Dynamically Recognized Photo Gallery

[CurtisMcHale]

I am designing a website to be contained on a Cd. This CD will be given to customers of a home inspector. Most of the information will be the same but the photo gallery will be different for each house. How can I get the site to build an index of a folder for each new CD. They can be saved in the same folder each time so it just needs to look in the folder and create a gallery out of those images.

[TORCH511]

This will end up being a lot harder than it sounds, not the simplest of tasks. The problems is that since the client is opening the site locally, you can not take advantage of using PHP, Coldfusion, ASP etc... It would not be hard using Coldfusion to search a folder, retried the files and display in a gallery (however that would still be more script than I would post here), however if I were to put that on a disc is would not work, since the client would have to have coldfusion installed and the services running on their computer in order for that to work. Same goes for all the other languages.

You would have to program the script (most likely javascript, though I suppose you gould build a flash application to run locally, the chances of Flash Player being installed on a local machine are high, and you could even include the redistributable with the CD and check and install if necessary), and run it on the web page, and while I am OK with javascript and even OK with Actionscript, getting this to work is beyond me.

Again, no easy task you are trying to do.

[outsider]

I guess a flash application for the photo gallery is a way to go.

You can read your image files from a certain folder, as you replace the images with existing ones (using same file names) it would update your gallery accordingly.

There are actually free or cheap flash photo galleries available on the web and you have complete control of designing its layout etc.

Also its got nice animated features which your client might like.

I just remember (will try to find it though) one of my clients had exactly what you were looking for (flash based photo gallery) what it does basically, it reads an xml file (containing the path and file name to gallery folder) and uses those images in the flash file.

will post it as soon as I found this.

[The Repro Kid]

There is a way to do this non-dynamically that does not rely on any Pug-ins or flash or cold fusion, so any home user can read the gallery from the disk you distribute. It will however take an extra two or three minutes to set up each disk, but since it relies only on HTML it is relatively fool proof. Its also totally automated, so the extra two minutes is painless.

All you'll need is a freeware or shareware gallery generator. They are very common, I use one called "Gallerie." I'm sure you organize your disk site with folders. Set up a folder in the site called something like "Gallery" or "GalleryFolder." Use your gallery folder to set up your first gallery, typically you choose some template options or you can edit and modify and customize your own. Generate this first gallery of pictures into the sites Gallery folder, and create a hyperlink in your site that links to the index.html file inside your Gallery folder that the gallery Generator created. Now when ever you want to create a new disk, just generate a new gallery into the sites gallery folder and burn your disk. Simple, and it only takes two extra minutes to generate the new gallery every time you burn a disk. The hyper link always links to the index folder inside the gallery folder, and the gallery generator always provides all the proper html for everything inside the gallery folder.

And, no fancy, dynamic, plug-in dependent, must be a power user, mom-and-pop-can't run-this, stuff required.

If you want to see the galleries I generate with "Gallerie" visit:

http://mendozaproductions.com/uwphoto/

and click on the any dated thumbnail. The auto generated gallery will open in a new window. I customized my template for my page. All the photos, links, buttons, thumbnails, frames etc and all html are generated automatically. The captions are also generated automatically if you load the photos into iPhoto first and caption the photos in iPhoto's description text area.

[TORCH511]

Trying to follow your idea Repro...


<img scr="E:\photos\imagefile.jpg">


is a valid url for a image file and if you open up the HTML it will find and display the image.

OK, so I am still with you, referencing local files is nothing new. And you MIGHT be able to create a gallery, but what straight HTML do you use to pull the file names off and dynamically populate the gallery, and now have it work on PC and Mac.

Maybe you could find a javascript gallery, change the links to local URL references....

All the PHP, ASP and CFM scripts won't work.

Again, I know it can be done with Javascript, I have seen it done... straight HTML... not knowing the number of files, the names of the files, can't see you making much of a gallery dynamically using a formatting language that isn't dynamic at all.

Not trying to argue, just trying to understand.

