FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

Hi everyone,

After strenuous efforts ;-) we have created a new website: the FMF Gallery ( https://www.topminerals.info/ ) which is a gallery of minerals where we have grouped and ordered all photos from the popular sections of the English forum: "Collection Photos" & "Women's Private Collections", and also all pictures of the sections "Collection Photos" and "Micros and Macros" from the Spanish Forum!.

The pages always open with the pictures randomly arranged to display different specimens every time you open the page, but using the corresponding box you can sort the images either by the "author" of the collection or by the mineral name. So, it makes it possible to see the minerals alphabetically ordered (if the "author" has properly placed the name of the mineral first in the box "Comments of the text" - or alternatively in the name of the photo)

The system is effective but not smart ;-), so it finds just the name that the "author" gave to the photo and then they are sorted alphabetically. This reinforces even more the importance of our members writing the data correctly in order to have the chance to see the photos well organized in the new FMF Gallery. The more order that members use in the texts that they add to the photos downloaded in the"Collection Photos" & "Women's Private Collections" sections, more orderly will appear in the Gallery FMF...

Please let us know of any errors or possible improvements that you feel would help for this new web page in order to make it better.

BTW, we have also replaced the FMF banner from Fabre Minerals (which sponsors this page) with a the banner announcing the FMF Gallery and we have moved the banner of Fabre Minerals to the bottom of the page. Thus we believe that FMF has the feel of being a little bit more a members' site because the banner of the sponsor (me ;-) is not so dominant.

Thank you very much and enjoy it!

[James Catmur]

Jordi

It is really great as I can quickly track down all the photos by a particular person (assuming I can remember their name).

I guess we now need to all learn to start the caption with the name of the mineral to make them easier to find.

James

[Debbie Woolf]

Hi Jordi

I just noticed this new feature, the gallery layout looks superb, great work !

Debbie

[Jordi Fabre]

Thank you Debbie, we are very happy with the final result ;-)

[Jordi Fabre]

We have been working on the FMF Gallery checking that everything works well and one of the best applications is the possibility to find the photos of the minerals from each locality. If in the search on the home page of the FMF Gallery you write the name of a locality (Bisbee, for example) you will find all existing images on FMF from the sections "Collection Photos" and "Micros & Macros" and from the equivalent sections in the Spanish site. I had not mentioned this before because we wanted to try to make it possible for you to search on compound names (more than one word) but the truth is that it is too complicated (that's why Google is so rich;-), so if you wants to see the minerals from Bunker Hill Mine you should write a single appropriate word (Bunker, for example) and it works. Typing the whole name (Bunker Hill) is not satisfactory.

Please try it. You will see that the result is exciting!

[Jordi Fabre]

We have made a new improvement to the FMF Gallery

Up until, now the search feature could not distinguish between one or two words, that is to say that if you searched for "Rutile Georgia" all the photos that included either "Rutile" OR "Georgia" would appear, so a lot of pages. Now the search will work as if you had included an AND between the two words and only those photos that include both words will appear, that is to say far fewer -> https://www.topminerals.info/index.php?searchterms=rutile%2Bgeorgia&searchauthor=-&level=search

In the main forum things will work as they have up until now, that is to say if you want to search on Rutile from Georgia you need to enter "Rutile AND Georgia" to get only those posts that mention both these words, but that does not mean that we will not one day get it to work so that you do not need to include the word "and" and it will work like the FMF Gallery now does, where it only finds places where both words appear.

We hope this is useful

[cocoleta]

The new gallery really looks amazing. Now everybody can see the minerals in all their splendore

[Jordi Fabre]

[Susan Robinson]

Many thanks for the new mineral photos galleries! Have a wonderful holiday season and a good year in 2012!

[Jordi Fabre]

Following a great idea of Carles Millán, we have introduced a further improvement in the Forum related to FMF Gallery.

From now on anyone who posts photos on any section of FMF where FMF Gallery catches pictures and therefore has an album in his or her name, will have a link to this album in FMF Gallery with this text: "My FMF Gallery". This link now appears below the avatar, just above the button

With this improvement, all the FMFers may visit easily at any time their own album in Gallery FMF as well as being able to visit the other FMFer's albums. We hope this new improvement becomes useful.

To learn more about how FMF Gallery works, from where it catches the pictures, requirements, etc. ... please visit "FMF Gallery - User's Guide"

[ploum]

Great Jordi!

[James Catmur]

Great idea and really useful (although having the name "James" on the forum means that every specimen of Jamesonite gets added automatically to my album!)

Who else has collected some interesting specimens that way I wonder? Susan what have you 'gathered'?

James

[Jordi Fabre]

[GneissWare]

[Jordi Fabre]

[James Catmur]

Actually I think I may have none!

James

[Riccardo Modanesi]

Hi!
I saw almost all of the pictures, they are very well done! I showed also to some friends od mine and they got astonished when they saw...what we all know perfectly, that is: so many beautiful crystals in some 1 or 2 millimeters! Good idea Jordi!
Greetings from Italy by Riccardo.

[Tobi]

Thumps up for the FMF gallery! But it seems not to be free of mistakes: When visiting my gallery, this picture is shown first:

https://www.topminerals.info/index.php?level=picture&id=15576

It lists me as author - but this is neither my photograph nor my specimen ...

[chris]

Hi Tobi,

I reported the same to Jordi. You should have a look at mine, I get dozens of results while my contribution is much smaller than that. Jordi told me his team was working on it right know to fix the problem.

Christophe

[GneissWare]