The Chicken or the Egg
April 28, 2004
I am not sure what precipitated this, my wanting to post some pictures of our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies or the need to find a custom way to create an online photo album. Either way, both can be seen here. Hopefully I will post more galleries soon as the process is pretty easy now that it is set up. Anywho, if you want to see a few snaps, click here. Geeks might want to read on...
For the development of this, I used a single php file for display (index.php) and a single php file for data (data.php, I am so creative...). I also used a super nifty plug-in for iPhoto by the name of betterHTMLExport. BHE builds upon the web exporting features of iPhoto and probably would have done about the whole album, but what fun would that have been?! I utilized the "Export Images Only" option to resize and compress my album of pictures from the Rockies. BHE exports them (fairly quick I might add) in a numbered sequence which makes it much easier later on. One small caveat: BHE starts with zero, which can be very confusing later on. I ended up putting a dummy image as the first pic in the iPhoto album then discarding it so that my photos started with one.
As for the php, it is pretty straightforward. The index page reads a variable to see where you are in the sequence (or puts you at the beginning if you just got there) and fills in the image url with the corresponding number (remember that numbered sequence?). It then calls upon the data file to get the caption for each picture along with the title of the album. The links just post an addition or subtraction to the variable and refresh the page. Quick, easy and light and it can be used over and over again. Just change the captions and the title, and drop a new set of pictures in.
The layout is controlled by a master css file in the root "photo" directory so that it can be used for all future albums. And of course XHTML on the ground level...
Comments
sis says:
you've learned greek already...wow
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Mom says:
Okay - so I guess I am not a geek -- So all I have to say is ---Whatchew talking about Willis?????Love you - MOm