Communities of practice online: Reflection through experience and experiment with the Webheads community of language learners and practitioners

Week 1

2. PHOTOS ONLINE

Hi everyone,
I thought you might appreciate this situation: I thought I had discovered the most efficient way to  post photos online with the minimum amount of html coding. However, halfway through the process I discovered a much more efficient (and easier) method. I haven't yet gotten around to posting via the second method but if you'd like to see the first effort,
visit:
http://www.eslhome.com/pics/cps/index.htm
All the best,
Arlyn
PS: Anyone viewing this on a dialup connection, I'd appreciate feedback about the length of time taken for  photos to load, etc. (I'm currently on a cable modem).
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Nice photos ;-)

'mind telling us what the method is (the better one)? 
Aiden

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Very nice pictures! Congratulations. It did not take very long to load only about three seconds.
Emma

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Arlyn,

 - I'm on 53.2 kbps at the moment and the page took about a minute – quite acceptable I'd say for a page with so many images.
- Michael C.

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Nice and fast-loading photos, Arlyn,

 but am interested in knowing the two processes - old and new! This one works great on a cable connection.
Happy New Year!
Teresa

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                                      Hi everyone,
                

Yes, it's a very good question everyone has asked: what are the two methods and the differences between the two.

Method one (more work and three times the file creation) involved:
1. creating a main .jpg at full size
2. a smaller .jpg of same image ('thumbnail'- about 20% of orig. size) saved with a different file name (I added "th_" to the front of each file name). I saved the thumbnails "for the web" so they would load quickly.
3. creating a main index page (.htm) for all the thumbnails.
4. creating a separate .htm page for EACH full size .jpg
5. the thumbnails are really links to the larger size photo.
The easier method, discovered late in the game, is the following:
1. create one image file, at full display size
2. create a second smaller image for thumbnail
3. create one main index page to display thumbnails
4. use the following html code (rows inside a table):
<td ALIGN=CENTER VALIGN=BOTTOM>
<font face="your choice here" size="-2">
<a HREF="image_name.jpg" target="ImageWindow">
<img SRC="thumbnail_image_name.jpg" WIDTH="80"
HEIGHT="80" BORDER="0" ALT="image_name.jpg">
<br>your caption here</a></font></td>

Basically using this option removes the need for an individual .htm page for displaying the full size image. When the thumbnail is clicked, an "image window" opens, displaying the full-sized image. I was not aware of this "image window" command as a target for the image when I began this project. This option reduces the labor and amount of file creation
by one-third.
NOTE: I haven't actually tried this second method yet, I discovered it on someone else's page, and chose "view source" to see the html. The drawback is that the image window option doesn't allow for further captions or color choice (white seems to be the
default).
Did anyone by any chance happen to click to see the full-size photos on my page? Since these are saved at higher quality and are larger files, I was concerned about THEIR download time.
Let me know if any of you try version two and how it works out for you.
All the best,
Arlyn

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Hi,
                      

and, another option; Download Express Thumbnail Creator from http://www.express-soft.com/  The program is pretty reliable and flexible. They offer a trial version  with which you can try it for 30 days. I liked the program in the way that it really is worth paying. If you are creating bunch of pictures and want  it to be presented in an orderly fashion, I highly recommend it.
arif

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Dear Arlyn,

 I have printed your instructions for uploading a photo  and I am as happy as a dog with two tails because I learned how to  manipulate photoes thanks to your tips. I have just uploaded my  photo, have a look :) I would like to make it clearer. Can somebody
help?
Nelba

