Adding a gallery of pictures to a website using Expression Web 2 or 4

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.

Cropping and Resizing Photos to Fit into a Certain size space

Recently I had to change pictures in an existing website that was template driven. It seems easy enough when you first think about it but actually doing it can be a pain. As an example, the first pictures dimensions were 380 pixels wide by 506 pixels high. I found an appropriate replacement and opened that picture inside of Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3. The original dimensions were 4912 wide by 3264 high. this is a big difference. I chose the cropping option and set the size to 380 by 506 and it was so small I couldn't fit what I wanted in that area. The trick is to set the target pixel size then making sure the "Maintain aspect ratio" box is checked, drag the sides or corners of the cropping box until you have the detail you need. Now you have the picture you want but its way to large. The second step is to re-size the picture to the original dimensions you need. I clicked on "Image" then "resize" and under "pixel dimensions" adjusted the size down to 380 by 506. I know that some people might say its easier and less steps to do all this within the web authoring package you use but that's not always the case. I use Microsoft's Expression Web 2 and Expression Web 4 and if you resize a picture the results aren't nearly as nice. This is one of the many reasons it helps to have software designed to one thing and do it well.

The original is here, the picture to the right.
The cropped picture is here, the top picture on the right

Installing and Using Dropbox

I should just call this post using dropbox because there's not much to installing it. For that matter, there's not much to using it either. You download a file, install said file and then you drop files into the "dropbox" that appears on your desktop. You can access the files in your dropbox from any computer connected to the internet or a smartphone. Simply put, this is a way to share or have access to your files from anywhere at anytime. When I say access, I mean you can add to your account, copy, delete whatever! Did I mention it's free?(up to 2 GB) It does require an email and a password. Dropbox! Pick it up!