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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Album GV 1.7

               Album Generator and Viewer for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/00
                                    XYDot
                             Last Freeware Version    
                                 Version 1.7
                                 August 2001


Renate Schaaf
renates@xmission.com
http://www.xydot.com/
(Check this URL for latest versions)

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*New in 1.7:*
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Enhancements:

When you make an album CD, it now contains a frontend menu which runs in autoplay. Users can see all the albums stored on the CD and easily pick one to view. Couldn't resist making the CD-menu an irregular form looking like a digital camera... There's help for the CD album viewer now.

Added more customization options for the web album, explore the items in the wizard. You now have the option to have album copy your original jpeg files into the web folder, in case you've optimized those manually, already. This will work if "Show original size" has been checked under layout options. You can also optionally have images in the web-album sharpened, in case they have been downsized from your originals. (I'm putting too much stuff into the last freeware :)

Thumbnails can optionally be stored on your hard disk for fast reloading of albums. It goes somewhat against my philosophy, but it sure is faster :). At least you have total control over where and when and if at all the thumbnails are stored. Also, if you find they are taking up too much space, just delete a bunch of them, and album will recreate as needed for the next albums shown. Works kind of like a web file cache.

Images can be shown with transitions. If turned on, a random transition is being picked each time. For customization, wait for the shareware version.

Added possibility to print an image with its description. Nothing impressive, but comes in handy. For better print support, wait for the shareware version.

For more add-ons browse through the menu to see what's new, or explore the (now updated) help file. There have been a few cosmetic changes, too, which make the program look more consistent, I hope, but more work is needed there. Also, I've reworked the whole layout routine for album/web-album.

Contains a new version of the Intel(R) Jpeg library. Now loading and saving of Jpegs is automatically performance optimized for your system.

Changes:

When you add pictures to an album, they will be inserted right after the currently selected one instead of at the bottom, this helps saving some resorting work, I hope.

Bug fixes:

The 'file not found' error when starting to build a web album should be fixed now.
You can now use the letter 'a' when typing in an album title, even in the light table view.
The thumbnails in the web-album should load faster now, since I've fixed an error assigning the wrong size to the images.

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*User Feedback*
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As usual: I'm extremely grateful for bug reports. My users are great, when they report a bug, it usually really is one! Also, as usual, feature requests are most welcome. Most of the enhancements you might have seen over time are the result of those requests!

At this time I have a special request: Very rarely and irregularly I get an access violation on exiting album. These are very hard to debug. Once I have a reproducible scenario under which it happens, I can probably fix the bug. So: If you can produce this (or any) bug reliably, please, tell me how, thanks!
 
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*Introduction*
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Now that you have all these digital pictures on your harddisks and CDRoms, maybe you would like to have a way to show them to friends and family like you used to show a scrapbook or photo album: Page by page on a nice background with photo descriptions, so the pictures can actually tell a story. Maybe you'd also like to show those albums on your web site or make album CDs from them for sharing your pictures. The program Album tries to help you achieve this in a way involving a minimal amount of hassle, but with a pleasant looking result. My design philosophy is, to sacrifice customizability for ease and speed of use. I'm trying to second guess user needs wherever possible. If you have ideas to improve on this feature, or other ideas, I'd be interested to learn about them.

The program is free, because it's the first thing I release to a wider range of people, originally having been written for my own use, then improved for friends and family. I release it, because I think for its usefulness and the work involved writing it, it should be used by more.  Future, more professional versions might be released as shareware, actually I perceive this one as my last freeware version, right now. For now, make sure you read the item "Copyright, Pricing, License, Liability" at the bottom of the text. With the first use of the program you accept all this.

The following items describe what the application can do. To learn more about how to make it do this, use the online help, or (that's what I'd prefer:) just explore. I sure hope you enjoy using Album!

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*Installation*
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After unzipping, run the setup program.
If you have a previous version installed, it is recommended that you uninstall it first, using the Add/Remove Programs item in Control Panel.

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*Supported file formats*
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The picture formats that Album can read are
*.jpg; *.jpeg; *.bmp; *.emf; *.wmf; *.tif; *.tga; *.psd; *.png; *.cut; *.cel; *.pic;  *.eps; *.pcd; *.pcx; *.pcc; *.ppm; *.pgm; *.pbm; *.pdd; *.rla; *.rpf; *.bw; *.rgb(a); *.sgi; *.tga; *.vst; *.isb; *.vda; *.win; *.tiff.
Thanks to Mike Lischke for providing support for that many file formats! Well, some of those are real oldies :), but the only one really missing is *.gif. I could add *.gif support in a blink of an eye, but I'd have to pay a (rather substantial) license fee to Unisys for using a patented compression algorithm. Same applies to some compressed *.tifs.