[The Repro Kid]

it's no theory I do it all the time. The freeware gallery generating software does all the links and photos, html for you. the freeware always generates an index file into the FinalGallery folder of your site. So each time you make a new disk, you empty the FinalGallery folder, generate a new gallery into said folder, and the main sites link always finds a file called index.html in the FinalGallery folder. the gallery generating software writes all the proper links and photos, so your done. easy. I've used this idea many times. If you can write a site that can work on disk, then yo can do this. It might make more sense if experiment with simple gallery generating software. it may seem like basic amateur type software, but you can use it to automate gallery building to great advantage. the best I've used is "Gallerie." but there may be others that are better. All the galleries on my UW photo web site were made with this software. someone like yourself could customize the templates better than myself.

about dynamic content, in this method, nothing is dynamic, you need to generate a gallery with new photos each time you write a new disk. If you follow the original post question, I believe this is for some sort of real estate inspector's report thing, where the disk contains all the same information, and then a photo gallery of a particular home that was inspected, then the final disk is sent to the inspection customer. so there is really no need for anything to be dynamic. they just need to get the inspection photos into the disk site without any extraneous labor.

[TORCH511]

Hell, generating a gallery and putting it on a CD is easy... Photoshop can generate a gallery, no need to find a freeware gallery generator. However I don't think you are achieving what I understood the question to be.

Imagine this. I create a web site that has a gallery on it with NO pictures... yet. Just a site that has the ABILLITY to display a gallery.

I give the disk to you... you put it on your computer and the site opens up and the gallery displayes pictures ON YOUR LOCAL computer. You can't do that with straight HTML. You would have to write a script that could do that or quite possibly may be able to find a javascript gallery that you could change the links to search within a local directory.

[The Repro Kid]

I only know basic 1992 style coding so I really can't show you any coding example, but this really doesn't require that. Study the screenshot below of a dummy site I created for this example. the site contains an index and three additional content folders. The entire contents of the inside of the PhotoGalleryInspection are all generated automatically by the gallery generating software. All you need to do is build a link in the main index to the index in the PhotoGalleryInspection folder. since the name and location of the index file inside the PhotoGalleryInspection folder never changes, the main index does not see or know any difference. All the content inside the PhotoGalleryInspection folder are created anew for each inspection customer disk, and the contents are copied into the folder before burning the disk. The main index does not need to know anything about the links and photos in the PhotoGalleryInspection folder, as that's all handled by the index inside the PhotoGalleryInspection folder. Does that make more sense?

[The Repro Kid]

...However I don't think you are achieving what I understood the question to be...

If you follow the original post question, I believe this is for some sort of real estate inspector's report, where the disk contains all the same information about the inspection criteria, and then a photo gallery of a particular home that was inspected, then the final disk is sent to the inspection customer.

I think this would work quite well for this particular application.

[The Repro Kid]

...Photoshop can generate a gallery, no need to find a freeware gallery generator...I played with the Photoshop's built in gallery generator when searching for a way to easily create galleries for my underwater photos and and it fell short of the types of things I was trying to accomplish. The freeware and shareware offerings were more full featured. You may may be able to improve on photoshops gallery capability, but I'm not a coder, so I needed some crutches for this type of thing.

[CurtisMcHale]

Thanks Repro it does sound like what you are explaining will work. Where can I get Gallerie that you use?

You were right all of the content is the same. One .pdf will change, which can just always have the same file name, and a directory of pictures will change each time. The client is kind of computer savy but it does need to be easy.

[The Repro Kid]

the correct name is Galerie, is always for get how to spell it. Get it here.

http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/galerie.htm

It has lots of nice features and they make the templates easy to edit and customize, although you'll probably be able to customize it better than myself, it took a lot of wrangling on my part to get my template how I wanted it.

There are many others similar products out there.

There is a legal requirement that you credit the programers on your web page in order to keep it free, "Generated by Galerie" and the word Galerie is a link to their website, but if you're not posting on the Web, I'm sure no one will ever know:o I put their legals on the very bottom of the thumbnail frame of the galleries on my site, in small text in a non-contrasting color.

[CurtisMcHale]

Thanks for the information.