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Photo Page Creator Help

This is the help page for Photo Page Creator.
It briefly describes what Photo Page Creator does and how to use it.

Table of Contents

Overview
- Creating a Photo Page
- Tool Tip Help
Fields
Frequently Asked Questions
Legal Stuff
- Photo Page Creator Licence Agreement
- Software Libraries

Overview

Photo Page Creator is used to quickly turn a collection of digital pictures into a simple but sophisticated online photo album.

Creating a Photo Page

The interface

Creating a Photo Page with Photo Page Creator is extremely easy. You simply specify the folder containing the pictures, fill out a few fields such as the title for your Photo Page, and hit "Create Photo Page". A few seconds later you'll have a fully-functional web page ready to be uploaded to the internet.

As Photo Page Creator creates the images and web page that make up your Photo Page, it will report its progress to you using a progress bar.

When it is finished creating your Photo Page, Photo Page Creator will give you the option of showing the Photo Page when you exit. If you select checkbox, your Photo Page will be displayed using your default browser after Photo Page Creator exits.

Tool Tip Help

Tool Tip help example

Be aware that you can get help from within Photo Page Creator without opening the help file, by using Tool Tip Help.

When hovering over any of the fields or buttons in Photo Page Creator, a small box called a "Tool Tip" will appear, providing a description of what the field is for or what action the button performs.

Fields

This section explains each of the fields in the Photo Page Creator interface and what kind of values you should be entering in them.

Title

The Title field

The 'Title' field specifies the title that will appear at the top of your Photo Page.

Examples:

A Week in Spain

Date

The Date field

The 'Date' field specifies the date that your pictures were taken. This is also displayed near the top of your Photo Page and can take any form you like.

Examples:

17 - 24 January, 2005

February 2005

Location

The Location field

The 'Location' field specifies the location where your pictures were taken. This is also displayed near the top of your Photo Page.

Examples:

Madrid, Spain

Copyright

The Copyright field

The 'Copyright' field specifies a copyright statement protecting the copyright of the pictures that will be shown on the Photo Page. You should replace the "YOUR NAME" part with your own name, if you are publishing your own pictures, or the name of the pictures' copyright owner. This will be displayed near the bottom of your Photo Page.

Examples:

All images Copyright (c) 2005 Thomas Nobody

Pictures Directory

The Pictures Directory field

The 'Pictures Directory' field specifies the directory (or "folder") on your computer that contains the pictures you want to publish on your Photo Page. You can click on the 'Browse..." button to select a directory using a file chooser, or you can type the name of the directory in the field.

The Pictures Directory you specify must exist and must contain pictures in one of a number of formats. Photo Page Creator will include all pictures in the directory you specify, but will not include pictures that exist in sub-directories of the directory you specify.

Examples:

C:\Documents and Settings\Thomas Nobody\My Documents\My Pictures\Travel\Spain 2005

Output Directory

The Output Directory field

The 'Output Directory' field specifies the directory (or "folder") on your computer where Photo Page Creator will save the web page that it creates, as well as the pictures and other resources that make up the Photo Page.

Photo Page Creator will suggest an output directory for you, based on the title of your Photo Page. You can click on the 'Browse...' button to change the directory using a file chooser.

If you want your Photo Page to be created in a directory that does not already exist, you can either type the path to the new directory in the Output Directory field, or you can use the 'Browse...' option to select the directory that will be the parent of the new directory and then type the rest of the new name into the Output Directory field.

Because Photo Page Creator saves many files to the Output Directory, it is suggested that you use a new directory for each Photo Page you create, and do not attempt to save into an existing directory, unless you are re-generating an existing Photo Page.

Examples:

C:\Documents and Settings\Thomas Nobody\My Documents\My Web Pages\Photo Pages\Spain 2005

Target Resolution

The Target Resolution selector

'Resolution' is a measure of how many pixels (individual points of light) a computer monitor uses to create an image. Photo Page Creator can create Photo Pages that are targeted for users with different resolutions. This affects the size of the pictures that are produced and the layout of the Photo Page.

