htAlbum Review If you're reading this, you have an internet connection and if you have an internet connection, you can post your own web page. Most people never take advantage of the free personal web pages that their Internet Service Provider (ISP) offers because they don't feel they have anything to post, they don't know how to post and don't have the time to find out. Digital photography can take care of the content. Digital cameras and inexpensive scanners make digital photography available to almost everyone and the web is a perfect place to share them. Now, htAlbum removes the last barrier by making it easy to create and post your pictures. You may want to download htAlbum and follow along. If you want to post your pictures, you should get the FTP posting information from your Internet Service Provider. 9 Screens Creating and posting a web page with htAlbum is simple; just answer questions on 9 different screens that come up one at a time. The first is merely a welcoming screen. Click Next The second screen will ask if you want to post on the internet or not. Select Publish to the Internet; you can change that choice later. Click next. The third screen will ask what folder your pictures are in. Since htAlbum will grab everything in a folder, it's a good idea to create a new folder on your hard drive and put the pictures you want to post in there. In this example, I made a new folder called "htAlbumTest". Screen four is where you give your page a name and a title. The title can be anything you want. For the example, I chose htAlbumTestPage for a title. The easiest way to arrange your web space is to create a different folder for each set of pictures you post. In that case, the name of the page should alway be index.html because that page is automatically read when a browser goes to that folder. For instance, if your web site is www.mysite.com, you can create a subfolder called summervacation. To get to this site, you would type in www.mysite.com/summervacation and it will automatically read an index.html file if it's present. The folders are created when you make a new FTP profile below. For now, name your index filename index.html. Since htAlbum doesn't automatically add an extension, be sure to include the .html. Two other options are: 1) Include picture filename - this just puts the name of the picture next to it on the web page. This is a good idea; it's kind of tough to tell someone to look at picture xyz.jpg on your website if there's no name. 2) Show linked pictures in their own page - this creates a separate web page for each picture. This takes more memory on your web space but some people think it looks nicer. Some think it stops autodownloaders from grabbing all of you pictures but it doesn't; see the Web Vacuum review if you have any question about that. Screen five has the page selection. Here, you specify what your page will look like by selecting the following: 1) Style. Clicking on the down arrow shows the various background choices for your web page. For this example, we'll select simple which is a plain white background. 2) Thumbnail size. Pretty simple; small or large. Small is the usual size and it save memory on your web space. If you only have a few images, you may want to use large. 3) Page size. Click on the down arrow and it shows the sizes of the web page you can create. If you know nothing about screen resolution, 800 x 600 is a safe size. 4) Custom style box - checking this box changes the page style options and allows you to select a background image of your choice and to modify the text colors. To select the background image, click on the button to the right of the background image text box and browse for it on your hard drive. Clicking on the background and text color boxes opens up a color picker where you can set these colors. If you have trouble finding the right color you may want to look at the Pick N Capture review page to see if this utility would be helpful. After you've made your selections, click next. Screen six just asks you to verify the page style and location of your images. Make sure they're correct and click next. A processing box will appear showing you that htAlbum is busy creating your web page. Screen seven will have a check box asking if you want to publish to the internet. If you leave this unchecked, and click next, you will be given the option to view what the web page will look like but it will be a local version meaning it's still on your PC. Select the checkbox and click next. Screen eight will ask for your FTP information. Novices may find this confusing when they first set up FTP information but it's really very simple. You'll have to call your Internet Service provider to activate your personal web page so be sure to as about FTP at the same time. I'd give you exact advice on this but it's different for each Internet Service Provider. This is what I can tell you: 1) Profile: this is just a name you choose and is just a reference for you. It can be any name you want. 2) FTP Server: The internet service provider you're using. Call them and they can give specifics. 3) User name and Password: Double check with your Internet Service Provider. 4) Save password: You will be prompted for your password everytime you want to post a page if this is left unchecked. 5) Remote directory: You can create your own folders in your web space but you have to know where your base or root directory is. Talk to your Internet Service Provider to find that out. Afterwards, you can create new directories to keep you picture pages separate and allow you to call your page index.html as mentioned above. Click on the button to the right of the "Remote Directory" text box and it will show you the directory structure of your web page. Use the standard windows folder icons to create a new folder or move up a level in the directory tree. One little tip; when naming pictures, files or folders for the internet, DON'T USE SPACES. They can cause problems. So if you want to create a folder for your pictures called "Summer Vacation", rename it "SummerVacation or Summer_Vacation". 6) Web URL: This is the internet address that the picture page will be at. If your web space is www.myISP.com/users/myname and you create a directory called summerVacationPictures in the Remote Directory step, the URL would be www.myISP.com/users/myname/summerVacationPictures. 7) Image quality: This option allows you to shrink the memory and physical size of you pictures. Smaller pictures take up less space and take less time to download. The slider on the left will reduce the memory size of your images but will reduce the image quality as well. The menu on the right will allow you to reduce the memory size of your images by reducing the physical size of your images. Try a few combinations to see what works best for you. 8) After the profile is created, you will only have to change the remote directory when posting new pages to your web site. Clicking next will publish your page to the internet; a box will open to show the progress. This may take a few minutes depending on the size of your page. The last screen will ask if you want to view the web page. Selecting the box and clicking next will open your browser and bring you to the page of your new page. You're all done! If you have all of the FTP information from your ISP, this entire process will take about five minutes. I created a sample page using a few scenic pictures I took with a digital camera. Unlike the sample, your pages will have an active link to the publisher. Conclusion and Registration. As you can see, htAlbum is a very simple program. Novice and experience webmasters alike can use this program to quickly create thumbnail based digital image pages. Novice users may also find this program to be a great introduction to creating web pages and eventually want to try a more full featured web page creation tool like Web Effects. The low registration cost of $19.95 makes it an even more attractive offer. Download and try htAlbum for 30 days. If you like it, register it through the "Buy Now" button that appears when the program starts and clicking the "Buy Now" button in the next screen that starts the built in software delivery wizard - The Genie - News || Reviews || Utilities || Home/Office || Web Tools || Web Utils || Graphics || Security || Games || Other Categories || Program List || FAQ || Forum || About Us || Contact Us || Home Strategy Games || Action Games || Puzzle Games || Card Games ||