “earthli.com” or “www.earthli.com” in the browser directly. From here, you can click “Albums” to get back to the page you were at before. Or, you can click “News” to go to the main news page where I publish my articles. The “News” page functions exactly the same as the Albums (described above).

For convenience, you can also see the most recent pictures and most recent articles right on the home page. You can click those links as well to jump right to the picture or article. From there, you can use the navigation skills you learned above to get to other pictures, albums or articles.

Exercises:

1. Explore the Engadin Radmarathon album using the skills you learned above.
2. Try to get to Engadin Radmarathon from the earthli home page using the navigation skills you learned above.

Good luck and happy browsing!

This article is part (9) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

Before you start adding pictures, you should read the article Uploading pictures in earthli Albums (earthli News) to learn how to prepare pictures for publication online.

If you have a lot of pictures to add to an album and you don’t feel like adding them individually, you can upload them all at once and then edit them later.

Let’s start, as always, by going to the Galapagos home page, as described in the navigation tutorial, as shown below:

Selecting to Upload Pictures (click to enlarge)

Hover the mouse over the “Commands” button, then select “Upload pictures” (1) from the menu; you’ll be taken to a form for uploading multiple pictures, as shown below:

Upload Pictures Form (click to enlarge)

You only have to provide a value for “Zip file” (3); the other settings are optional. For zip file, you have to collect the pictures you want to upload into a single, compressed file in ZIP-format. You should leave “Day” (2) at the default value, which tries to read dates from pictures, using today’s date as a default for pictures that don’t contain dates. If you upload multiple zip files, you can change the “First number” (1) so you don’t have pictures with the same names [1]. When you’re ready, press the “Upload” button (4) to upload the zip file and process the pictures in it, as shown below:

Multi-Picture Output (click to enlarge)

This next step might take a while, depending on how many pictures are in the ZIP file. The output shows each picture (1) as it is processed, indicating warnings (2) when the date can’t be extracted. When the upload is complete, you can select “View pictures” (3) to see the uploaded pictures in the album.

This article is part (8) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

If you’ve got a lot of pictures in one album and want to group them or categorize them better, you can make sub-albums within the main album. Picking up from where we left off in the navigation tutorial at the Galapagos home page, we see that there are hundreds of photos in one album.

Before you can move pictures, you have to create the album to which you’re going to move them.

To move pictures, you have to switch to the “explorer” view using the drop-down menu, as shown below:

Album Drop-down Menu (click to enlarge)

Hover the mouse over the “Commands” button (1) to show the drop-down menu, then move down and select “Explorer” (2) to show the following page:

Select Pictures in the Explorer (click to enlarge)

The explorer view lets you perform operations on more than one picture at a time. Check off the pictures (2) that you want to move or use the toggle-all triangle (1) to select/de-select all pictures. When you’ve selected the pictures you want to move, press the “Move” button (3) to show the page below:

Move Dialog (click to enlarge)

Here, you can see the pictures you selected in the list on the left (1); you should choose the album to which to move them in the tree on the right (2). When you’re ready, press “Yes” (3) to move the pictures.

If you only want to move a single picture, you can access the “Move” operation (1) from the popup menu next to a picture’s thumbnail, as shown below:

Move Picture from Album (click to enlarge)

The “Move” operation (1) is also available from the “Commands” button on a picture’s home page:

Move Picture from Home Page (click to enlarge)

When you move a single picture, you’ll be taken to the same folder-selection and confirmation page as for multiple pictures (shown above).

Continue on to (9) How to add multiple pictures at once.

This article is part (7) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

In addition to adding and editing pictures, you’re invariably going to need to delete some as well. There are a couple of ways to do this, but let’s start off—as always—where we left off in the navigation tutorial with the Galapagos home page, as shown below:

Delete Picture from Album Page (click to enlarge)

To select a single picture for deletion, hover over the small “command” triangle (1) next to it, then select “Delete” (2) from the menu. You’ll be taken to a confirmation page, as shown below:

Confirm Deletion of Single Picture (click to enlarge)

If you want to make sure that you’re removing the correct picture, select the small triangle (1) next to the preview box to show the picture. To continue, press “Yes” (2). You’ll be returned to the album home page.

Alternatively, you can delete a picture from its home page, as shown below:

Delete picture from picture home page (click to enlarge)

Hover the mouse over the “Commands” menu (1) and select “Delete” from the menu to go to the delete-confirmation page shown in the previous step.

If you’ve got several pictures to delete, you can use the explorer to delete them instead of deleting them one-by-one; go to the Galapagos home page, as shown below:

Select Explorer from album home page (click to enlarge)

Hover the mouse over the “Commands” menu (1), then select “Explorer” (2) from the menu to show the page below.