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*Creating an Album*
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You can mark picture files on your computer to be included in an album. In the menu choose File|Create New Album. You can browse and select a group of pictures from one folder. The pictures will then be displayed in a light table format, where you can

>sort them for display order

>add descriptions

>remove/replace individual pictures

>send individual pictures to a photo editor already installed on your system

>add more pictures, also from different folders

>choose title and description fonts

>choose background color or - bitmap and font colors

You can save collections into files which have the extension *.alb.
Note: Only the display options, the locations of the pictures, their order and the descriptions are saved. No new picture files are created, and your original picture files are not changed (unless you do it yourself by sending them to an editor, of course). Under preferences, you can choose whether to store the picture file paths as absolute (starting from the drive letter) or relative to the location of the *.alb file. The latter is more flexible in case you move your pictures together with the *.alb file to a CD, for example. 


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*Viewing an Album*
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There are 2 main views: Sequence and Light Table. Show your finished album in the Sequence view. The menu item View|Sequence takes you there, or loading an album from disk does it automatically. You can then show the pictures in their order with descriptions. In the default layout, they will be displayed with a thumbnail list of all pictures to the left, and each individual picture size formatted so it and its description fit optimally on the rest of the page. You don't have to worry about what the pixel dimension of the original image is.

Using either keyboard or mouse, you can turn the pages. Or you click on one of the thumbnails to view its big brother. An AutoShow view has a timer turn the pages for you.
Display of the thumbnails can be turned off.

Whenever Album can't find or read a picture (because you have moved it elsewhere, say), it displays a white background with a black cross. You can right click on the picture, pick the menu item "Replace" and browse for the correct one.

Under the default setting, when loading an album, it might take some time in the beginning to load the pictures from disk and to make thumbnails from them. But you can now turn on an option to save them to your hard disk as they are created. It goes a bit against my philosophy, because I don't like applications myself that use my disk space without me noticing. To make up for this, the way the thumbs are stored is absolutely transparent, you choose a folder, and album will still work if you delete a bunch of thumbs in that folder to make room. Also, album can erase the folder contents for you when you turn the option off. (So use a dedicated folder, and turn the option off before you uninstall Album GV for good, the latter of course you never will :)


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*Changing an Album*
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Existing albums can be edited much in the same way as you originally created them. Load an album, and choose View|Light Table. Use the Edit|Add Pictures menu to add pictures. You can toggle back and forth between the light table view and the sequence view. Descriptions, title, font, colors can also be changed in the sequence view. Just click on the text to make it editable. Right click on the text to change fonts, colors.


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*Saving as Web Album*
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Yes, you can save your whole album layout to a (collection of) webpage(s) , which can show your pictures in a very similar way in a browser.
Invoke  File|Web-Album Wizard  while viewing an album as a sequence. A little wizard guides you through the steps involved, and a collection of html and picture files is created which show up in a browser in the same size and layout as in your album (as closely as I could get it). This time album creates new pictures in Jpeg format, because for the web, they need to be size optimized. It creates a main html file and a folder containing all the images and album pages needed for viewing. Upload all this to your web site, link to the main html-file, and you can share the album over the web.

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*Making an Album-CD*
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You can now easily make a distributable CD showing one (or more) of your albums. The menu item  File|Album-CD Wizard  opens a little wizard which collects all files necessary for burning the CD in a folder on your desktop, based on which *.alb files you choose for inclusion. A viewer front end program is included on the CD. This will run in autoplay mode, and shows a list of all the albums stored on the CD, so the user can easily pick which one to view. When run off the viewer front end, Album.exe has all the editing stuff disabled and acts as a viewer only. This hopefully makes it minimally intimidating for only casual computer users.

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*Associating Album to *.alb files*
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Using the  View|Folder Options|File Types  menu of any folder, you can associate all *.alb files with Album.exe. Double clicking on an album file will then bring up the album viewer. Note: I hate it when programs do this automatically, in particular, if they overwrite an existing association. So I'm leaving it up to you.


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*Trouble Shooting*
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See the item in help now.

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*Performance*
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This item is no longer needed, thanks to Intel releasing an updated version of their Jpeg-library. Your processor is now automatically detected, and Jpeg loading and saving is as fast as possible on your system.


