New version of Photo Kiosk is available now - v7.0. In addition to the release, we have reworked our website, so you are welcome to learn more about new version here:

http://photokiosk.aurigma.com/

Note, now we brand it under the name of Pixlpark rather than Aurigma. Pixlpark is used for our products created for photo print business, while Aurigma is used for our file upload SDKs.

Let's see what Pixlpark Photo Kiosk offers comparing to the previous versions.

Payment workflow support

The common issue is how to organize payment process on the kiosk. Now Photo Kiosk offers the following approach:

1. When the user places the order, Photo Kiosk displays the Order ID.
2. To proceed with the order, the user prints a receipt with the Order ID or writes it down.
3. Then the user goes to the cashier and gives him/her this Order ID.
4. To confirm the payment, the cashier uses special Payment Confirmation Tool (supplied with Photo Kiosk) to get a Confirmation Code.
5. The user enters the Confirmation Code to the Photo Kiosk to confirm that the order is paid.

This workflow can be used for instant print or CD/DVD burning features. 

Flexible price configuration

Now you can configure prices more flexible. In particular:

• You can set the minimum accepted price (the order won't be accepted unless the user orders items for this price or higher). 
• You can configure a sales tax.
• You can set different prices for instant and minilab print.
• You can set different prices for different quanitities (volume discounts).
• You can configure additional services, e.g. additional image processing, etc. 

Improved Photo Order Process

We have improved the photo order process:

• If the photo is too small to be printed with a specific size, Photo Kiosk will warn the user.
• If an image is not JPEG, Photo Kiosk can automatically convert it to JPEG.
• If a photo aspect ratio does not match to a print size, the user can select a print area.

Advanced Order Management for Minilabs

In addition to old Order Manager feature which allowed renaming photos in the order to contain the order details (file and folder names), now Photo Kiosk has additional options:

• Generate human-readable HTML document with the order details.
• Generate DPOF file for each order to print photos in minilabs automatically (for those minilabs which support DPOF).

* * *

Feel free to download the new version and check out new features yourself: 

http://photokiosk.aurigma.com/Try.aspx

If you are interested to upgrade or have any other questions, feel free to email at info@pixlpark.com. 

Today I would like to dwell on very popular question asked by our customers. How to organize sending additional data along with files in Image Uploader. It can be very helpful if your website requires some metadata along with files like tags, name of a set to associate the file on server side, etc.

From our perspective we see this task consisting of 3 big portions: 1) displaying and associating data with files selected for upload in Image Uploader, 2) entering data by end-users, and 3) sending data along with files to server-side. Let’s examine approaches to implementing each of them.

Displaying additional data in Image Uploader

Custom upload pane

From the very early versions Image Uploader comes with a separate visual control called Thumbnail. The idea is quite simple. The control is designed to display thumbnail or icon for a specified file selected by a user for upload in “parent” Image Uploader. This way, you can hide upload pane in Image Uploader and create your own custom one using multiple Thumbnail controls in HTML layout. This approach is very flexible. You can create any HTML layout of upload pane you want. Additional data can be displayed next to files selected for upload as well as you can surround them with input fields allowing your clients to enter additional information. All you need to implement this approach is a good understanding of HTML and JavaScript. The product comes with ready to use sample application illustrating this method, it’d be a good starting point.

Additional data inside Image Uploader

Version 7 introduced new way of displaying custom information inside Image Uploader. Now each file in Image Uploader can be accompanied with a custom text. It is formatted in HTML, set through API and rendered inside the control next to each file selected for upload. This way is much simpler than custom HTML pane and requires less coding. The approach is used in the Photo Order demo application available on our web site and redistributed with the product.

How End-users Populate Selected Files with Additional Data

It is not enough to display any data beneath or near selected files, it is very important to give end-users convenient way to fill in data during upload process. User interface layout will depend on which of two ways you implement in your application.

If you stick with custom HTML panel, layout can be anything you want since it is pure HTML and you can use any input fields available there.

If you decide to use the second approach, you have less variety in user interface. Since all data is rendered and displayed inside Image Uploader and it doesn’t support input fields, you will have to organize input of data somewhere in HTML outside of the control. The workflow will be the same regardless of what information you are uploading: a client selects one or several items in upload pane, after that he/she switches to HTML panel and specifies values for selected files there. As soon as the input process is finished, the values are passed inside Image Uploader via JavaScript API, are associated with the selected files and Image Uploader displays the entered information next to them.

Sending Data to Server

The both approaches require a special JavaScript code doing the following. After end-user hits Upload button and prior to starting the upload process, your script should iterate through files selected for upload, and populate their tags with user specified values. It is up to you in what format to save multiple fields in this property; it can be XML or some other format. On server side you get a tag received with each file and extract values stored inside it.

Afterwords

That’s the idea. I guess having documentation and two ready-to-use sample applications will help you to choose the way to implement sending additional data and will give you good starting point for implementation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team, they will be glad to assist you with that.