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Dear Nelba,
                 

Getting the resolution you want varies according to many variables.
1) Were you beginning with a digital image, or a photo  still that was scanned?  If digital, the image resolution can be made to appear sharper by using the "sharpen" filter in Adobe
Photoshop (very expensive software, but they do allow for a free 30-day trial download). If scanned, then you can select to scan the image at a higher resolution (slower scan and larger file).
2) Did you reduce the photo and then try to enlarge it from the reduced size? In looking at the image, it appears to be highly pixelated, which occurs when the above steps are taken.
When this happens, go back to the original (high resolution) version of the image and choose to reduce the size by a different percentage. I have done this several times (using the "undo" function) until the image appears at the correct size. Basically, you can only go in one direction (from larger to smaller) and  NOT 'from larger to smaller to larger'.
3) Another variable is choosing to save a smaller file size, which means to also save at a poorer resolution. The ideal situation is to find the exact point where the file can be reduced without losing too much resolution.
In Adobe Photoshop, there is the option to "Save for the Web": choose the "4-up" tab and you will see four versions of the image, at varying files sizes and resolutions. The upper-left image will be the image at its full size and resolution. The upper-right will offer a drastically smaller file (with a quicker  upload time) and with some loss of resolution. This
is the option I chose for my "thumbnail" images.  However, for the full-size images, I chose to keep the  highest resolution. Sometimes, to reduce the file size, I cropped the images to be physically smaller. This created a smaller file without lowering the resolution.
Having looked at the photo, I would suggest going back to the highest resolution version of the image, practicing reducing by various percentages (and choosing "undo") until you find the percentage that makes you happy.
Ugh! This is definitely one of those processes that is much easier to demonstrate than to explain! Hope this helps (I love the idiom about a dog with two tails!) to keep you 'wagging'.
All the best,
Arlyn

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Hi everyone,
                 

Well, on another web surf I discovered a beautiful display of photos with a link to the source script.  And it's free!  Follow this link: http://photoframe.sourceforge.net/
The description for the Php source script reads partially as follows:
"This free and simple PHP4 script aims to make it as easy as possible to display a bunch of photos on the web with thumbnails, captions and comments. All you need to do is drop your JPEG, PNG and GIF files in a web server directory, drop this script in with them (named index.php) and it's done. The script takes care of:  

* making thumbnails,
* writing the pages,
* adding captions
* adding Next/Previous links
* adding an Auto slideshow mode, with a user-set timer"
It looks real good to me :) !
All the best,
Arlyn

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sounds really great Arlyn...

 I cannot wait to test it this weekend.
altunA

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Dear WH's,

I thought I'd share with you(all) a page that a friend created using just  the built in functionality of PhotoShop7 (an expensive program I  realize). This version of PhotoShop seems to be able to automatically create pages very similar to the ones Arlyn showed us -- all you have to do  is point it to a directory/folder.
http://homepage.mac.com/fundy/newyears2003/
Of course, Dougimas' software is FREE and has the very nice feature of including a guest comment section.
--Don
PS. I'm also interested in trying out Dougimas' highly interesting Moodle  courseware but again the installation looks a little daunting for someone  with no net administration experience. Has anyone tried this out?

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I found the info Arlyn shared with us about mastering this process 

VERY daunting Don and abandoned the idea so you're not alone!
>BTW, it appears that you can do something very similar in Photoshop, i.e. automatically create a webpage that displays photos. Photoshop does allow you to 'record' a series of steps that you use on an  image so you can ask it to replicate that same process over and over, but  don't ask me how to do it! It's one of those things I was intending to get  back to. Any Photoshop experts out there? I bet if you went sniffing around the users help section at http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html
you'd find the answer or someone who could help you with the answer.
And Adobe seem to have a new product called Photoshop Album for $50 which creates pages and albums of pix.
- Michael C.

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I too didn't like all the fussiness of the PHP

site--couldn't figure out what I really needed and what was just icing-on-cake. So I've been working on various (free) options for installing photos, thumbnails, etc., and found some good scripts at http://www.htmlgoodies.com/  (I think I may have gotten this address from Vance or another WebHead originally!)
If you can make a basic Webpage with html, you can insert photos, resizing them to be thumbnails and making them into "buttons" that will pop you to a linked Webpage with the original big photos.
If you want some scripts to copy, let me know. Also, if you save an MSWord doc with photos as a Webpage, the photos will be there, though a little fuzzy. It's good for rough and ready, though the photo quality is pitiful, and of course you won't have thumbnails. As other Webheads have reported, the "Save as Webpage" in MSWord is not good and often takes more time to clean up than it's worth--better to start with your own html page from scratch.
BTW, I found in geocities that I was not allowed to upload html files, but could use their create-a-file option and paste in the html from a Webpage created in Simple text or Netscape Composer, or even MSWord.

--Elizabeth

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...and the consumer shall lead us...

Found this site that uses a unique combo of family home pics and embeded Real Audio. Reality is, as the common user becomes more saavy, expectations of professional usage is bound to rise. In other words, if this family can do it, then we ought to know how-to too.
http://family.heyum.net/real.html -- click on "Audio
Picture 4" for a cute one.
regards,
Arlyn

 

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