Select Multiple Pictures to Delete (click to enlarge)

From this page, select the pictures that you want to delete using the checkboxes on the left, then hover the mouse over the “Commands” button (2) and select “Delete” (3) from the menu. You’ll be taken to a confirmation page, as shown below:

Confirm Deletion of Multiple Pictures (click to enlarge)

Verify that the pictures you selected are listed on the left (1), then press “Yes” (2) to delete the pictures.

Continue on to (8) How to move pictures to another album.

This article is part (6) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

Changing the cover for an album is the same as editing one, but you need to actually add pictures or move pictures from another album first. To change the cover picture for an album, go to the album’s home page. If you follow the instructions in the browsing tutorial, you should see the Galapagos as shown below:

Galapagos Home Page (click to enlarge)

Near the top of the home page, you should see the “Edit” button (1); press it to show the page below (if you can’t see the button, follow the instructions for logging in before continuing):

Edit Album (click to enlarge)

There are a lot of settings on this page, but just scroll down until you see the page shown below:

Edit Album Browse Picture (click to enlarge)

To change the cover picture for the album, press the “Browse…” button (1) to open the picture browser, showing all the pictures in the current album.

Browse Picture (click to enlarge)

Use the navigator controls at the top and bottom (1) to cycle through all the pictures in an album if there are a lot of them. When you’ve found the picture you want to use (2), click it to select it and close the window and return to the album editor, as shown below:

Edit Album Browse Picture Modified (click to enlarge)

You should see the picture you selected as well as a yellow marker indicating that the picture has been “modified” (1). Press the “Save” button (2) to save the changes and go back to the album’s home page.

Continue on to (7) How to delete one or more pictures.

This article is part (5) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

Editing an album is just as easy as creating a new one. To edit an album, go to the album’s home page. If you follow the instructions in the browsing tutorial, you should see the Galapagos as shown below:

Galapagos Home Page (click to enlarge)

Near the top of the home page, you should see the “Edit” button (1); press it to show the page below (if you can’t see the button, follow the instructions for logging in before continuing):

Edit Album (click to enlarge)

There are a lot of settings on this page, but you really only need to change the title, near the top (1). When you’re finished, press “Save” (2) to save the changes and go back to the album’s home page.

You can learn how to change the cover picture in another tutorial.

Continue on to (6) How to change an album’s cover picture.

This article is part (4) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

Editing an existing picture is a snap; if you don’t have any pictures yet, check out how to add a picture first. Let’s continue from where we left off in the browsing tutorial with the Galapagos home page, as shown below:

Galapagos Home Page (click to enlarge)

There are two ways to edit a picture: from its home page or from a drop-down menu that pops up when you hover the mouse over the triangle next to a picture (2). If you’re editing a lot of pictures, it’s probably more convenient to use the drop-down menu (2), but let’s take a look at how to edit from a picture’s home page.

To get to a picture’s home page, just select a picture (1); you’ll be taken to a page showing a large version of the picture on its own page, as shown below:

View Picture (click to enlarge)

From here, press the “Edit” button (3) to open the editor for the picture, as shown below:

Edit Picture (click to enlarge)

Here, you can change the title (1) and the description (2); from here, you can also change the date and time or upload a new picture, if you like. When you’re finished, press one of the “save” buttons (3) to save changes and return to the picture’s home page. If you want to see your changes before saving, press one of the “Preview” buttons; you will get something like the following page:

Edit Picture with Preview (click to enlarge)

You can select the little triangle (1) next to the preview to hide it or just scroll down to continue making changes (2). When you’re finished, press the “Save” button to save changes and go back to the album.

Continue on to (5) How to edit an album.

This article is part (3) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

Before you start adding pictures, you should read the article Uploading pictures in earthli Albums (earthli News) to learn how to prepare pictures for publication online.

