What freeware creates thumbnail photo html gallery WITH LINKS

[barb]

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with easily
clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

This Windows photo-gallery freeware needs to do only two basic tasks:
- Given a directory of large originals - create smaller thumbnails
- Create a local index.html linking the thumbnails to the larger originals

Here's what failed!

IRFANVIEW:
Googling, I find some advocated Irfanview. But, while Irfanview is a great
fast photo viewer and while Irfanview easily creates thumbnails, I couldn't
figure out how to force Irfanview to output a simple index.html of those
thumbnails which points to the larger originals. http://www.irfanview.com

JALBUM:
Some suggested JAlbum in older threads, but that also failed me (YMMV).
Apparently JAlbum requires Sun Java on WinXP. Unfortunately, the entire
hellish Sun Java installation killed my system (the whole thing was a royal
mess); so I had to delete the whole assemblage (wasting hours in that
process). Obviously JAlbum isn't a recommended (by me anyway) alternative
solution ever again. http://jalbum.net

YoPoW:
Newer googled threads suggested "Your Photos on the Web" as the best
Windows photograph JPG web index.html generator. YoPoW has a nice & simple
wizard so I had a local web page in minutes and, best of all, YoPoW gave
you the third option of having a third set of photos linked to the
thumbnails.
a) Your huge originals
b) Your 100 pixel thumbnails (settable to any desired size)
c) And, an additional 800 pixel medium size
I liked YoPoW, but, oh my gosh, was the index.html it created miserably
difficult to navigate. It drove me crazy that the user interface of YoPoW
was so absolutely easy to use but the resulting web page was torture for
the user to navigate. http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/yopow/yopow.htm

Given that this simple failed quest has now consumed a half day, I'd like
to ask the following two questions of experts smarter than I am.

QUESTION 1:
Can Irfanview create HTML linking thumbnails to originals? If so, how?

QUESTION 2:
If not, what Windows freeware program does these three simple tasks:
0. Given a directory of large originals ...
1. It generates a directory of local thumbnails ...
2. And then creates a reasonably easy to navigate local index.html ...
3. Which points to the larger originals (or a medium sized copy).

Thank you in advance for your advice,
barb

 

[Ivan V. Klattrup]

QUESTION 2:
If not, what Windows freeware program does these three simple tasks:
0. Given a directory of large originals ...
1. It generates a directory of local thumbnails ...
2. And then creates a reasonably easy to navigate local index.html ...
3. Which points to the larger originals (or a medium sized copy).

Well, I'm not sure if it's good enough, but i use iwebalbum to create my
gallery, I'm not sure because it only have 15 images on the main index.html

iwebalbum http://www.eunq.com/index.html

my gallery (my cat) http://klattrup.dk/sussi/index.html ;-)

 

[ebro]

barb wrote on zaterdag ,5-8-2006 :

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with easily
clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

This Windows photo-gallery freeware needs to do only two basic tasks:
- Given a directory of large originals - create smaller thumbnails
- Create a local index.html linking the thumbnails to the larger originals

Here's what failed!

IRFANVIEW:
Googling, I find some advocated Irfanview. But, while Irfanview is a great
fast photo viewer and while Irfanview easily creates thumbnails, I couldn't
figure out how to force Irfanview to output a simple index.html of those
thumbnails which points to the larger originals. http://www.irfanview.com

JALBUM:
Some suggested JAlbum in older threads, but that also failed me (YMMV).
Apparently JAlbum requires Sun Java on WinXP. Unfortunately, the entire
hellish Sun Java installation killed my system (the whole thing was a royal
mess); so I had to delete the whole assemblage (wasting hours in that
process). Obviously JAlbum isn't a recommended (by me anyway) alternative
solution ever again. http://jalbum.net

YoPoW:
Newer googled threads suggested "Your Photos on the Web" as the best
Windows photograph JPG web index.html generator. YoPoW has a nice & simple
wizard so I had a local web page in minutes and, best of all, YoPoW gave
you the third option of having a third set of photos linked to the
thumbnails.
a) Your huge originals
b) Your 100 pixel thumbnails (settable to any desired size)
c) And, an additional 800 pixel medium size
I liked YoPoW, but, oh my gosh, was the index.html it created miserably
difficult to navigate. It drove me crazy that the user interface of YoPoW
was so absolutely easy to use but the resulting web page was torture for
the user to navigate. http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/yopow/yopow.htm

Given that this simple failed quest has now consumed a half day, I'd like
to ask the following two questions of experts smarter than I am.

