[lj] WARNING: Scrapbook being replaced, back up your images if you care

[siderea]

Heads up, peeps! Rumor has it that LJ will shortly (how shortly, I don't know) be releasing "Scrapbook II", which will replace the present "Scrapbook" functionality.

See http://lj-pics-beta.livejournal.com/862.html

The claim being passed around was originaly posted by zeitgeistic, but that post is

Comments

Actual beta user

[fiddlingfrog]

I just spent the last six months in the beta, so let me explain all that I know.
First of all, I think the quota drop is a huge misunderstanding. The space that you get for having a paid account has always (at least since the introduction of Plus accounts) been only 2GB. You can only get to 10GB by buying extra diskspace. And while I've been in the beta, I've had access to my full 15GB limit the whole time.
Part of the misunderstanding may have been that for a short while on Friday users who weren't in the beta were being given the beta service and it wasn't connected to their storage space properly, so they were being told that they had no disk space left.

Secondly, security permissions for photos and galleries is mostly staying untouched. When you go to choose a security level you can select from "Everyone (public), Friends, Just me (private)" or any of your custom friends groups. The only security level that's going away is the "Registered users" level that's available on old-ScrapBook.
I think the dev team is taking a sensible precaution here. Old-ScrapBook has had repeated issues with custom groups, and I think it's better to err on the side of people having to re-open their images than to risk letting things go public that weren't meant to be.

Finally, I'm confident that the old-URL redirection will work properly. During the beta period the URL structure for images uploaded to new-ScrapBook has changed significantly, but all the entries using those images continue to work just fine. Compare this image, which I used in an entry back in December, to its new URL structure now.

Re: Actual beta user

[siderea]

Thanks so much for filling us in!

How are you liking the new system?

Re: Actual beta user

[fiddlingfrog]

In general, I really really like the new system. First of all, it's so much simpler to upload multiple images. And once the images are uploaded it only takes a click to change the title or description, and it's done from the image page like I linked earlier instead of on a separate management page. Oh, and it's as simple as clicking a link to set an image as its album cover.

Once you have a bunch of images in an album you can select "Add album to entry" in which case you choose which images not to add to a post, or you can check off checkboxes under each image and choose "Add selected to entry", in which case you're choosing which image to add to a post. In either case you can re-arrange the order in which the images are added to the post, and you choose the size of image you want to see (100, 300, 600, 900, 1000, original, or custom). I use the HTML editor, and when it drops the pictures in its only IMG tags, it doesn't include a link back to the ScapBook page.

On the downside, it's currently impossible to re-arrange the images in the album after you've uploaded them (though they may add that later). This is slightly less an issue because you can re-arrange the photos as you upload them and as you add them to an entry. There won't be any support for sub-galleries, which I'm a bit bummed about, so I really hope they can add in re-arranging soon. Also there isn't any support for the tags feature in old-ScrapBook; it's something I never used and so didn't miss in beta, but I have seen a few people angry that it's gone.

[kelkyag]

Also there isn't any support for the tags feature in old-ScrapBook

Oh, that's sad. That's the only way I can find the things I'm looking for a lot of the time. I'd rather not make a zillion overlapping subgalleries to hold the same data ... which wouldn't work anyway with no subgalleries. Foo.