[X-Apps] Web Page Design Software

[Ken Rossman]

On Saturday, July 26, 2003, at 08:14 AM, Al D'Amanda wrote:
> Can anyone refer me to Jag compatible software and/or tutorials, etc
> for building my own web pages?
>
> I am specifically targeting the Web page for sharing personal photos
> from my digital camera

Well, first, lets go to the cheap/free end of the spectrum:

   - iPhoto (which you already have) has the ability to build a web page 
which
     is kind of like a contact sheet (thumbnail images, which, when 
clicked,
     display the full-size image).

   - Netscape (free download) has a rudimentary web page creation tool, 
though
     it doesn't automatically generate matrices of images or web-based 
slide
     shows.  It does an OK job at being a WYSIWYG HTML page editor.

   - There is a freeware package known as Gallery, which can create web 
pages
     that can run timed picture slideshows in a browser.  The main 
additional
     requirement here is that the web *server* has to be able to support 
PHP
     code.  If it's your own web server, then know that Apache fully 
supports
     the addition of PHP, and PHP is freely available for download also.

   - Then we move on to the more serious packages, such as those from 
Macromedia
     (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, etc), and Adobe (GoLive and others),
     for example.  I have Dreamweaver, but at this point, haven't really 
used
     it for a whole lot yet.  A project for a rainy day.  Software in 
this
     class tends to cost several hundred dollars.

By the way, you may also want to pull down some image manipulation tools
such as NetPBM, GraphicConverter, or ImageMagick, so that you can 
manipulate
the images prior to inclusion in the web pages (e.g. resize large 
images down
to sizes that work better for web pages, color balance and/or brighten 
images,
etc, etc)...  all of the above are freeware downloads.

I ended up creating my own perl script to generate those "contact sheet"
picture matrices for myself.  You're welcome to a copy of that if you
want it.

K