Quick Start Guide

Note: the blue ovals in the pictures below are just to help identify the buttons that are being discussed - they do not appear in WebPics.

1. Start WebPics
   Double-click on the WebPics icon to start it (you may have already done this). An empty document window is created. For now ignore the stuff about registering and entering codes, just wait for the button to count down and click on Try It!
   
   
   
2. Add Pictures
   Click on the 'Add Pictures' button.
   
   
   
   A file selection dialog will come up. Select the pictures that you want to use. In the file dialog, hold down the shift key and click to select more than one picture. Click on the 'Add' button to put the selected pictures into the list.
   
   
   
   You can select the pictures in the list by clicking on the name or moving up and down with the up and down arrow keys. Some pictures will need to be rotated (typically when the camera is rotated when the picture was taken). If one of your pictures needs to be rotated, select it in the list and click on the appropriate rotate button.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Captions
   Often the picture files will have names that are generated by the digital camera that they were taken with. Adding captions to the pictures is a good way to give the viewers of your web page some information about each picture. Click in the area to the right of the first picture in the list below the word 'Caption'. This will start the editing for the first picture's caption.
   
   
   
   Type in the caption for the first picture. Hit the 'tab' key to enter a caption for the next picture. Go ahead and add captions for all of the pictures - or don't, captions are definitely optional.
   
   At this point it would be a good idea to save your work. Select the 'Save' item from the 'File' menu (or type ) and save your WebPics document with an appropriate name.
   
   
   
4. Text Options
   Click on the 'Text' tab for this next step. Do this now.
   
   Three text items can be setup for your photo gallery web page. The first is the title of the page. The title is displayed centered at the top of the page. There are also two text descriptions that can be added - one for the top of the page (just under the title) and one for the bottom of the page (just past the pictures).
   
   
   
   Click in the page title edit area and type in the title. Hit the tab key to move to the page description edit areas. The descriptions are optional, but it is a good idea to provide a title for your web page.
   
   For both the title and the descriptions, the color, size and style of the text can be setup. Clicking on the color swatch brings up a color picker to select the desired color (I always go straight to the 'Crayon Picker', it is the one that I understand the best!). The size of the text is controlled by selecting a number from the corresponding popup menu - the bigger the number the bigger the text. Finally, the text styles bold and italic can be applied by clicking on the respective check boxes.
   
   Don't worry about the various link editing areas - we can use the default settings.
   
   When you are done setting up the text options, hit to save your changes.
   
   
5. Graphic Options
   Click on the 'Graphics' tab for this next step. Do this now.
   
   The background color or image for your photo gallery web page can be setup in the Graphics Options. For this Quick Start we will only deal with the background - the remainder of the options are fully covered in the reference sections.
   
   
   
   Click on the background color swatch to select a color for your web page. Usually lighter colors work best for backgrounds.
   
   A bit more advanced is using a background image for your web page. If you want to use an image (picture) as the background for your web page click on the check box labeled 'Use a background image'. A file dialog will appear allowing you choose an image file - you can select either a JPEG or GIF type image file for the background. The background image is repeated in a 'tiled' fashion on your web page.
   
   The custom link color stuff is covered in the reference section.
   
   The selections made for background color or image will be shown in the preview area on the left side of the window.
   
   When you are done setting up the graphic options, hit to save your changes.
   
   
6. Thumbnail Options
   Click on the 'Thumbnails' tab for this next step. Do this now.
   
   There are many options in the Thumbnails tab. For this Quick Start we will hit a few and the remainder will be explained in detail in the reference section below.
   
   The number of thumbnails in each row is selected from the first popup menu. Typically three of the large size (see below) are about right - if you select a smaller thumbnail size you might want to have four or five in each row.
   
   Select the caption text position from left, right, above or below the thumbnail picture. The caption text font, color, size and style is setup in the same way as the title or description text. These options are reflected in the preview area - this allows for easy experimenting.
   
   Select the size of the thumbnails - large is nice, but they take longer to load over a slow internet connection than the smaller sizes.
   
   The next three options control the look of the borders that are created around the thumbnail pictures. Instead of going into a lot of detail here, just experiment with the various setting to find a combination you like. If you want no borders on your thumbnails select 'None' in the border width popup.
   
   
   
   Play around with the various options until you get thumbnails that you like.
   
   When you are done setting up thumbnail options, hit to save your changes.
   
   
7. Output Options
   We won't go into the output options in the Quick Start - the default setting will be just fine for your first photo gallery web page. See the reference about Output Options for more details.
   
   
8. Making a Web Page
   Okay, the big moment has come. Hit to save everything. In a moment you will click on the 'Build Web Page' button in the lower left corner of the window. Here is what will happen:
   
   
   • a file dialog will come up to let you select a folder to put the web page in - probably the best option is to click on the new folder button and make an empty folder for your web page - select the folder and click on the Choose button
     
     
     
     
   • WebPics will then process all of the pictures in the list and build the necessary web pages and pictures files
   • finally, WebPics will show you the newly created web page in your web browser - often this will happen in the same browser window that you are reading these instructions in - if so, just hit the 'Back' button in the browser to get back here
   
   Click on 'Build Web Page'!
   
   
   
   If you want to make changes to your web page, switch back to WebPics, make the changes, click on the 'Build Web Page' button again. This time just select the folder that you created the first time - WebPics will put the new items into the same folder and then open it in your web browser for you to try out. More details about the building of web pages are available here.