Maintaining a web site with a couple of portfolios keeps me busy. I need an image viewer which can be configured and changed as fast as possible. Here is my solution which can be downloaded and used by everyone who likes it. I now use this solution for all our portfolios at Photodotcom.

There are many variants of image viewers available on the net and I don't claim this one is among the best. It is based on a Java Applet and can be configured using a simple text file.

Here is the sample text file "images.txt" for the above configuration:

slideviewer/500_02_3292_GiantPoppy.jpg;Giant Poppy slideviewer/500_87FM1646_YelloyCactusFlower.jpg;Cactus Flower slideviewer/500_x01_0004_0805_SelfPortrait.jpg;Self Portrait
slideviewer/photo_08.jpg;Bodie
slideviewer/photo_09.jpg;Near Vienna (Austria)

There are 5 lines with one line per image. Each line contains the image path (relative to the location of the HTML file) and separated by a ";" an optional descriptive text (will be displayed on top of the image).

The HTML file contains an applet tag of the following form:

All the Java class files are inside the "slideviewerapplet.jar" file (is in the same directory as the HTML file). Width and height define the dimensions of the applet on the screen. Finally the parameter "imagelisturl" defines the name of the image list file (here "images.txt").