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Frequently Asked Questions

A list of the questions:


Q

Can I use Spotlight searching to find my WebPics documents?

A

If you are using Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger or later) and WebPics 2.7 (or later) you can use Spotlight searching to find your WebPics documents. The text from the title, descriptions, captions and copyright are searched.

A couple important details:

  • The WebPics documents must be save with WebPics 2.7 (or later). If you have existing documents you want to be able search, then open them with WebPics 2.7 and select Save As to update them. Starting in 2.7 the WebPics document format has been optimized to allow for fast Spotlight searching (actually indexing). The previous document format was too time consuming to use with Spotlight.
  • The Spotlight importer plugin for WebPics documents is in the WebPics application bundle. It will be located by Spotlight if the WebPics application is placed in the Applications folder. This seems to work much better in 10.4.2 so it is recommended that you get the latest update to 10.4 that is available.
 

Q

Can I use WebPics to make web pages from my photos in iPhoto?

A

If you are using iPhoto 2.0 (or later) and WebPics 2.6 (or later) you can access your iPhoto albums from inside WebPics. Click the iPhoto button in the lower right corner of the Pictures tab. Click here for more details.

If you are running an older version of iPhoto the easiest way to do this is click here and download the 'Send to WebPics' script. Position it someplace convenient on your desktop. Run iPhoto, select the photos you want to use in WebPics and drag and drop them on the 'Send to WebPics' icon. WebPics will be started and your photos will be automatically added to the picture list.

A few important details:

  • The Send to WebPics script assumes that your WebPics application is named exactly 'WebPics'.
  • iPhoto has a great Undo feature - but it does not save your changes (such as rotation) to the picture files as long a the change can be undone. So if you rotate a file and then send it to WebPics (or anywhere else) you will get a photo that has not been rotated. The only way to force iPhoto to update the picture files is to quit iPhoto and restart it. Hopefully they will address this short coming in a future release.
  • Make sure and grab a copy of the AppleScripts for iPhoto that Apple has posted here. They are lots of fun.
 

Q

My changes do not show up after rebuilding my web pages - what happened?

A

Some browsers need to have the page reloaded to show the changes (depending on how your have their preferences set for caching). In Internet Explorer you can hold down the option key while clicking on the Reload button to cause a complete reload. If all else fails, quit the browser and restart it (this should not be necessary).
 

Q

I have a new 4 mega pixel digital camera and WebPics does not seem to work with the pictures I have taken with it. Why is this?

A

Lucky you! Picture files from 4 mega pixel cameras are really big - often more than 800k bytes. When using WebPics with Mac OS 9 you need to increase the memory size for WebPics to handle these large pictures files. Click on the WebPics icon in the Finder and choose Get Info from the File menu - select the Memory item in the sub menu that appears. Change the 'Preferred Size' to 10000. Now WebPics will handle your pictures just fine.

Alternatively you can run WebPics in Mac OS X and it will get all of the memory it needs without any problem. Or of course you could send your 4 mega pixel camera to me and I will send you my 2 mega pixel camera ;)

 

Q

Can I hand edit the web pages that are generated by WebPics?

A

Sure, with one reservation. If you make changes to the WebPics document and then rebuild the web page your edits in the HTML code will be over written. To be safe you should save a copy of the edited HTML file with a different name (WebPics will not disturb it). The one exception to this is the 'thumbs' folder. WebPics creates this folder and you should not store any files in it.
 

Q

I am having problems using the 'FTP to web site' feature in the Output tab. Any suggestions?

A

The FTP feature in WebPics was completely rewritten for release 2.5.2. If you are having problems make sure you have this version or newer. If you are still having problems make sure you read the documentation section for the FTP feature here.

 

Q

Can I use WebPics with Image Capture on Mac OS X?

A

Yes. Select 'Other...' in the 'Automatic Task' popup in the Image Capture window. Choose WebPics. Now when you download pictures from your camera WebPics will be started, a new document will be created and the pictures will be added to the picture list.

