One of the key features of Storyboard is the vertical compiler. There has been some confusion over the vertical compiler and I wanted to address those confusions today and explain what the vertical compiler does, when to use it and more importantly, when NOT to.
*The vertical compiler is the same as the Storyboard Compiler in previous versions. We renamed it to better reflect its functionality.
At its heart, the vertical compiler takes all of the Storyboard’s you would have completed initially, and stacks them from top to bottom (Vertical Compiler) into a larger vertical Storyboard. See below for an example of a compiled Storyboard (4 different Storyboard’s stacked on top of each other):
The main reason we created the vertical compiler was for photographer’s who do not have custom spacing control available via their blogging platform. By contrast, ProPhoto Blog users are able to precisely control image spacing, and for this reason a ProPhoto blog user does not need to use the vertical compiler. They can upload all of their individual Storyboard’s, and with the proper image spacing settings, their blog post will be perfect from top to bottom. The vertical compiler does this same sort of function for those who do not have spacing control.
Even though you could easily just compile all of your Storyboard’s into a larger top-down compiled board – it is not recommend for a few key reasons:
- Larger compiled boards will take longer to load on the web compared to individually uploaded Storyboard’s
- Optimal SEO is achieved with individual Storyboard’s, compared to one large compiled one.
- There have been reports that large compiled boards do not display properly on the iPad. This is not a limitation of Storyboard, but rather one of mobile safari on the iPad trying to load all that data properly.
- Blogger blogs have not been playing nice with compiled Storyboards. They have been resizing them and the boards are not displaying as intended. Check with any backend settings in Blogger to display your images at the sizes you want.
If you need to use the vertical compiler option of Storyboard, we recommend only compiling a few boards at a time, not all at once into a giant compiled board. That being said, there are some good reasons why you may want to use the vertical compiler:
- Your blog platform does not allow for controllable spacing and you want to have exact pixel values for your spacing across the whole design of your blog.
- You want to use the compile for creative reasons – putting together images for promotional material, blog advertising, etc.
- Use the vertical compiler on 2 horizontal images first, then use the storyboard script to pair that with a vertical. This will cool trick for mixing up your Storyboards!