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*Resources used (thanks!)*
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written in Delphi 5 (Borland)
GraphicEx library by Mike Lischke, to be able to support more file types. Thanks for a superb (and free for freeware) tool.
Lots and lots of how-to's on Earl Glynn's site www.efg2.com
Intel Jpeg library for fast Jpeg loading and saving (also provided free to developers)
IO unit for above by David Taylor
Component by Brad Stowers to automatically update version no. in About
JCL library by the JEDI knights
TShellTree component by J.P. Stotz, free for freeware, great, thanks.
Borland Newsgroupies, thanks guys.
(all trademarks mentioned are trademarks of whoever they belong to...)

__________________________
*Very Special Thanks to: *
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Klaus: For requesting most of the features which now make this program so easy to learn and fast to use.

J.W. Vraets: A user like you who spent quite a bit of time on pointing out limitations originating from sub-optimal use of resources, a bug reading 8bit Jpegs, and making great suggestions for better usability/feedback.

All other users who have sent me bug reports, feature requests and feedback. There are too many to list them all, but you should know that your input is much appreciated. This is the kind of thing that makes it worthwhile for me to keep enhancing the program.
 

___________________________________________
**Copyright, Pricing, License, Liability**
___________________________________________

© 1999-2001 Renate Schaaf

Use of the program 'Album Generator and Viewer' (album.exe) is free.
You are allowed to share the program with friends, as long as you leave the original distribution intact, but in no way is anyone allowed to directly or indirectly charge money for it or its use or its distribution.

THE AUTHOR IS IN NO WAY LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE USE, INSTALLATION, OR FAILURE TO PERFORM OR UNSUITABILITY TO A SPECIFIC TASK OF THE PROGRAM 'ALBUM GENERATOR AND VIEWER (ALBUM.EXE)'. IN OTHER WORDS,THE AUTHOR IS NOT LIABLE FOR **ANYTHING**. IN PARTICULAR, THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT PUBLISHED ON THE INTERNET BY THE USE OF THE PROGRAM.

(grin)
I've recently learned, this needs to be all caps in order to be legally valid. Legal stuff is so funny. Don't worry, there's no way this program is going to reformat your hard drive.

_______________________________
*Supporting Album Development*
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If you feel like you want to contribute to the further development of this program, you can do so by sending $15 to my account at www.paypal.com, using my e-mail address renates@xmission.com. If you do so, also send me an email whether you would like to be notified of updates. Any contribution is of course completely voluntary, and only meant as a sign of appreciation for the not unsubstantial amount of time spent on the improvement of this software. Contributors will be able to register a future shareware version of the program at no extra cost. This is not a 100% promise though that there actually *will* be a shareware version, but it has climbed to, say 92.7% right now :)


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*What's new* (Now consolidated for major version numbers)
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1.5 - 1.6
Enhancements:
Now comes with a wizard for easy making of distributable CDs containing one or more of your albums. Just pick which albums to include, and the wizard will collect all files necessary for burning the CD in a folder on your desktop. If autoplayed, the CD will show the first album in your list. If you include more than one album, those can be shown off the right click menu of the CD.
Added a command line option '/v' which turns Album.exe into a (hopefully) completely foolproof viewer with all the editing/saving options disabled. This is the mode in which album will run off a CD in autoplay, so even the most computer illiterate person should not be scared by it. Making a help file for this mode is still on the ToDo, though. Also, as usual, suggestions for improvement are welcome.
There's now an option to make prettier (but slower) thumbnails. Thumbnails for CD or Web-album are stored "pretty" now. 
Bug fix:
All of a sudden album was giving me an AV on startup, hope I was the only one affected, but it is fixed now.
Pictures locations in root directories were not stored correctly, fixed now.

1.5.0.1 - 1.5.0.3:
I've been working on 3 wish lists.

Enhancements:
When in the light table view, you can now bring up a real viewer for your pictures, with zoom options etc.. The keyboard shortcut for it is now 'Enter', so you can do keyboard-only navigation using the arrow-keys, then hit Enter for viewing, use other shortcuts for description etc... I like it :)
When picking image files, you can now also preview them in large size instead of just in the thumbnail.
You can now rotate/flip pictures and save them (as .bmp or .jpg only). (Cropping etc. and faster performance might be next... in the shareware version:)
Added another stretch option, for the poor Win9* users for which Smooth Windows Stretch doesn't work.
The web-album wizard has an additional page on which you can specify names for the html- and picture files different from the default. To make the name choosing easy, your album can display the page whose web-names you want to change. In case you put blanks into the names, album hopefully takes care of referencing them correctly now.
When you type an URL or an e-mail address into any description, it gets turned into a link in the web-album. (Not in the local one, so far, needs much more work, and I need to leave some things for the shareware version :).

Bug fix:
Multi-line titles are now supported and center correctly.

