HTML photo album generator?

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Does anyone happen to know of a good HTML photo generator? It should be simple, HTML pages with thumbnails linking to larger versions. I don't want an automated script like Gallery, just generating HTML pages.

I started out with Dreamweaver's built-in version but that didnt' work because for some reason it randomized the photos. It was all tables too so I had to completely clean up the code.

Then I found this one which claims to be "strictly" standards compliant but it's not. It validates, but uses tables for layout and all kinds of unnecessary classes all over the place. So I'm having to completely re-do the code on that too.

It would be great to find something that would do this but with proper coding!

Side question: on the gallery index I am using div's to lay out the thumbnails. Is this the best mark-up or would a list or (gasp) a table be more appropriate? What is a group of thumbnail images? Could be that a list is most appropriate ??? What do you think?

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

I can't remember for sure, but think that uLead's Photo Impact has a thing for creating a photo album. I think. I only used the one with dreamweaver myself before.

Photo impact does at least ahve batch processing to take a whole diretory and make thumbnails of it.

-Greg

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

The thumbnail part is easy, it's creating the HTML pages with next/back and linking to an index that I'd like to automate... I am starting on doing it manually. Might be easier than faffing around with a bunch of programs that don't do exactly what I want.

Roo's picture

She has: 840 posts

Joined: Apr 1999

I haven't seen one yet that spits out valid code.

A couple of alternatives.....

You could do thumbs and have the larger images load into an iframe, or try the Flash tool that is XML driven SimpleViewer

I use Picassa to generate Simple Viewer and then do the work to make it valid:
Valid Simple Viewer Example.

You can customize things in the XML file.

Roo

He has: 490 posts

Joined: May 2005

Megan.

Try the one I use, HTML compliant 100% (no java, or flash. XHTML only). next - back - index and home buttons. Makes main index page, and seperate XHTML page for each photo. Its called Web Album Generator, you can even tinker with the CSS file, and pretty well do what you want with it. Link below. Smiling

http://www.ornj.net/

Ok, I see you have already tried it, and it is 100% compliant check it with WDG or W3C. I use the older version, the one just before the last revision, I like it better. I would leave it just the way it is. I have never found any browser problems myself.
I added a caption box under the photos, on the CSS page. But I think the newer version already has it. The algorithms in the new version tend to sharpen to much, and on top of that I usually have mine sharpened enough. The extra sharpening is just to much.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

No, it's not compliant, it uses tables to lay out the back/home/next buttons and the CSS is really messy. I was going to have to completely re-do most of the code. That one was better than anything else I looked at though.

I ended up doing it all by hand. It wasn't too bad with Dreamweaver templates.

He has: 490 posts

Joined: May 2005

I don't know about the version you are using. I had more reasons than one, to go back to the older version. If it validates I call it compliant, and I really don't know of one album gen, that does not use tables - somewhere.

I really can't say to much about the css, but it works. And if you don't use all the functions, like the thumbnail nav. which I don't, then there is redundant css in the file. It will pass a W3C check though. At least the old one will?.

I used to usa a javascript of my own doing that used no tables, but since many free servers - like I use don't let you use java, I had to hunt for something diffrent.

AlbumGen beats J album, several other programs I tried, and was the nearest to the best I could find. Smiling

I have seen some really neat flash albums, but I would rather sleep on nails than to use flash on my site. I guess, its because I have seen so much bad use of it. Like those GodAwful forever on-going intro pages! YUCK. With the music I spoke of before.

You were talking about Opera, I got my site 99.99% the same on all the browsers except Opera. But I finally found the problem, and it is 99.90%, there is a shadow below the nav buttons I can't get rid of. It is only in Opera, it was in FF but I changed the way I positioned the buttons, and it went away. I was using Vspace, and I changed to css top margin, that cleared FF, but not Opera?.

I sometimes wonder if some of the browser problems I incur, are because I run Win ME. My son has a laptop with Opera, I'll have to take a look with it, he runs WIN XP.

Bye-Bye. Smiling

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Oh, there were no display problems, I just didn't like the code it was generating.

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