Instructions for the new photo album viewer

Basics:

The new viewer is written in Macromedia Flash, a programming language geared for cool multimedia features. When the viewer first loads it will show you a list of events, if there is more than one. Select the one you want. You can select pictures from the thumbnails or use the left and right arrow keys. If you press the center arrow it will start the slide show mode and you can just let it go. Just hit your browsers' back button, or the back button in the viewer to end the show.

Viewing Area:

Depending on where you mouse cursor was when the show started, you may see a pop-out sidebar on the left-hand side. There is more information on this sidebar below but for now, if you want it to go away, move you cursor off the viewing area.

The viewer is made up of the main viewing area, a control bar just below the viewing area, and a row of thumbnails below that. On the left of the viewing area will be the pop-out mentioned above (may not be on all albums). On the right upper corner is a back button to return to the home page.

Control Bar:

The control bar has several elements.

Starting from the left . . . Click this to show the events contained in the album. If there is more than one event they will be displayed below the main category. If there is an arrow next to the event name in the button, it means there is sub-event below it.

The next element is the pan/zoom feature, click it to get a sub-bar of controls. Use + - to zoom, the arrows to move, and the reset to get back to normal. If you zoom larger than the viewer screen, you can use your mouse to drag around. Hit the pan/zoom control again to hide the control.

The question mark opens the help screen. Not all items shown in help may be available on the control bar.

The magnifying glass is a search feature that will let you put in certain key words and images and it will seek out any images that contain that information. More on that later.

The middle controls start and stop the slide show, adjust timing and, manually scroll through the images. When the slide show is running, the box to the right will control the time interval. Adjust the arrows to the desired time and hit the little clock icon to set the new time. Place your cursor over the two bars and watch the pop-up timer give you a countdown.

To the far right is the icon for the shopping cart. If you want a copy of the image being displayed, click on the cart and then the "add to cart" button. Click the cart again to close it and continue looking, without loosing the contents of you cart. More on the shopping cart in Help & Support and Ordering Info.

The bouncing bars are for the MP3 player. There is not too much in there right now but there are controls to start/stop, change tracks and, adjust volume. Click on the bars to open and close the controls.

Thumbnails:

The thumbnails are below the control bar. You can go directly to any image by clicking on it. If you let you cursor rest on a thumbnail, it's file name and size will scroll by. Placing your cursor on the left or right-most thumbnail will scroll the thumbs. Or use slider below the thumbs by dragging it or click the slider track to pop it into that position.

Sidebar:

Some albums may have a pop-out sidebar. Placing your cursor on the viewing area will activate it. Some of the information that may be in the sidebar include an "x" out of "y" number scale, the date the album was built and the file name.

The main section may have some descriptive text and some keyword tags, used for the search feature. The bottom box contains exif/iptc information. Exif is data taken from the camera when the photo was taken including the date, type of equipment, exposure settings, etc. This is a small part of the total exif data available but is enough for photography fans to know how the picture was taken. IPTC is data that is added to the file and is transmitted with the file. Think of it as a sticky-note for pictures.

Search:

The magnifying glass in the control bar will pop up a box that will allow you to enter certain keywords to select images. Right now this is a work-in-progress so we haven't completely decided what information to include in the search. As simple search might include your school name, a date, or a category. Another example would be if you wanted to tell a friend about a particular picture, you could give them the file name and they would put it in the search box to find it.