QUESTION 1:
Can Irfanview create HTML linking thumbnails to originals? If so, how?

QUESTION 2:
If not, what Windows freeware program does these three simple tasks:
0. Given a directory of large originals ...
1. It generates a directory of local thumbnails ...
2. And then creates a reasonably easy to navigate local index.html ...
3. Which points to the larger originals (or a medium sized copy).

Thank you in advance for your advice,
barb

http://www.stegmann.dk/mikkel/porta/

 

[KatWoman]

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with easily
clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

This Windows photo-gallery freeware needs to do only two basic tasks:
- Given a directory of large originals - create smaller thumbnails
- Create a local index.html linking the thumbnails to the larger originals

Here's what failed!

IRFANVIEW:
Googling, I find some advocated Irfanview. But, while Irfanview is a great
fast photo viewer and while Irfanview easily creates thumbnails, I
couldn't
figure out how to force Irfanview to output a simple index.html of those
thumbnails which points to the larger originals. http://www.irfanview.com

JALBUM:
Some suggested JAlbum in older threads, but that also failed me (YMMV).
Apparently JAlbum requires Sun Java on WinXP. Unfortunately, the entire
hellish Sun Java installation killed my system (the whole thing was a
royal
mess); so I had to delete the whole assemblage (wasting hours in that
process). Obviously JAlbum isn't a recommended (by me anyway) alternative
solution ever again. http://jalbum.net

YoPoW:
Newer googled threads suggested "Your Photos on the Web" as the best
Windows photograph JPG web index.html generator. YoPoW has a nice & simple
wizard so I had a local web page in minutes and, best of all, YoPoW gave
you the third option of having a third set of photos linked to the
thumbnails.
a) Your huge originals
b) Your 100 pixel thumbnails (settable to any desired size)
c) And, an additional 800 pixel medium size
I liked YoPoW, but, oh my gosh, was the index.html it created miserably
difficult to navigate. It drove me crazy that the user interface of YoPoW
was so absolutely easy to use but the resulting web page was torture for
the user to navigate. http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/yopow/yopow.htm

Given that this simple failed quest has now consumed a half day, I'd like
to ask the following two questions of experts smarter than I am.

QUESTION 1:
Can Irfanview create HTML linking thumbnails to originals? If so, how?

QUESTION 2:
If not, what Windows freeware program does these three simple tasks:
0. Given a directory of large originals ...
1. It generates a directory of local thumbnails ...
2. And then creates a reasonably easy to navigate local index.html ...
3. Which points to the larger originals (or a medium sized copy).

Thank you in advance for your advice,
barb

from MS it's not free:
FRONTPAGE
slideshow
(all FP NG's diss this a lot and recommend JALBUM)
I used it one webpage and it looks fine on IE some say it won't on other
browsers

do you have PHOTOSHOP??
automate web album

free:
hand code in HTML using notepad or word
there are like a million free scripts to d/l out there to show photos

Java is very simple to install, not sure your problem there
most slideshows need this to work


when you say LOCAL
if you are in XP and just want to show images as slideshow??

it is under the VIEW>customize folder options
make sure to choose type of folder there are two picture types, the one I
think you mean is Photo Album
it will show a selected image large at top within the folder and the rest
are thumbs
Is that what you need??
picture view

thumbnails

double click it will preview in WIn Picture fax viewer unless you installed
something that stole the file association for preview

 

[Dennis Pogson]

from MS it's not free:
FRONTPAGE
slideshow
(all FP NG's diss this a lot and recommend JALBUM)
I used it one webpage and it looks fine on IE some say it won't on
other browsers

do you have PHOTOSHOP??
automate web album

free:
hand code in HTML using notepad or word
there are like a million free scripts to d/l out there to show photos

Java is very simple to install, not sure your problem there
most slideshows need this to work


when you say LOCAL
if you are in XP and just want to show images as slideshow??

it is under the VIEW>customize folder options
make sure to choose type of folder there are two picture types, the
one I think you mean is Photo Album
it will show a selected image large at top within the folder and the
rest are thumbs
Is that what you need??
picture view
double click it will preview in WIn Picture fax viewer unless you
installed something that stole the file association for preview

What the guy means is that if you say exactly what you want to do, we may be
able to help you.

