Backlight 2.0.9 is now available! In this update, we introduce lazy-loading of thumbnails in photo albums, and numerous other improvements.

Lazy-loading improves page speed by loading only those image thumbnails currently visible in the browser, and the next images just out of view. As the page is scrolled, upcoming images are loaded on demand. Lazy-loading eliminates the need to paginate galleries, while yielding improvements to the user experience, and improving page speed for search ranking.

After updating to 2.0.9 and clearing the template cache, all pangolin-album templates will upgraded with lazy-loading, no further action required. This includes all grid layouts: classic, justified and masonry.

The update will not make changes to album pagination; if you wish to length pages, or remove pagination altogether, then you will need to do so manually.

Version 2.0.9 bring still more to the table.

Improvements have been made to the Description layout for album sets, mostly to do with better sizing of thumbnails at varying display widths.

We’ve improved referrer checking for single-image pages, making the Back button more useful and reliable when embedding albums into pages.

Search has been updated to exclude protected photos and private albums.

Cart functionality has been fixed in search results, and for embedding albums.

Reporting of errors has been improved when when installing and updating modules, which will make troubleshooting easier in the future.

As always, updating to 2.0.9 is easy.

How-to: Installing Updates in Backlight 2

This update also includes a new version of the Publish Services plugin for Lightroom, which you may download from the Backlight Modules page, in Backlight’s admin area.