Organizing Pictures with Thumbnails in C#.NET

Generating QR Code JIS X 0510 in C#.NET Organizing Pictures with Thumbnails

To minimize download time for large pictures, it s common practice to display a small preview picture (a thumbnail) on the Web page a visitor would first encounter, and display the full-size picture only if the visitor clicks the thumbnail. This gives the Web visitor the choice of whether to view a larger file, without having to wait to download it first. Thumbnails are very popular on Web pages that display a series of pictures the Web visitor can select because:

The thumbnails download much faster than the full-sized pictures. The thumbnails present more options at a glance than are possible with full-sized

pictures. The next section describes the FrontPage AutoThumbnail feature, which creates thumbnail pictures one at a time. FrontPage also includes a Photo Gallery feature, which organizes an entire set of pictures into a scrollable, clickable list of thumbnails that displays one full-sized picture at a time.

For more information about using FrontPage Photo Galleries, refer to Using FrontPage Photo Galleries, on page 655. 10

The FrontPage AutoThumbnail feature creates one thumbnail picture at a time. Here s the procedure for using it:

1 Open the Web page on which you want to display the thumbnail. 2 Set the insertion point where you want the thumbnail to appear. 3 Using any method you want, insert the full-sized picture where you want its

following places:

The Tools menu. The Pictures toolbar. (If the Pictures toolbar isn t visible, choose Toolbars from

the View menu, and then choose Pictures.)

In one operation, FrontPage removes the large picture, creates the thumbnail in its place, and sets up a hyperlink from the thumbnail to the large picture.

Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out Tip To create a linked thumbnail in one operation, use the right mouse button to drag any picture file from the Folder List to an open Web page. Then when you release the mouse button, choose Auto Thumbnail from the shortcut menu.

5 Use the thumbnail s handles to resize it if desired. 6 When you save the Web page, FrontPage displays a Save Embedded Files dialog box to

prompt for the thumbnail s file name and location. By default, FrontPage names the thumbnail by appending _small to the original base file name.

For more information about using the Save Embedded Files dialog box, refer to Using the Save Embedded Files Dialog Box, earlier in this chapter.

Figure 10-21 shows typical results from using the AutoThumbnail feature. Clicking the small picture in the background page displays the large picture shown in the foreground page.

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Figure 10-21. Clicking the thumbnail picture in the background Web page displays the full-sized picture in the foreground.

Double-clicking a thumbnail picture in Design view (or right-clicking it and choosing Picture Properties from the shortcut menu) displays the properties of the thumbnail and not the properties of the original picture.

For more information about configuring page options, refer to 46, Configuring Page Creation Options.

As you might have noticed, the preceding discussion made no mention of the thumbnail picture s size and appearance. That s because FrontPage assumes you want all the thumbnails you create to look the same. (Surely you wouldn t want them all to look different, would you ) To specify the default size and appearance of all thumbnails you create, choose Page Options from the Tools menu, and click the AutoThumbnail tab, as shown in Figure 10-22.

Figure 10-22. This tab in the Page Options dialog box controls how FrontPage creates thumbnail pictures.

This tab provides the following settings:

Controls the size of the thumbnail pictures. You should specify both a sizing strategy and a measurement. The sizing options are as follows: