WebGalleryMagic

Q: Can I keep the WebGalleries I made before registering?

A: You can. The WebGalleries or the images you made before registering have embedded watermarks. If you have saved the User Settings each time you made a WebGallery or an Archive or compressed images, you can use the Load Settings button to reload each of them and then hit the Make... buton to redo your work. Since the User Settings have all relevant information, your work will be recreated, only without the watermarks.

Q: Can I easily preview a template in more detail before I commit to it?

A: You can. The fastest way is to put only one of the images you want to process into the image list and then try out various template, color, font, size, etc settings. Having only one image in the list will simply speed up the process. When you are satisfied, simply add all desired images into the list and hit Make... Note: the template preview images in the WebGallery Settings Tab do not reflect the color, font or border settings, nor any of the image size settings.

Q: My Help does not start when I hit F1?

A: The hh.exe file may be missing. Please check with Microsoft for more details on what to do depending on your operating system.

Q: In the WebGallery Settings Tab, the template preview is blue, but the WebGallery is of a different color after I generate it?

A: The template preview is just a screen shot meant to indicate roughly the layout of the template. The actual colors depend on your Colors/Fonts settings and can be adjusted by opening the Colors/Fonts dialog ("R").

Q: How do I know that I have the latest WGM version?

A: Compare the Version and Build numbers shown in the Help&Info dialog with the ones here. If there is a newer version available, you can download it right there.

Q: I store all my digital photographs on my hard drive at home. I have to admit that we don't do a lot with them, besides printing them out occasionally, e-mailing them to friends and relatives, and using them as screen savers. Will I do more with your product?

A: There are many ways to use WGM. Here a few ideas: Try using the Archive mode (hit "A") to prepare the photos including thumbnails and reduced-size views for burning onto a CD-ROM. This way you can browse and view the thumbnails first and then look at a larger size view as you go. Also you can write a comment into each picture file easily, for instance if you distribute the CD to your friends. Posting WebGalleries on a website is often more conveniant than sending photos by E-mail. This way, your firends don't need to wait until many Megabytes of data are downloaded by E-mail (especially on a slow connection). If you send them a link to your site, they view all pictures and chose only the ones they want to download.

Q: The line, "Compiled by ..." in the WebGallery pages isn't one I would ever use, but I didn't seem to have access to the text to change it.

A: The best way to change this (and all the other entries) would be to go to e.g. C:\...\WebGalleryMagic\Templates\LeftThumb_TopTitle\pages\Page_Template.htm and just edit the appropriate lines in the HTML page template or make a copy first and then edit it. In this way, every subsequent WebGallery created using the edited template would have the desired appearance. If you make a renamed and edited copy of the template, you can use both the original one and the modified one. Please see the Help file for instructions on how to add new WebGallery templates to WGM.

Q: My goal is to create a gallery on my web site which allows viewers to pursue different paths through the gallery. For example, they might choose to see pictures of me, or pictures of camping, or pictures of Utah. I would like a picture of me camping in Utah to appear in all three paths, without storing the full image multiple times to save storage space. Can I do this with WebGalleryMagic?

A: You can certainly do what you are suggesting, but it will involve a little HTML editing. When you select the Catalog mode in WGM's "WebGallery Settings" Tab, each time you Make a Gallery, WGM creates a new subfolder in your Destination Folder, something like "Utah~021030~Wednesday~170857". All HTML pages and images go there and the appropriate link is added to the catalog page, which is directly in the Destination Folder. You may want to make several trial runs and check out how the files are structured using Explorer. Obviously, all images are generated and stored each time because you may want different sizes, compression quality, etc each time. If you want only one set of images, you'd need to run one set, e.g. "Utah" first. Assume "Utah" is the place where all duplicate images will be. Then run "Camping". In the subfolder for "Camping", locate all page files which have the same name as the image files (e.g. "Me_Camping_1988.htm") and would normally reside in a subfolder named "/Pages". Open each file corresponding to an image you wish to redirect (duplicates) in an editor and change the path in the "<IMG SRC=...>" tag from something like:

<IMG alt = "Me_Camping_1988" src="../images/Bill_Camping_1988.jpg" ....

to something like:

<IMG alt = "Me_Camping_1988" src="../../Utah~021030~Wednesday~170857/images/Me_Camping_1988.jpg" ....

Take care to change paths for all occurences of this particular file name in the .htm file, as the same image may also be referenced in several places. This will redirect the links for the main images. I guess you don't want to do the same for the thumbnails (although you can) because they don't take up much space on the server. Take care to edit for the proper path, depending on the setting of "Folder Options": if it is set to "Files to 3 separate folders", you need to add "/images" to the path, as in the above example. You may have several duplicates but generally not all images will be duplicates. After editing, you can delete the duplicate image files (and only those) from the "Camping" subfolder and leave the folder structure intact. Obviously, you can test the result locally before you upload.