Short: View directory image contents w IBrowse Author: A. Paabo Uploader: paabo bancom net Type: gfx/misc Version: 1.1 Architecture: m68k-amigaos PROGRAMS USING THE FILES IBrowse optional: ImageFX and Personal Paint MAIN APPLICATION Using IBrowse web browser, view the image contents all-at-once in thumbnail view, of a local directory with images. ADDED NOTES: It is worth noting for web designers, that if you load a local directory that is a mixture of pictures , html texts, and further drawers you will note that the html text files and drawers get their boxes too, but there is an error message since there is no picture. However, these boxes still contain the link information. If you click a box with html text, you will get that html page on screen; and if you click a box with a drawer, you will get IBrowse's 'directory' screen. In the latter case you can run IBrowseCat again to look into this drawer. !.Thus this is not just a one dimensional picture viewer--you can even navigate down into drawers and view html documents as well as pictures. Additional optional scripts: -- IBrowse2IFX.ifx, is an ImageFX script to be launched from ImageFX, which will directly load any local image file that is currently showing on the IBrowse screen. See usage below. --IBrowse2PP.pprx--as above but for use from Personal Paint INSTALLATION Copy IBrowseCat.ibrx anywhere you want to keep IBrowse arexx scripts. Then go to the IBrowse 'Preference-General 'window and select 'Rexx' tab. Add the IBrowseCat.ibrx script to the list, and under 'NAME' enter something like 'View Directory Images'. Click Okay and then select Preferences-SaveSettings to make it stick. The optional IBrowse2IFX.ifx and IBrowse2PP.pprx are to be installed in ImageFX and Personal Paint respectively, and will fetch the current image in IBrowse, after you have selected it from the thumbnails. DESCRIPTION IBrowseCat is designed for viewing local files on your hard drive. Instead of viewing images only one at a time, IBrowseCat , on-the-fly, creates an html script called THUMBNAILS.HTML for the selected directory, which is deposited in Ram: and then automically loaded into IBrowse (IBrowseCat can be used to create permanent thumbnails for huge images. After the thumbnail display is created, you can do a screen-grab and make it into a single-sheet thumbnail file. Or cut it up in a paint program.) Although the advantage of creating a new THUMBNAIL.HTML every time is that it will never get outdated, you may want to create permanent thumbnail scripts for archived (you will not change them) directories. The THUMBNAIL.HTML script can be saved by dragging it onto the hard drive and renaming it. These html scripts can be assembled to create thumbnail folders in html format, complete with menus. In general, because website images and graphics are inherently small, there is no need for permanently thumbnailing already-small images. Thus straight use of IBrowseCat is ideal for viewing the content of website image and graphic directories which normal The additionally supplied ImageFX and Personal Paint scripts are written for these respective systems and commands. Install and launch them from these programs. If there is a local image on the IBrowse screen, it will be loaded. USAGE When IBrowseCat.ibrx is run, it will view the contents of the CURRENT DIRECTORY as visible in the URL line at top. Thus, to begin the browsing you first have to load the desired directory (and get a directory listing) or load any image in the desired directory. IBrowseCat reads the URL, ignoring anything following the last '/', and provides a path name for AmigaDos and Arexx commands to use to do their work. When a list of the files has been created, and html text additions made, the resulting text , called THUMBNAIL.HTML is deposited in Ram. NOTE: if the directory contains files other than pictures supported by your browser, you will still get a box, but there will be an error message. These boxes are still clickable. If you click an html document you will see the document displayed. If you click a drawer you will get the IBrowse directory page, from which you can launch further viewing by going to IIBrowseCat again. NOTE: You may not want to show all the images in a directory (especially if some are huge files--your ram and IBrowse have processing limitations). In that case select 'delay image loading' in IBrowse Prefs, and when the boxes appear, right-click and select 'reload unlined image' of only those ones you want to see. When the display is done, you can save the THUMBNAILS.HTML script by just dragging it out of Ram, and renaming it before you do another one. Why save the script? Well, you may want to create an html folder of all your pictures, which is managed by a menu page. You can also do a screengrab of the IBrowse display if you would like to create a single-sheet thumbnails image file, of cut it up into individual thumbnails---useful if the source images are very large. Additional scripts you can use: IBrowse2IFX.ifx. Launch this from ImageFX. Click the desired thumbnail on the IBrowse screen to get the image url specified in the window at top (plus the full image on screen). Then activate ImageFX, and select this added script from the Arexx button. This script will determine the path of the file from the url and load it into ImageFX. In this way, IBrowseCat.ibrx can be used as thumbnails for loading into ImageFX. IBrowse2PP.pprx , to be lauched from Professional Paint RX button, used in same way for the same reasons. REVISION HISTORY 1.0 --original script 1.1 --modified the script to use 'base ref' so that the script does not have to write the entire path for each line. Added notes to this readme regarding the fact that the boxes for non-images are still clickable for navigation and for showing html documents. Created two supplementary scripts, one for ImageFX and one for Personal Paint, for loading into these programs after using IBrowseCat for thumbnail viewing. CREDITS AND NOTES This script was inspired by three sources: A program called NetCat (see NetCat.lha on Aminet)which also creates an html script for browser use, which scales source images. But it simply gives you an 'index.html' script. You have to store it in the picture directory and load it into your browser as an additional step. IBrowseCat.ibrx selects and loads thru the Ibrowse interface. Also IBrowseCat.ibrx creates the script on the fly, thus it is always fresh--very useful for an active picture directory that is always changing. The manner in which the image files in a directory are listed and sorted is borrowed from a similar requirement in the ImageFX script called CreateNails.ifx where a sorted file list had to be created before the thumbnails were created. Inspiration for doing an IBrowse script is from seeing on the Aminet some IBrowse arexx scripts by S. Forsberg . I am: Andres Pääbo, Box 478, Apsley, Ont. Canada K0L 1AO. Can-705-656-9387 email paabo@bancom.net (Webdesigners: I have also created a PPaint7+ arexx script for animated gif design . See WAD.pprx on Aminet.) -date of this upload August 1998 -------------------------------