 

[dadiOH]

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with
easily clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

This Windows photo-gallery freeware needs to do only two basic
tasks:
- Given a directory of large originals - create smaller thumbnails
- Create a local index.html linking the thumbnails to the larger
originals

Here's what failed!

IRFANVIEW:
Googling, I find some advocated Irfanview. But, while Irfanview is
a great fast photo viewer and while Irfanview easily creates
thumbnails, I couldn't figure out how to force Irfanview to output
a simple index.html of those thumbnails which points to the larger
originals.

Thumbnail window
Select thumbnails
File
Save selected thumbs as HTML file
Link images to original files on local disc

That will get you an HTML file that displays the thumbs which link to
the original files wherever they are. Naturally, it also saves the
thumbs wherever you tell it to put the html file...has to in order for
the HTML file to show the thumbs.

Basic info in the <GASP> Irfanview help file. Look under "HTMLexport"
or "thumbnails" in the index.


--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

 

[dadiOH]

BTW, JAlbum doesn't need WinXP. Does need Java, don't know what your
problem was there, Sun's is a simple install.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

 

[Monkee]

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with easily
clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

MS XP Powertoys, HTML slideshow wizard

 

[Carputers]

QUESTION 2:
If not, what Windows freeware program does these three simple tasks:
0. Given a directory of large originals ...
1. It generates a directory of local thumbnails ...
2. And then creates a reasonably easy to navigate local index.html ...
3. Which points to the larger originals (or a medium sized copy).

Thank you in advance for your advice,
barb

xnview: http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enfeatures.html

 

[Junefly]

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with easily
clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

This Windows photo-gallery freeware needs to do only two basic tasks:
- Given a directory of large originals - create smaller thumbnails
- Create a local index.html linking the thumbnails to the larger originals

Here's what failed!

IRFANVIEW:
Googling, I find some advocated Irfanview. But, while Irfanview is a great
fast photo viewer and while Irfanview easily creates thumbnails, I couldn't
figure out how to force Irfanview to output a simple index.html of those
thumbnails which points to the larger originals. http://www.irfanview.com

JALBUM:
Some suggested JAlbum in older threads, but that also failed me (YMMV).
Apparently JAlbum requires Sun Java on WinXP. Unfortunately, the entire
hellish Sun Java installation killed my system (the whole thing was a royal
mess); so I had to delete the whole assemblage (wasting hours in that
process). Obviously JAlbum isn't a recommended (by me anyway) alternative
solution ever again. http://jalbum.net

YoPoW:
Newer googled threads suggested "Your Photos on the Web" as the best
Windows photograph JPG web index.html generator. YoPoW has a nice & simple
wizard so I had a local web page in minutes and, best of all, YoPoW gave
you the third option of having a third set of photos linked to the
thumbnails.
a) Your huge originals
b) Your 100 pixel thumbnails (settable to any desired size)
c) And, an additional 800 pixel medium size
I liked YoPoW, but, oh my gosh, was the index.html it created miserably
difficult to navigate. It drove me crazy that the user interface of YoPoW
was so absolutely easy to use but the resulting web page was torture for
the user to navigate. http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/yopow/yopow.htm

Given that this simple failed quest has now consumed a half day, I'd like
to ask the following two questions of experts smarter than I am.

QUESTION 1:
Can Irfanview create HTML linking thumbnails to originals? If so, how?

QUESTION 2:
If not, what Windows freeware program does these three simple tasks:
0. Given a directory of large originals ...
1. It generates a directory of local thumbnails ...
2. And then creates a reasonably easy to navigate local index.html ...
3. Which points to the larger originals (or a medium sized copy).

Thank you in advance for your advice,
barb

You might try ETumb1_2.exe
http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ethumbe.htm I use it to make the
thumb nails for my album but do not use the links part.. it works very well.
I am in the process of trying changing albums so not sure if I will still
need it or not, but I will sure keep it.

Good Luck
Faded_Glory

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

What WinXP freeware do you use to create local HTML galleries (with
easily clickable web links to the larger local photographs)?

I have used something called FreshView, it's free and does a decent job.