Photo Page Creator will (the first time it is run) automatically choose a Target Resolution that is closest to the resolution of your own screen. Most modern computers use a resolution of at least 1024 x 768 (pixels wide by pixels high). People with older computers may have screens that operate at a lower resolution, e.g. 800 x 600. Also, people who have difficulty reading small text may set their resolution to 800 x 600 in order to make text appear bigger. Hence, if you have a lot of friends who have older computers or who have difficulty reading small text, you should probably use the 800 x 600 Target Resolution. Otherwise, the 1024 x 768 Target Resolution is usually the best choice.

Be aware that, when you target your Photo Page for 800 x 600 resolution , Photo Page Creator will scale your pictures to be smaller than they would for a 1024 x 768 resolution. This is necessary to be able to fit the pictures onto a "smaller" screen. It will mean, however, that your pictures will appear quite small on the screens of users running at a 1024 x 768 resolution. Hence, it is best not to specify an 800 x 600 resolution unless you are sure that most of your friends would be using this smaller resolution.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kinds of pictures can Photo Page Creator use?

Photo Page Creator will read pictues in any of the JPEG (.jpg), Graphics Interchange Format (.gif), Portable Network Graphics (.png) and Windows Bitmap (.bmp) formats.

What does the 'active content' warning in Internet Explorer mean?

When you open a Photo Page in Internet Explorer, it will sometimes display a security warning at the top of the screen, saying "Internet Explorer has restricted this file from showing active content that could access your computer." It displays this warning because your Photo Page contains computer code written in a language called JavaScript which can be used to access information from your computer.

The JavaScript used by Photo Page Creator does not access any information on your computer except for the images that it creates. You are safe to let the active content in your Photo Page run, which you can do by clicking on the warning and selecting 'Allow Blocked Content...' and then choosing 'Yes' in the dialog that pops up. If you do not allow the active content to run, you will not be able to change the picture being shown on your Photo Page.

Will other people see an 'active content' warning when viewing my Photo Page?

People viewing your Photo Page over the internet will not receive the security warning. JavaScript that is received over the internet does not have the same access to your computer that JavaScript running on your hard drive does, and so the security warning is not necessary in this situation.

How do I upload my Photo Page to the internet?

In order to publish your Photo Page on the internet, you will need two things: a web space and an application that can act as a FTP client.

Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide web space as a part of their internet access packages, so you may already have web space and not know it. You should check on your ISP's website to see whether they provide this service for you.

Most users will be able to use Internet Explorer as their FTP client. This is done simply by entering into the top address bar the characters "ftp://" (without the quotes) followed by the name of your ISP's ftp server, e.g. "ftp://users.bigpond.net.au".

If you need more information about uploading files you can read this tutorial about using Internet Explorer as an FTP client.

How do I include pictures from more than one folder?

See the answer to the next question.

How do I include just some of the pictures in a folder?

Photo Page Creator always includes all the pictures from a single folder. To use pictures from multiple folders, or to use only some of the pictures in a folder, create a new folder, copy into the new folder all the images you want to include in your Photo Page, and then use that folder as the 'Pictures Directory' when creating your Photo Page.

What are the numbers in the Photo Page beneath my pictures?

Photo Page Creator uses the name of your picture files as the title for the pictures in the Photo Pages it creates. Most digital cameras create picture files that simply have a number as their name, or the letters "IMG" and a number.

How do I give the pictures in my Photo Page more meaningful titles?

To give your pictures more meaningful titles in your Photo Pages, you should change the name of the picture files before creating the Photo Page.

Photo Page Creator orders the pictures in your Photo Pages alphabetically. You can use this to your advantage to make your pictures appear in the order you want by preceding each pictures name with a number, for example:

01 - Landing in Madrid
02 - Our Hotel Room
03 - A Very Friendly Spaniard
04 - ...

Note that, if you are putting more than nine pictures on your Photo Page, any numbers less than ten should have a zero ('0') before them to make sure they are ordered correctly.

How do I change the name of files?

Using Windows, you can rename files by using 'My Computer' or 'Windows Explorer' to browse to the location of the photos and then doing one of the following:

Click on the file to be renamed, then press F2; or
Click on the file to be renamed, then wait half a second and click on it again; or
Right-click on the file to be renamed, then select 'Rename' from the context menu that appears.