1.4 - 1.5:
Speed up:
Substantial improvement in the speed of loading and saving large album files. The load time it takes now, is really only due to making the thumbnails. (And this bit I had sped up already to what I see as the max.) Light table is drawn faster. Because of that the display had a chance to be prettied.

Enhancements:
More options for picture frames: Lowered or raised bevel and drop shadow. The shadow has not made it into the web-album so far, I still need to figure out, how.
Web album creation is now done with a wizard which guides you step by step. You can also now interactively pick which of your own html-files should show up on the back-link of your album. The light table view looks more like the "real thing", with slide frames around the pictures. The picture file picker shows a better directory tree which is expandable/collapsable and lets you browse for your image folders more easily. The files in the file list show their icons now. You can now already use the album while it loads pictures.

Bugs Fixed:
File names with blanks and folder names with dots are being avoided for the web album now, because of some servers having problems with those. Album's temp folders are really scratched and don't clutter your recyling bin. Fixed memory leak occuring with textured backgrounds. Custum background loaded from file now is being remembered, sorry. Generally fixed display glitches.

Changes:
When I used Album, I was moving the picture accidentally way too often. So I changed the way pictures can be moved from their default location: Now you have to hold down the shift key while dragging with the mouse.

1.3-1.4:
Fixed bugs and glitches, probably introduced some new ones, sigh.

Generally spiffed up the display. Texts cast shadows and are thus (hopefully) easier to read. More. See it. Tell me if you don't like it.

Scrollbars show when needed. It was a major pain to keep the thumbs scroller and the turn buttons in place when scrolling, without causing flicker.

Scrollbars for the thumb scroller can be hidden, and panning can be used instead to scroll. Makes for a nice "flat" look, I think.

Completely reworked the thumbnail making and loading of .bmp files. Any (reasonable) pixel size of .jpg's and .bmp's should now get loaded. But loading those huge images (larger than 2000x2000 or so) is of course not fast, but it's as fast as I've seen others load them.

Added menu item File|Reopen, which gives a list of recently opened files.

Added option to display images using a fixed height or width. Can be good for webpages.

In Autoshow, time units can optionally be set to milliseconds. If you've shot that fast series of your pet playing, and you want to see it quasi movie like.

Added a picture preview to the image file picker.


1.2-1.3
Fixed bugs.

Added 'Import another album', so you can add pictures/descriptions from an already existing album.

The copyright info can now be set on a per picture basis.

Added "Auto Show" view, for slide show like display.

Added menu item 'General Preferences|Optimization|Use Pentium CPU optimization. Can be used if you have a pentium, to speed up jpeg loading/saving.

Added more frequent updates of the display for better feedback.

Reduced amount of resources used. It now loads 800 jpegs for me under Win98. This required a major rework of the thumb display.

Under Win98/95/ME, thumbs in the scrollbox could "wrap around" if there were too many, due to 16 Bit limit in the GDI. Should be fixed now. Please tell me, if the error still occurs.

Added option to change lighttable/thumbscroller background color.

Album files can now be larger than 64K (that was the limit under Win9* before)

Added customizable thumb size.

Added option to display pictures in original pixel size.

Load counter for album opening and creating.

Thanks to J.W. Vraets I was made aware of 2 rather showstopping bugs:
1) Jpegs having 8 bit format weren't read correctly
2) The program reacted very unappropriately to an out of resources condition.
Should both be fixed now.

Added 'Smooth Windows Stretch' to the resizing options. Note, it gives no effect under Win98 (a bug). This is still fast, but takes care of straight edges in pictures a little better than Default Windows Stretch. The penalty, images display a little 'flatter'.

Added a menuitem to the local picture-menu which saves the current picture as bmp or jpg, optionally with a new size and new location. Note that when you a) have a .bmp already, b) specify a new size and c) not a new filename or location, then the original picture gets overwritten.

Setting the wallpaper includes an option to make the desktop icon text box transparent, so the wallpaper shines through. Take it as a gadget right now, the effect will be gone as soon as you restart windows or change any desktop properties. A little utility "Trans.exe" can be used to set transparency from the start menu.

From 1.1 to 1.2:
Fixed bugs.

Made the web album resemble the local album more. (Note that this is not entirely possible because of the nature of how a browser interpretes tables and fonts.)

Added textured backgrounds. You can choose from predefined ones or load your own bitmap.

Added option to draw a frame around pictures. This way they resemble old fashioned photos with a white frame.

Added limited customizability for the layout of individual pictures by allowing pictures to be moved on a page.

You can now set a picture in an album as desktop wallpaper. The routine uses high quality resampling of your image for optimal effect, there are several options to choose from.

Album now automatically updates an image after it has been sent to and saved in an image editor.

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