Dreamweaver- creating a photo gallery

I am a beginner with Dreamweaver (I have DW 8), and I'm working on a couple of simple sites. For my needs, (I'm a teacher) I have to have simple image galleries; that is, a few thumbnails displayed on the page, you click on the thumbnail which takes you to the full-size image. This is something I will be using all year, where I have, say, 30-40 images up on various pages, and they get updated and changed during the year.

I used Front Page for years and they had an automatic thumbnail creating function, which as far as I know DW does not have. I seem to recall an expert telling me a few years ago that every single thumbnail needs to be individually created....if so, putting up a few pictures could be an endless task...

What is the best way to accomplish this in Dreamweaver? Again, I'm a beginner, forget HTML programming; just please let me know if I can do this simply and effectively.

 

Hi bj nick

I don't personally use Dream Weaver, but the process should be pretty much the same regardless of the program.

Use a program like Irfanview to create a set of thumbnails. This program will allow you to resize many photographs at one go use the batch convert. Then do the same for the slides.
Then just insert the thumbnails on your page and link them to the corresponding slide.

If you want things to look smart you can use the lightbox script to add a fancy load.

You can have a look at demo page that I created here.

Another option is to use JAlbum. You can download the program. Once it is installed start the program and follow the instructions. You will be asked to select the photographs you want included in the gallery, chose a skin (look) and then the program will create all the thumbnails, link them, add cool effects and produce html pages and files which all you need do is upload to your server. You can also download from the site additional skins. Very easy!
You can have a look at a demo I made here.

 

Thanks for your response. The Lightbox galleries look wonderful, but there's no way I'm going to be able to do the HTML for that....I just don't have the time or patience. (I know, I know.)

The Jalbum looks terrific as well. It would be perfect for my needs. Do I understand correctly that the software will do everything for me? And that I can use it with Dreamweaver? Would it be just a link....? In other words, I'd have a link on the site which says "Image gallery" or "kids at play" or whatever, and that takes one to the Jalbum site?

I would like it to transparent/seamless within my own web site; that is, a visitor doesn't even realize that they are going to another site....

thanks!

 

The JAlbum does all the work. But it is separate from dream weaver. What I did, was to create a gallery in JAlbum, then copy the html that JAlbum created onto my websites template. Once you are done, you can just link you pages.

 

Have a look at Arles here. It is a separate programme but it does exactly what you want. It is not expensive and there is a full featured time unlimited demo on the website. I use DW for my camera clubs website but wouldn't use anything else but Arles for an image gallery. IMHO this is not something DW is very good at, if you must go the DW route there are several gallery plugins for DW. I have looked at most of them and IMHO Arles is far better.

 

Photoshop has a pretty good gallery tool. Takes whatever images you load in it, makes thumbnails out of them, and gives you all the html and css required for the gallery.

I haven't tried to see if it works in Photoshop CS3 (it might), but I used it a few times on my old computer running Photoshop Elements 4.0

 

I think you need a php script for photos gallery

 

depends on if you want a static gallery or a dynamic one. It's possible to have a gallery with just html if what you want is a static gallery, where you add new pictures manually.

 

As I said above look at Arles it will do everything that you need. It generates the html pages and the thumbnails, using the image explorer you can alter the order in which the photos display, if you add a new photo to a previously generated gallery you can just generate the new / changed pages only. It is exceptionally powerful without getting into a db and php. Give it a try for free.

BTW this is just a great bit of software that I use regularly I am in no way associated with the author.

 

The bottom line is that you should never be making websites using the Dreamweaver or Frontpage "Design" mode, which is what I'm guessing you're using.

Websites are made using programming languages such as HTML and CSS. If you do not have the time and patience to sit down and do the code for your website then you probably need to find someone else to do it, or reconsider your situation.

The reason is that the way Dreamweaver and other programs put together website made in Design mode is absolute horrific and usually will lead to a lot of problems in the future.

Although it is possible to do a simple thumbnail gallery in Dreamweaver Design mode, I strongly advise against it. However, if you were to do the code for it, it's really quite simple for what you describe.

Simply create a few image-links for thumbnails like this:

Code:

<a href="YOUR_IMAGE"><img src="YOUR_THUMBNAIL" alt=""/></a>

And you're done.

 

Get your hands on "Firm Tools Album Creator" - It's great!! Here's a page where I used it:

http://www.goldenhorseshoebassanglers.ca/

click on the photo gallery.

It simply opens up your pics from one directory and creates all the files you need - it has themese and you simply upload the whole directory to your server and you're good to go!