After you have finished typing the new name for the file, press 'Enter' to save the file with its new name.

Can I Change the Background Colour of my Photo Page?

You can change the background colour of your Photo Page by editing the output of Photo Page Creator. After your Photo Page has been created, follow these steps:

Open the folder where your Photo Page was saved;
Right-click on the file called 'index' or 'index.html';
Choose the 'Edit' option from te popup menu;
When the file opens in a text editor, find the line that looks like this:
<body onload="resizeComponents();">
It should be about 12 lines down.
Add some code inside the end of the tag so that it looks like this:
<body onload="resizeComponents();" style="background-color: #660000">
(Note the spelling of 'color' in this new code.),
Save the file.

The colour in the new code is the '660000' part This will change the background colour of your Photo Page to a dark red. This value is a Red + Green + Blue value written in hexadecimal. For a list of other colour values you could use, see this page of sample colours.

Why are some pictures larger than others?

Photo Page Creator will scale your pictures (usually making them smaller) in order to fit on the screen and within your Photo Page.

Because computer screens, and hence the layout of Photo Pages, are rectangular in shape, landscape-oriented pictures are able to take up more of the rectangular space than portrait-oriented pictures. Rather than scale all your pictures by the same amount, Photo Page Creator scales each picture individually to ensure it is shown as large as possible in your Photo Page.

What happened to the apostrophes in my file names?

You may notice that, if the names of some of your picture files have apostrophes in them, the apostrophes will not appear in your Photo Page. This is because the code in Photo Page Creator that makes your Photo Page work can not handle names with apostrophes in them, so Photo Page Creator removes them automatically.

What is this 'Donate' business about?

Photo Page Creator took a lot of time and hard work to develop and perfect. But rather than force you to pay to be able to use it, I've chosen to first let you use it for free and hope that out of gratitude you might choose to pay me some money if you find it useful.

Donations are accepted online through the secure PayPal service.
For more information see http://www.grlea.org/photopagecreator/donate

Legal Stuff

Photo Page Creator Licence Agreement

This Licence is a binding legal agreement between the individual who downloads the Software ('You') and Graham Lea. Even though a Licence fee is not paid for use of this software, it does not mean that there are not conditions for using such software. As a condition for granting you a Licence to use this software, you agree to all of the following terms and conditions. You are deemed to have read, understand, and have accepted all such terms and conditions upon executing a download of this program. THIS SOFTWARE IS COPYRIGHTED AND GRAHAM LEA CLAIMS ALL EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO SUCH SOFTWARE, EXCEPT AS LICENCED TO USERS HEREUNDER AND SUBJECT TO STRICT COMPLIANCE WITH THE TERMS OF THIS LICENCE. If you fail to abide by any of the terms and conditions set forth herein, your Licence to use the software shall be immediately and automatically revoked, without any notice or other action by Graham Lea. LICENCE TERMS FOR PHOTO PAGE CREATOR (for the purposes of this licence document henceforth known as 'the Software') 1. Graham Lea grants you a non-exclusive licence to use the Software subject to Your compliance with all of the terms and conditions of this Licence Agreement. 2. You are only granted a licence for the machine-readable, object code portion of the Software. You will not modify, enhance, reverse engineer or otherwise alter the Software from its current state. 3. You may not distribute, copy, publish, assign, sell, bargain, convey, transfer, pledge, lease or grant any further rights to use the Software. 4. The output of the Software (henceforth known as a 'Photo Page') contains portions of the Software, each of these portions being wholly contained in a single file that contains a copyright notice (henceforth known as 'the Redistributables'). You may publish one copy of the Redistributables, without modification, for each Photo Page produced by the Software, in the same location as all the files of the Photo Page, and for the sole purpose of making the Photo Page functional, on a single web server that may or may not be accessible to the general public. You may not distribute, copy, publish, assign, sell, bargain, convey, transfer, pledge, lease or grant any further rights to use the Redistributables, or any part thereof, or any modification or derived works thereof, except under the conditions set forth herein. 5. You will not have any proprietary rights in and to the Software. You acknowledge and agree that Graham Lea retains all copyrights and other proprietary rights in and to the Software. 6. Your licence to use the Software shall be revocable by Graham Lea upon written notice to you. This licence shall automatically terminate upon your violation of the terms hereof or upon your use of the Software beyond the scope of the licence provided herein. 7. Use within the scope of this licence is free of charge and no royalty or licensing fees shall be payable by you. Use beyond the scope of this licence shall constitute copyright infringement. 8. This licence shall be effective and bind you upon your downloading of the Software. 9. You accept the Software on an 'AS IS' and with all faults basis. No representations and warranties are made to you regarding any aspect of the Software. 10. GRAHAM LEA HEREBY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, RELATIVE TO THE SOFTWARE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR MERCHANTIBILITY. GRAHAM LEA SHALL NOT BE LIABLE OR RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, INJURIES OR LIABILITIES CAUSED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY FROM THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR SPECIAL DAMAGES. 11. This Licence Agreement shall be construed, interpreted and governed by the laws of the State of New South Wales without regard to conflicts of law provisions thereof. The exclusive forum for any disputes arising out of or relating to this Licence Agreement shall be an appropriate national/federal or state court sitting in the State of New South Wales, Australia. This Licence Agreement shall constitute the entire Agreement between the parties hereto. Any waiver or modification of this Licence Agreement shall only be effective if it is in writing and signed by both parties hereto. If any part of this Licence Agreement is found invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remainder of this Licence Agreement shall be interpreted so as to reasonably effect the intention of the parties. 12. Graham Lea's failure to enforce any rights hereunder or its copyright in the Software shall not be construed as amending this agreement or waiving any of Graham Lea's rights hereunder or under any provision of Australian law.