 

[Michael Laplante]

barb wrote:

Thumbnail window
Select thumbnails
File
Save selected thumbs as HTML file
Link images to original files on local disc

Exactly. Pretty easy to do -- you have to start the process in 'thumbnail'
view. Once Irfanview is open, press 't'. Then follow the above instructions.
Too easy.

Xnview follows a similar process, however, it gives you the option to view
the image "directly", i.e. not in an HTML wrapper the way Irfanview does.

M

 

[barb]

Thumbnail window
Select thumbnails
File
Save selected thumbs as HTML file
Link images to original files on local disc
That will get you an HTML file that displays the thumbs which link to
the original files wherever they are. Naturally, it also saves the
thumbs wherever you tell it to put the html file...has to in order for
the HTML file to show the thumbs.

I'll test it out. I didn't see how the link images option could possibly
work when I put the HTML on the local lan because it uses a "file://" link
instead of the "./" kind of link. But, maybe you knew something that I
didn't.

Here's what I'll try and report back to you:
- I'll put about 500 photos in a directory on my local machine
- I'll run the suggested Irfanview steps above
- I'll then test it out on my local machine
- If it works, I'll move the entire folder over to the networked machine
- It should still work if relative paths are used for all the links

The reason I didn't think the otherwise wonderful Irfanview would do this
basic job was because the documentation said it uses a "file://c/pic" style
URL (which isn't portable across machines) instead of a local URL of
"./pic/" (which is 100% portable across machines on the local network).

I'll let you know how it goes!
barb

 

[barb]

Thumbnail window
Select thumbnails
File
Save selected thumbs as HTML file
Link images to original files on local disc

IrfanView (unfortunately) failed to create the desired web page.

Can someone tell me what settings to use in IrfanView thumbnail view
such that the saved HTML file actually shows the thumbnails?

Here's EXACTLY what I did so you can reproduce it exactly to
help me and others (yes I read the Irfanview help but there is
more "help" here in this one thread than in the thumbnail section
in IrfanView 3.98).

0. I started with an empty directory:
mkdir c:\pic
And then I put a folder of 500 original photographs there.
c:\pic\original

Each original JPEG is approximately 3008 x 2000 pixels.
No other files or directories existed in c:\pic at this time.

1. I double-clicked on the first photo, which brought up Irfanview
Irfanview version 3.98

2. In Irfanview, I selected "File" and then "Thumbnails".
This opened a second window with 500 thumbnails showing.

3. In the thumbnail view, I selected "Options" & then "Select All".
This selected all 500 thumbnails.

4. I pressed "File" & then "Save selected thumbs as HTML file".
The options chosen were:
Main result HTML file name: index.html
Destination folder: c:\pic
Thumbnails sub-folder: c:\pic\thumbs
Thumbnail file prefix: th_
Thumbnail flie suffix: _th
Images sub-folder: c:\pic\images
Filder with HTML templates: c:\programs\viewers\irfanview\html\
[x]Copy original images to destination folder (recommended)
[x]Create one HTML file for each thumbnail (HTML browsing)
HTML Options Page title: My Pictures
Columns: 12
[x]Link images to original files on local disk ("file://")
[x]Write file info/text [$F = file name] [$S = file size]
Text alignment ( )Left (x)Center ( )Right
Link/Image display ( )Display links in original browser window
(x)Display links in the second browser window
[Export]

5. There was no confirmation that the job finished, but, soon enough
there were 501 HTML files in my c:\pic directory:
c:\pic\index.html
c:\pic\Picture 001.html
c:\pic\Picture 002.html
...
c:\pic\Picture 500.html

6. Unfortunately, when I double-clicked on the index.html, the
web page contained blank thumbs (i.e., there were no thumbnails).
Hmmmmmm.... At least the links worked but they were to the originals
which are basically too large to view fully in a single web page.

7. Looking at the index.html page, I see that it was my folly to assume
the c:\pic\thumbs directory was going to be created and populated by
Irfanview automatically. OK. Fair enough. This is the HTML:
<A HREF="Picture 001.html" target="" style="text-decoration:none">
<IMG SRC="./c:/pic/thumbs/th_Picture 001_th.jpg"
width="80" height="80" BORDER="0" ALT="Picture 001.jpg">
So it looks like I'll have to create my own thumbs first

8. In Irfanview Thumbnails, I pressed "Options" & then "Select All".
Then I pressed "File" & then "Save selected thumbs as single images".

