I found two options, and explored them by implementing them on active projects. I'd like to provide stand-alone demonstrations to make sharing these solutions more convenient, but for now I've included links to the project pages. They can still be used to figure out how to implement on your own projects, and at least they're proof-of-concept prototypes.
Paul Van Roekel's Picasa Web Albums Simpleviewer Embed Code Generator
I demonstrated this with my roommate search page.
- takes about five minutes to set up
- takes the form of a flash viewer with acceptable performance
- the look and arrangement of elements is not editable
- pulls your gallery right from Picasa Web Albums, so you can edit
- it's not always best for commercial implementation
- the last slide in each gallery is an attribution slide mentioning Paul Van Roekel
- Simpleviewer branding appears when the plugin loads and in a little square to the bottom-right of the plugin, however the little square can be covered up by other HTML/CSS elements
- photos are inaccesible for download or viewing in another page, which could be a good or bad thing depending on whether your project favors accessibility or protection of the media
The Galleriffic JQuery Gallery Plugin
I demonstrated this with a client website.
- takes about an hour to properly adapt the plugin to our blog, if you've done it before
- the first time I implemented this, it took about eight hours to figure out the ins and outs of the plugin, and that's once I got it working outside Blogger, which was relatively easy
- uses CSS that needs to be modified to ensure that it doesn't conflict with Blogger CSS
- I haven't figured out a way to make it automatically grab gallery XML from Picasa Web Albums, so I've had to copy and paste photo URLs from there
- you can host (or pull) photos from wherever you want - Flickr, your own server, etc
- very customizable - all the effects, look and feel, etc are very flexible and can be easily edited with sensible CSS
- several "themes" are available from the authors to help make sense of the CSS and start from a point that's closest to your desired result
- as long as the CSS is modified judiciously, it performs well in all browsers across all systems, including when Javascript is unavailable, and it uses great HTML markup and CSS styling
- it's very ready for commercial deployment
- no branding or attribution is forced
- custom branding can be applied along with a custom look and feel
- photos can be sourced from the viewer, which makes them easy to share (or steal, if you're the type of person who thinks of it as theft)