Software Libraries

Photo Page Creator makes use of numerous third-party software libraries.
A list of libraries used and the licences governing their distribution is kept at http://www.grlea.org/online/libraries

Some libraries require their copyright notices to be reproduced in the documentation of any product that makes use of them. Where applicable, these appear below.

LGPL Libraries

The following libraries are distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence. This licence requires the source code of the library to be made available for download and so these are available through the Libraries page referenced above, as is the full text of the Licence.

Explicit Layout

Copyright (c) 2002 Zooki Technologies. All rights reserved.

Explicit Table Builder

Copyright (C) 2002 Andrew Pietsch

JDIC

Copyright (c) 2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, California 95054, U.S.A. All rights reserved.

Flying Saucer (XHTML Renderer)

Copyright (c) 2004, 2005 The Flying Saucer Team (Joshua Marinacci, Patrick Wright, Torbjörn Gannholm)

Apache Libraries

The following libraries are distributed under the terms of the Apache Licence 2.0. The full text of the Licence is available through the Libraries page referenced above.

GUI Commands

Copyright 2005 Andrew Pietsch

L2FProd JDirectoryChooser

Copyright 2005 L2FProd.com

Foxtrot Licence

Copyright (c) 2002, Simone Bordet & Marco Cravero All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. - Neither the name of Foxtrot nor the names of the contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Jaxen Licence

Copyright 2003 (C) The Werken Company. All Rights Reserved. Redistribution and use of this software and associated documentation ("Software"), with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain copyright statements and notices. Redistributions must also contain a copy of this document. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. The name "jaxen" must not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Software without prior written permission of The Werken Company. For written permission, please contact bob@werken.com. 4. Products derived from this Software may not be called "jaxen" nor may "jaxen" appear in their names without prior written permission of The Werken Company. "jaxen" is a registered trademark of The Werken Company. 5. Due credit should be given to The Werken Company. (http://jaxen.werken.com/). THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE WERKEN COMPANY AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE WERKEN COMPANY OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

JGoodies Looks Licence

The BSD License for the JGoodies Looks ====================================== Copyright (c) 2001-2005 JGoodies Karsten Lentzsch. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: o Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. o Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. o Neither the name of JGoodies Karsten Lentzsch nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Copyright (c) 2005 Graham Lea. All rights reserved.