9. Unfortunately, the dialog that popped up didn't give the option
to create the directory (just the files), so I quit out of Irfanview
and manually created the directory to put the thumbnails into:
c:\pic\thumbs

10. I repeated step 8 but was dismayed to find that Irfanview didn't
give me a dialog with options to rename the thumbs. So I had to look
to see what name they were given and what size they were created at.

11. The thumbnails seem to have been created with specifications of:
c:\pic\thumbs\Picture 001_t.jpg (80 x 80 pixels)
c:\pic\thumbs\Picture 002_t.jpg (80 x 80 pixels)
...
c:\pic\thumbs\Picture 500_t.jpg (80 x 80 pixels)

12. Going back to step 4, I modified the thumbnail-name setting:
Thumbnail file prefix: <I made this blank>
Thumbnail flie suffix: _t

13. At this point, after deleting all the HTML files that were creatd,
I repeated step 4 above and step 5 & 6 unfortunately came up with
the same result. There were no thumbs visible in the resulting
index.html web page when viewed in Firefox.

14. Again hand editing the index.html, I saw the error was in Irfanview
putting the full path in the image-source HTML tag so I changed it
FROM:
<A HREF="Picture 001.html"><IMG SRC="./c:/pic/thumbs/Picture 001_t.jpg"
TO:
<A HREF="Picture 001.html"><IMG SRC="./thumbs/Picture 001_t.jpg"

15. This minor edit to make the paths relative solved that problem;
but nobody wants to be editing HTML text files when they don't have to.

16. So, I went back to IrvanView and, after deleting all the HTML files
that were created, I again repeated step 4 changing:
FROM:
[x]Link images to original files on local disk ("file://")
TO:
[ ]Link images to original files on local disk ("file://")
But, this failed to solve the problem of blank thumbnail images
in the index.html due to a path of "./c:/pic/thumbs/".

17. So, I went back to IrfanView and, after deleting the HTML files,
I again looked at the options in step 4. I noticed there was no
"c:\pic\images" directory, so I changed the setting in step 4:
FROM:
Images sub-folder: c:\pic\images
TO:
Images sub-folder: c:\pic\original

18. But, this didn't solve the problem of blank thumbnail images.
The resulting c:\pic\index.html web page still pointed to an
IMG SRC of: "./c:/pic/thumbs/Picture 001_t.jpg".

19. Getting desperate, I looked at the settings in step 4 again when
I noticed no images were copied to the destination folder despite
the recommended setting in Irfanview (what does that setting do)?

So, I changed that setting in step 4:
FROM
[x]Copy original images to destination folder (recommended)
TO:
[ ]Copy original images to destination folder (recommended)

20. Alas. The result was no better than before. No thumbnails showed up
in the resulting web page due to the incorrect link being added to
the IMG SRC HTML directive.

Can someone tell me what settings to use in IrfanView thumbnail view
such that the saved HTML file actually shows the thumbnails?

Thanks in advance,
barb

 

[barb]

Irfanview will sure enough do this.
Here's an example:
http://paulmueller.home.mindspring.com/forweb3/index.html

Hi Paul Mueller,

My problem with the otherwise venerable IrfanView at the moment hinges
on the image source HTML tag being incorrectly written to the
index.html file by IrfanView 3.98 as:
<IMG SRC="./c:/pic/thumbs/Picture 001_t.JPG">

When I do a "View" and then "Source" on your suggested web page:
http://paulmueller.home.mindspring.com/forweb3/index.html
I see your image source HTML tag is using a relative link:
<IMG SRC="P1010021a_t.jpg">

What magical setting are we supposed to use in IrfanView to get
IrfanView to NOT write out "./c:/P1010021a_t.jpg" as the
image source path but to write out "P1010021a_t.jpg" instead?

Thanks in advance,
barb

 

[barb]

I have used something called FreshView, it's free and does a decent job.

Since Irfanview keeps writing the full path (including the "./c:") into the
index.html IMG SRC tag, I'm going to have to give up on the otherwise
fantastic IrfanView and find something else that works to create a simple
web page of thumbnails pointing to the larger originals.

Googling, I found FreshView for Windows freeware at:
http://www.freshdevices.com/freshview.html

The download page required an email account (which is surprising for
freeware). Having been spammed to death already, I created a new yahoo
account but the FreshDevices web page won't accept Yahoo email (huh?).

