This doesn't seem complicated I'm sure to most web designers but I'm self taught and I didn't understand what I wanted. First of all, there is a ton of free software that will accomplish this task for you to choose from. That is, if you want something Flash based or possibly Java based. They are easy to use once you understand the procedure needed. I speak from experience here and will try to provide a list of them if that's what you're looking for. After trying many different programs, I realized that I did not understand what I wanted. Maybe I should spend more time talking to myself. What I wanted was a gallery (actually, galleries) of thumb nailed pictures that would upon clicking the thumb nail, would lead to a full size picture. The purpose would be to offer some pictures free of charge (public domain) for use in whatever anybody had in mind. My motive is not entirely utilitarian as I run ads on the site but I, as many do, wanted to give something back to the Internet community. The existing gallery generating packages that I looked at did as advertised, they created some slick looking galleries that you could embed on blogs and websites but didn't solve my problem.
My solution was to use a table, which like I said, seems simple enough but I didn't see it. It seems that most gallery software wants to display your pictures but prevent the copying or free use of them. My goal was the opposite. I used the table solution in a site designed with a "dynamic web template". I created a table with 10 rows and 2 columns. You can then choose to insert pictures from files into each cell by using the menu driven solution or actually just drag and drop. After either action, the result is a large picture that doesnt fit, but a right click and "auto thumbnail" fixes this in a jiffy. This is the most elegant solution that I have found for creating pages that provide what I was looking for and hopefully may help others.
I am new to Expressions Web 4 and I have tried a few 'album generators' and did not have any success, i probably messed something up but i am tired of toying with them. I was thinking about the table idea but did not know how to go about it. After reading your post my questions is: choosing "auto thumbnail" to make the pictures fit in the table, does that cause them to also be enlarged when they are clicked on after it has been published? Is there a way to add a caption too, with out making the table all wonky? You can email me at: sinsoflokie@hotmail.com if you have a website posted that you used the table method i would like to see it, thank you for your information!
ReplyDeleteYes, choosing "auto thumbnail" will result in the shrinking of the picture to a thumbnail, which, when clicked on will show the original picture.
ReplyDelete