Web Slide Show 1.0

D. Rosky,  2000/4/20

 
Features

Screen Shots

Download

Links
Web Slide Show  is a simple Tcl/Tk-based application designed to take a directory containing multiple image files  (typically JPEGs from a digital camera or scanned in from film) and arrange them into a muti-page web based presentation containing thumbnails, captions, titles, etc., which can be viewed and navigatged from within a web browser.  The HTML files which comprise the presentation are generated automatically by Web Slide Show.  Thumbnails are generated automatically, and the explanatory elements, such as captions, titles, etc., are entered by the user, and maintained by Web Slide Show.
Web Slide Show depends on external programs to provide the image processing functions necessary to create thumbnails and preview images.  Since there are several very capable programs already in existance for doing these functions, I felt it was more efficient to leverage these than to try to duplicate this functionality.  This also allowed me to keep the code entirely Tcl/Tk based, which helps keep things simpler and more portable.  The image processing package used by Web Slide Show is ImageMagick.
To use Web Slide Show, you will need to have Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher installed on your system as well as ImageMagick.
Web Slide Show is being developed under Linux (Red Hat 6.1 + XFCE), but it should work on other UNIX systems which support Tcl/Tk and ImageMagick.  Since both of these are available for Win32 platforms, Web Slide Show should, in principle, work on Win32  as well, although I have not tested it this way.
Configuration options are provided to allow some control over the format of the presentation; however, Web Slide Show is intended to be an easy, automated way to organize directories of images into web-based presentations, and is not intended to be infinitely configurable. If necessary, the resulting HTML output  can be edited in the program's main window, or the saved files may be edited in any HTML editor; however, any such changes will be lost if the page is regenerated using Web Slide Show.  A primitive facility for saving and inserting pieces of HTML code is provided, however, to allow some minimal flexibility.

New items in v1.0

    Web Slide Show Initial Release.

Features

    Web Slide Show can automatically generate multi-page web based presentations from a directory of image files where each page may contain the following graphical and explanatory elements:
    • Title - common to all pages, color configurable.

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    • Author - common to all pages, color configurable, can be a mailto: link.

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    • Date - common to all pages, color configurable.

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    • Subtitle - unique to each page, color configurable.

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    • Page description - unique to each page, body text color (configurable).

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    • Multiple rows of thumbnails and associated captions - The captions are body text color (configurable), and the size and number of thumbs per row are configurable

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    • Navigation links for muti-page presentations (link colors configurable).

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    • Any additional HTML material that the users desires at the bottom of the page, such as links or credits.  This is included automatically if the user places a file called "bottom_material.html" in the working directory.  The bottom material appears on all pages.

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    • A brief link to the Web Slide Show  web site at the very bottom of the page.  This can be optionally removed.


    Configuration options are provided to allow some control over the format of the presentation; however, Web Slide Show is intended to be an easy, automated way to combine directories of images into web-based presentations, and is not intended to be infinitely configurable. If necessary, the resulting HTML output  can be edited in the program's main window, or the saved files may be edited in any other HTML editor; however, any changes will be lost if the page is re-created using Web Slide Show.  To allow some minimal flexibility, however, a primitive facility for saving and inserting pieces of HTML code is provided.

    Additional Features

    • Horizontal bars can optionally be placed between rows of thumbnails.

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    • A visual directory browser for easily copying images into the working directory.

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    • Ability to directly perform common simple image processing tasks on the selected image or all images in the image list.  Images can be resized, sharpened, rotated and gamma corrected without having to use an image editing program.

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    • Ability to manually include external HTML files at any point in the generated HTML.

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    • Ability to save portions of the generated HTML to a file.

    Possible future plans:

    • Support for generating Javascript so that the main images can be displayed in browser pup-ups rather than in the main browser window.

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    • Support frames for more flexible page layout and so that a full navigation index can be placed on each page of a multiple page presentation.

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    • Additional configuration options.

Screen Shots and Sample Output (version 1.0)

What is Required?

    Web Slide Show itself is written entirely in Tcl, which is an interpreted language, so it requires no compilation and should run on any platform which supports the underlying packages, Tcl/Tk and ImageMagick.  Web Slide Show is written to Tcl/Tk version 8.0 and  ImageMagick 4.2.9.  Newer versions should work; older versions may or may not work.  Both Tcl/Tk and ImageMagick can be downloaded from the links shown below.  Precompiled versions and RPM packages are available from these and various other sites for some platforms, including Windows.

Compatibility

Web Slide Show version 1.0 is compatible with ImageMagick version 4.2.9, and Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher.

Usage

View the README file for details on how to setup and use Web Slide Show.

Caveats and Bugs

For full functionality, it is recommended that Web Slide Show be used with ImageMagick 4.2.9 or higher.  See "What is Required" above for more details.  Bug reports can be sent to me.

Downloading (WSS download is not ready yet, links are not active)

Links

    tcltk.com - Tcl/Tk online resources and information.
    Scriptics -  A commercial company founded by the author of Tcl/Tk.  Lots of useful information and links to the most recent versions of Tcl/Tk.

     

    Please feel free to address any comments, bug reports, questions, suggestions, and improvements to me.

David Rosky, d_rosky@nccn.net