A warning on the FreshDevices web page ominously says:
Do not use free email accounts. Our system is not compatible with
some ISP. You may report to your ISP about it, mostly related
with their e-mail filtering/blocking/anti-spam settings.

Hmmm... sounds like a potential spam house or spyware threat to me.

Can anyone else vouch for this "Fresh Devices" outfit as a fitting
replacement for the otherwise venerable IrfanView for creating a web page
of thumbnail images linked to the originals?

barb

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Since Irfanview keeps writing the full path (including the "./c:")
into the index.html IMG SRC tag, I'm going to have to give up on the
otherwise fantastic IrfanView and find something else that works to
create a simple web page of thumbnails pointing to the larger
originals.

Googling, I found FreshView for Windows freeware at:
http://www.freshdevices.com/freshview.html

The download page required an email account (which is surprising for
freeware). Having been spammed to death already, I created a new yahoo
account but the FreshDevices web page won't accept Yahoo email (huh?).

A warning on the FreshDevices web page ominously says:
Do not use free email accounts. Our system is not compatible with
some ISP. You may report to your ISP about it, mostly related
with their e-mail filtering/blocking/anti-spam settings.

Hmmm... sounds like a potential spam house or spyware threat to me.

Can anyone else vouch for this "Fresh Devices" outfit as a fitting
replacement for the otherwise venerable IrfanView for creating a web
page of thumbnail images linked to the originals?

barb

I'm sure the reason Fresh Devices wants a valid email address is so that
they can send you mail about their other products. I haven't gotten any
increase in spam from giving out my address, although they do seem to
want to send you newsletters frequently. AFAIK, they are not spyware,
and they actually have a few good tools.

 

[Harry Limey]

What magical setting are we supposed to use in IrfanView to get
IrfanView to NOT write out "./c:/P1010021a_t.jpg" as the
image source path but to write out "P1010021a_t.jpg" instead?

Thanks in advance,
barb

Hi Barb

Never used Irfanview for this myself! (Use it for most other batch type
things though) so I set about doing what you asked with a folder of about 50
images (included some .psd files in there by mistake)
Now what I did (never having tried before, you understand!!) is having
selected the images I wanted to use (If I were doing this for real - I would
batch process them all to the right size for display first - say 800 px
wide?) and having created and selected a new output folder, I left all the
settings at default and pressed 'GO'
No problem at all - 50+ html pages - clicked on the Thumbnails.html and the
ten or so I tried all worked - the thumbnails all showed too, although the
html pages with .psd files just showed a placeholder, not surprisingly!

So I suggest leaving things on their default settings!! unless that is now
too late!! If so I don't mind sending you the defaults I used?

Harry

 

[barb]

xnview: http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enfeatures.html

Voila! XnView worked like a charm!
http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enfeatures.html

Having failed (as explained in great detail) to create a web page with
thumbnails linked to the original JPEGs using the freeware IrfanView, the
suspected spyware FreshView, the hard-to-install javaware JAlbum, and the
hard-to-navigate YoPoW, I just now tried your suggested XnView.