Adding a picture is just as easy as editing one. Picking up from where we left off in the navigation tutorial at the Galapagos home page, we see the page below:

Create New Picture for Galapagos (click to enlarge)

Press the “New Picture” button (1) to go to a page where you can upload pictures:

Add Picture Page (click to enlarge)

Above the form, you can see a little pin (1); select it to stay on this page after you upload a picture—it makes uploading multiple pictures much quicker. Once you select the pin, you should see the page below:

Upload Picture (click to enlarge)

At the top of the page, you can see that you’re now “pinned” (1) to this page. As usual, you have to fill in a title, but you also have to select a file (2) from your computer to upload (this part looks different depending on which web browser you use). Any modern digital camera adds the date and time of the photo to the picture, so make sure that “Use date stored by a digital camera” (3) is selected (if there is no date in the picture, you’ll get an error and you can fill in the date by hand). If you don’t need to see the picture, just press “Create” to add the picture to the album; we’ll preview before we add, so press “Preview” (4) to show the page below:

Preview Upload (click to enlarge)

The preview appears above the form (1); select the small triangle to hide the preview or scroll down to see the form. You can see that the picture has been uploaded and is displayed with its file name and size (2). The date was also automatically extracted from the picture and is shown for the date (3). In addition to the title, you can also add a description before pressing “Create” (4) to finish adding the picture to the album.

Because we’re pinned to this page, you’ll come back to this page, as shown below:

Upload Next Picture (click to enlarge)

Above the form, you can see a confirmation message (1) that the last picture was uploaded successfully. From here, you can continue uploading pictures by repeating the steps above.

If you prefer, you can also upload multiple pictures at once.

Continue on to (4) How to edit a picture.

This article is part (2) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

Making a new album is very easy; you only need to know two things:

1. Where you want to put the album.
2. What you want to name the album.

Let’s make a sub-album in the Galapagos album from the browsing tutorial. If you don’t know how to get there, check out that tutorial to show the page below:

Create New Album (click to enlarge)

Near the top, you can see the “New album” button (1); press it to show the page below (if you can’t see the button, follow the instructions for logging in before continuing):

Create Album (click to enlarge)

On this page, there are a bunch of settings, but they are all set to reasonable defaults (inherited from the Galapagos album in this case). In this case, you only need to set the title (1) and press the “Create” button (2) to save it.

You’ll be taken to the home page for your new album, from which you can add a picture or move pictures from another album.

Continue on to (3) How to add a picture to an album.
 

This article is part (1) of a multi-part earthli Albums tutorial.

earthli Albums is an online photo manager that lets you upload pictures to albums and send updates to subscribers. Before you can add your own pictures, you should learn how to navigate the application. To get started, browse to the earthli Albums home page. You should see the following screen:

Albums home page (click to enlarge)

Near the top of the page, you can see your login status (1). If you’re not logged in, you’ll see a link to “Log in…”. Select it to show the following screen:

Log in page (click to enlarge)

On this page, fill in your name and password (1); check the “Remember me” box so that your login is stored for a while and you won’t have to log in every time you visit earthli Albums. Press the “Log in” button (2) to continue; you’ll return to the album home page, but it will look as follows:

Logged in albums home page (click to enlarge)

At the top of the page, you can see that you are now logged in (1). To actually browse through albums, let’s select the “Nid & Mil” album (2) by clicking the picture. You’ll be taken to the home page for that album, as shown below:

Mil & Nid Home Page (click to enlarge)

From there, click the picture for the “Trips” album (1) to be taken to the home page for the Trips album, as shown below:

Mil & Nid Trips Home Page (click to enlarge)

From here, you can see the albums inside the “Trips” album, both as a list on the left (1) and as a grid of photo album covers; select the “Galapagos” album (2) to go to the home page for that album.

Galapagos Home Page (click to enlarge)

From an album page, you have several options: you can edit the album itself (1) or use the navigator (2) to browse through multiple pages of pictures either by selecting a page number or by using the arrows to move forward or back. Click a picture (3) to jump to a full-size view of that picture and to see the screen below:

View Picture (click to enlarge)

On this page, you can see your position within earthli Albums in the so-called breadcrumbs along the top (2), which lists all of the albums you’ve navigated followed by the picture name. You can also edit the picture (3) from here or press the “picture list” button (1) to show a list of other pictures in this album on the left-hand side. Click it now to show the following screen:

View Picture with List (click to enlarge)

As before, you can still edit the picture (2) and you can press the “close” button (1) to get rid of the list on the side if you like. Use the navigator (3) to move forward and back through the pictures in the album.

You should now know all you need to know to move comfortably through earthli Albums.

Continue on to (2) How to make a new album.

earthli Albums is an online photo manager that lets you upload pictures to albums and send updates to subscribers. Pictures are organized into nested albums and users can have as many albums as they like. It’s pretty easy to use the earthli Albums, but you should still familiarize yourself using the tutorial outlined below.

1. How to browse earthli Albums
2. How to make a new album
3. How to add a picture to an album
4. How to edit a picture
5. How to edit an album
6. How to change an album’s cover picture
7. How to delete one or more pictures
8. How to move pictures to another album
9. How to add multiple pictures at once

This manual is also available as a PDF document.