 

Q

Can I use some small pictures in place of the previous, next and return to gallery text links?

A

Yes - but there is not a specific place in the WebPics window to add the pictures. This is a good place to use the HTML quoting feature of WebPics.

Go to the Text options tab. Copy the following HTML code and then use the 'Paste Quoted' item in the Edit menu to paste it into the Previous picture link field.

<img src="../misc/prev.gif" border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="previous picture">

The Paste Quoted command will put the necessary characters « and » around the text. Here is what this HTML code says:

  • Instead of a text link we will have an picture (image)
  • In this case the picture file is named 'prev.gif' and is located in a folder called 'misc' that is located in the main folder for our web pages (same place as index.html)
  • No border on the picture (border=0)
  • A small amount of space around the picture (hspace="4" vspace="4")
  • If the browser cannot show images (most can) or the user has images turned off the text "previous picture" (alt="previous picture") will be displayed

Make your web page and then add a folder called 'misc' to the output folder. Inside the 'misc' folder put a picture file called 'prev.gif'. You can experiment with the border, hspace, vspace and alt parts of the HTML to get different results.

Now launch your web page (Launch Web Page in the File menu) and click on one of the thumbnails. You should see your picture file (prev.gif) in place of the 'previous picture' link - clicking on the it will work the same as clicking on the text link.

You can use the same steps to replace any of the link text fields with a picture. For more details about the HTML quoting feature see here.

 

Q

Can I put the web pages made by WebPics on my iTools iDisk?

A

Yes! The first step is to open your iDisk (make it show up on your desktop).
  • From the Apple web site, click on the iTools tab, then the iDisk picture, and finally click on the 'Open Your iDisk' button.
  • If you're using Mac OS X, you can choose iDisk from the Finder's Go menu. You can also access your iDisk folders directly from any file open or save dialog box.
  • If you cannot remember your iTools password go to the iTools section on the Apple web site and click on the help button. There you will find information about changing your password (you cannot just get your old password, but you can change it to something you will remember).
Now comes the easy part. When building your web pages in WebPics (see here for complete details), make a folder in the 'Sites' folder in your iDisk. WebPics will create your web pages in this folder and they will be on your iDisk.

Okay, now I have my web pages on my iDisk how do I see them in a web browser? The address (URL) for the web page will be:

http://homepage.mac.com/'username'/'foldername'/


where you replace 'username' with your iTools user name and 'foldername' with the name of the folder that you created when building your web page in WebPics. For example, if your iTools user name is 'splons' and the folder was called 'sample1' the URL would be: http://homepage.mac.com/splons/sample1/ (take a look).

To disconnect, drag your iDisk icon to the Trash.
 

Q

Can I setup my own default values for the various settings in WebPics?

A

Yes, WebPics has a feature where you can setup the 'starting point' for any new documents that are created. Simply create a WebPics document that has all of your desired settings and then choose 'Save Starting Point...' in the File menu. Now all of your settings (except pictures in the list) will be saved and used whenever you create a new WebPics document. See here for details.

Alternatively, you can setup a document to have all of the settings you always use and then save it as stationery. Save a document with your desired settings and then select it in the Finder and choose Get Info in the File menu. In the info window turn on the 'Stationery Pad' checkbox. Now when you double-click this document the Finder makes a quick copy of the document and then asks WebPics to open the copy.
 

Q

The thumbnail picture for a QuickTime movie that I added to my web page is garbled. How can I fix this?

A

WebPics uses the 'poster' frame from a movie for the thumbnail picture. Sometimes a movie does not have a poster frame (and unfortunately there is no way for WebPics to figure this out). To fix this, open the movie in Movie Player, select Set Poster Frame from the Movie menu and then Save from the File menu. When you add the movie to you WebPics document it will have a good thumbnail.
 

Q

Is there a 'Carbonized' version of WebPics to run under Mac OS X?

A

Yes! Starting with version 2.2 there is a Carbonized version to run under Mac OS X. Click here to download.


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© 1998-2006 M3 Software Developers, Steve Splonskowski, all rights reserved.