Here's what I did.
0. I already had all my originals in c:\pic\original
I deleted everything else so that there were no other files or
directories in c:\pic other than the directory of 500 originals.
1. I started up XnView version 1.82.4 & viewed the following defaults:
"View" "Layout" = (left frame thumbnails, right frame originals)
"View" "Thumbnail Size" = 92 x 69 pixels
2. In the "Browser" tab, I clicked on c:\pic\original
3. I pressed "Edit" and then "Select All" to select all 500 images
4. I pressed "Create" and then "Web Page"
5. This brought up the "Web page Create" dialog box
6. I entered the following information into that dialog box:
Template folder: c:\programs\webprogs\XnView\Web Template\
Template: _Default - Frame
Title: My Web Page
Header: My Header
Number of Columns: 12
Sort by: Name [ ]Reverse
Thumbnail Width: 100 Height: 100
Format: (x)GIF ( )JPEG [x]Interlaced
[x]Use original files if smaller than thumbnail size
Information displayed: [x]Show information, <Filename> (lots of options)
Picture: [ ]No HTML page per picture, [ ]Size maximum (not specified)
Output Directory: c:\pic\web
Original sub-folder: original
Thumbnail sub-folder: thumb
Thumbnail prefix: t_
[x]Copy source images to output folder
[x]Launch web browser when done
[Create]
7. Unlike IrfanView, this create brought up a progress box
detailing the progress as 500 images were thumbnailed and the
web page ostensibly created.
8. Surprisingly, a dual-pane framed browser window showed up in
Firefox, with the 500 thumbnails in the left frame and the
desired photo in the right pane (depending on which thumbnail
was clicked on at any given time).
9. Looking around, I see the c:\pic directory now had two sub folders:
c:\pic\original
c:\pic\web
Inside the "web" subfolder were two new sub-sub folders:
c:\pic\web\original
c:\pic\web\thumb
A copy of the 500 original JPEGs with 500 new web pages were found at:
c:\pic\original\Picture 001.jpg
c:\pic\original\Picture 001.html
And, 500 tiny GIF thumbnails were created by XnView at:
c:\pic\thumb\t_Picture 001.gif
The main index.html file was only a dozen lines long:
c:\pic\web\index.html
Containing the following line:
<frame src="thumb.html">
Which basically pointed to the second HTML file:
c:\pic\web\thumb.html
Which contained the calls to the thumbs and copies of the originals:
<a href="original/Picture%20001.html" target="frame2">
<img src="thumb/t_Picture%20001.gif"
alt="Picture 001.jpg" width="100" height="66"></a>
<div>Picture 001</div>
10. The key point is that XnView, unlike the otherwise venerable IrfanView,
created an IMG SRC image-source tag which contained a relative path
to the desired thumbnails.
11. The only task left was to manually shrink the 500 originals four fold
from 3008 x 2000 pixels to 752 x 500 pixels so that the desired image
fit on a single monitor viewing.
12. So in the "Browser" tab, I clicked on c:\pic\web\original, and,
I pressed "Edit" and then "Select All" to select all 500 copies of
the originals.
13. I then pressed "Tools" & then "Batch Convert" and I then selected the
"Transformations" tab and then I selected "Resize" and then I pressed
the "Add >" button which brought up a bunch of resize options:
Width: 25%
Height: 25%
[x]Keep ratio
Resample: Bilnear
[x]Switch Width and Height to follow orientation
[x]Decrease only
[Go]
14. Unfortunately, I received an error because XnView tried to convert
the HTML files in addition to the JPEG files (huh? why?):
WARNING: Format of the file could not be determined:
c:\pic\web\original\Picture 001.html
15. So I moved all the HTML files in that folder to a temorary directory:
c:\pic\web\original\tmp\Picture 001.html
c:\pic\web\original\tmp\Picture 002.html
...
c:\pic\web\original\tmp\Picture 500.html
16. Unfortunately, when I ran step 13 again, five hundred dialog boxes
came up in series asking me:
The file c:\pic\web\original\Picture 001.jpg already exists!
Do you want to overwrite it?
17. So I went back to the "Batch Convert" dialog from step 13, and
in the "General" tab I changed the option:
FROM:
Overwrite = Ask
TO:
Overwrite = Replace [x]Keep original date/time attributes
18. Unfortunately, this change caused the Batch Convert settings to
forget what we did previously so I repeated step 13, again setting
the size to be one quarter of the original size.
19. I then moved the 500 HTML files in the tmp sub folder back to
the original folder so that for each 25% picture was an HTML file:
c:\pic\web\original\Picture 001.jpg
c:\pic\web\original\Picture 001.html
20. Finally, when I double-clicked on the index.html file:
c:\pic\web\index.html
the thumbnails were all in the left frame and whichever thumbnail
was selected showed the 25% shrunken original in the right pane.

Thank you very much for teaching me how to create thumbnail web pages!
I'm sad that we couldn't get the otherwise venerable IrfanView to create
links to the relative location of the thumbnails; but XxView seems to do
the job quite well so there's no need to fix IrfanView at this point.

Thank you all very much for your help and advice,
barb

 

[Mike Russell]

....

Having failed (as explained in great detail) to create a web page with
thumbnails linked to the original JPEGs using the freeware IrfanView, the
suspected spyware FreshView, the hard-to-install javaware JAlbum, and the

....
Barb - nice going, congratulations for your success, and thanks for going to
the effort of documenting how you did it! This is what this group is all
about.