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[ Thumbnail Browser Reference ]

The Thumbnail Browser lets visitors to your page view a collection of images using thumbnail images to navigate.

Dynamic Tools files created within your website:

  • The /images/.imagecache/ directory contains small versions of your pictures

Template files used by this Dynamic Tool

  • thumb.html - Displays a thumbnailed image gallery.

Options available:

  • ID - have multiple independent Thumbnail Browser galleries.
  • COLS - change the number of columns in the Thumbnail Browser.

Thumbnail Browser setup

Put your image files into a new directory called /images and use the following HTML hyperlink to link to your thumbnail browser:

<P>
<A HREF="/zisp/thumbnail">Click Here</A> to see my holiday snaps.
</P>

The thumbnails will be created the first time you look at the page and and then saved for later use.


Updating your Thumbnail Browser gallery

If you want to refresh the thumbnail view of an image (perhaps you've updated the image that it points at), you simply delete the old thumbnail by removing the relevant file in the /images/.imagecache directory. It is the one that starts with the filename of the image which you want to update.

Customising your Thumbnail Browser's appearance.

The Thumbnail Browser Dynamic Tool uses a template file to generate the pages your visitors see.

If you haven't already done so, you might like to a quick look at the Templates Reference page in this documentation.

Template files should be stored on your website, in a folder called "easyzisp".

The thumb.html template

The default template contains a the special tag "<!--TABLE OF IMAGES-->".

This tag is replaced by a table of the thumbnailed images when the page is viewed.


Using multiple Thumbnail Browsers.

You can have lots of different Browsers for lots of different galleries. You can do this by giving each separate thumbnail browser its own "ID".

An example, using ID 42, is shown.

<A HREF="/zisp/thumbnail?ID=42">Click Here</A> to see pictures of my friends at my birthday party.

... points to the image gallery with ID '42'. The images are stored in the directory /images42/ which must be created by you in the document root of your website. The optional template file used is thumb42.html, which should exist in your local templates directory. Your ISP should provide details of how to create files and directories in your website.


Changing the number of columns in the Thumbnail Browser table.

The number of columns in the table generated by the Thumbnail Browser Dynamic Tool is 6 by default, but can be changed easily on the fly, using the COLS option. To get 10 columns of images for the previous example, use:

<A HREF="/zisp/thumbnail?ID=42&COLS=10">Click Here</A> to see pictures of my friends at my birthday party.