A web-based photo gallery project
by Mark Jennings, Mike Koss, and Darrell Plank
The Image Gallery is a client-side JavaScript program that allows you to create a slide-show presentation from a collection of pictures. To create a new gallery, you need only copy a simple template file, and edit the XML data block contained in the file to reference your images.
The Image Gallery Designer is a windows application that simplifies the creation of the correct template file format, and allows you to quickly select and crop the images for your show. The folder containing the slide show HTML file and final images and thumbnails is created for you to be copied to a web server for distribution.
Cross-fade transitions between images.
Supports mixed portrait and landscape format images with optimal on-screen layout.
Easy-to-navigate thumbnail images
Title, Date, and description for each image.
Optional background music can play during the show.
A gallery can sequence automatically between images by hitting the Play button.
Optional "Home" button to link back to a parent web site.
Easy to create with Designer application. You can specify cropping and thumbnail rectangles for each image.
Simple to deploy. Just drag a single folder to your web server containing the gallery template file and the associated images.
The entire gallery is represented as a single HTML file; unlike other slide shows, the browser's Back button will return you to the originating web page rather than having to back up through all the images you've viewed so far.
Images are downloaded in the background while you are viewing other images - so there is less waiting to jump from one image to the next.
Documented XML-language description of a gallery allows for creation of galleries with other tools, or by manually editing the XML in a sample gallery.
Support for pop-up viewer for larger resolution image file
The Image Gallery is currently under development. There are several releases of the software so far. We welcome Beta Testers - so please try it out and let us know what you think. Click on the version link below to select the version you'd like to try (we'd obviously recommend you trying the most recent version).
Feedback: Please send questions and comments to:
| Version | Notes |
| 2004-09-17 | Fixed media player control showing in Windows ME, and layout bug where portrait images would overlap the navigation controls. |
| 2004-09-16 | Fixed window movement (recalibration) when page first opens and balky buttons (when window is scrolled). |
| 2004-09-08 | (Indy release) Fixed a bug displaying already loaded files during other-file load (esp. bad on slow link). |
| 2004-09-04 | Fixed timing problems loading images and sound files. Enable changing suffixes of thumbnails, medium, and large file sizes. |
| 2004-06-15 | Support of Large image files (-L files). You can now click on a gallery image and a pop-up viewer window will appear. The Large image is loaded into this window (if available). |
| 2004-06-13 | Fixed to button icons (no clipped shadows) and splash text correctly displays in embedded galleries. |
| 2004-06-12 | Support for "embeded" galleries that will be position to fit within the width of a containing DIV. Many new controls in XML for formatting options. Can also load XML from an external file, rather than embedded in the HTML file. Support for single-image galleries. Display of credits for images and background sound. |
| 2004-05-27 | Error handling for bad thumbnail images, splash screen while first images loading, smaller (40x40) icons (play icon highlighted when depressed). |
| 2004-03-13 | Fixed layout of large text descriptions; when
they would overlap the navigation controls, they are forced below the bottom
of the image. Similaryl, the credits line is move to not overlap long
descriptions. Added ImageBase, ThumbBase and Thumb attributes (see XML documentation below).
|
| 2004-03-11 | Use of icon's for show controls. Added end-of-show splash screen for Beta. |
| 2004-03-05 | Added more options for changing background color, fonts and colors. Added support for a background audio track. |
| 2004-02-08 | Added Home, Prev, Next, and Play buttons. Debug rectangles can be turned on by setting ss.fDebug = true in slideshow.htm. |
| 2004-02-06 | A debugging release. This has a newest layout algorithm, and also shows a red rectangle around the major elements. |
| 2004-01-08 | Initial release. |
| Version | Notes |
| 2004-04-10 | The Designer now allows for the creation of stand-alone slide shows
in addition to shows that download their runtime from the Internet.
When you make a stand alone show (click the checkbox marked "Embed" in
the File/Properties menu), a directory called "Runtime" will be added to
your gallery. This directory contains all the files and images
that are required to run the Image Gallery run-time application
(viewer). This zip file contains all the runtime files in addition to the Designer files. |
| 2004-03-24 | The files you need are now located in a single ZIP file. You
can download this file, and unzip the files to a single directory: This version has the ability to rotate images and other UI tweaks. |
| 2004-03-05 | We don't have an installation program as yet, but for now you can
simply copy these two files to your machine. The UI is still
rough, but we hope you'll get a flavor for what we're trying to
accomplish. Note that your first action in the application is to create a gallery. Then you can drag images from your system into the thumbnail view. You'll find two rectangles you can drag to form the large image crop, and a separate image crop for the thumbnail. Once your gallery is created on your local machine, you can publish it by copying yourshow.htm and all the *.jpg files in the gallery folder to your web server (note - you should NOT copy the folder called "Processed Images" - that is only for use when editing your gallery should you decide to open it in the Designer again). |