http://www.alohatechsupport.net/webdesignmaui/maui-web-site-design/photo_gallery_from_image_folder.html

I was looking online for a simple slideshow solution for a client. This website above is a good resource. Basically, I was looking for a javascript based solution that can display a simple fade-in-fade-out slide show from a specific folder.  There are a lot of tools out there use the <li> tags or uses a xml file for listing the photos which is not easy for end-user to use.

I wanted to stay with Javascript + php because its easy configuring ability. However, the first one “Folder Gallery” doesn’t quite display the photos as I wanted, though it’s a real easy to use, straight forward tool. I ended up with Flash Image Gallery , though it is flash based, because it’s easy to configure ( xml for on-off switches and colors, simple parameter in the html file for specifying image directory) and I don’t need to touch the flash file.

When I embed the slideshow div in my existing website, it fitted really well and you can still full screen it. Cool!

Basically, for listing pictures for a JQuery gallery, you have 3 solutions:

1. xml

2. embed <li> lists

3. read from a folder

For php/mysql based comprehensive gallery where user can upload photo via a web interface and title/organize them, Gallery2 is a complete solution but it’s really bulky and ugly. 🙁  phpalbum.net looks better but still not as sleek as those JQuery based gallery things out there. Unfortunately, those don’t have the comprehensive interface for managing and titling multiple albums.

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I settled with MiniShowcase for the multi-album because 1. it supports multiple albums whereas most Ajax based galleries don’t. 2. It uses the folder name as the album name. File name as the picture caption. Very easy to use. 3. It reads _info.txt from each folder to use as the description of the album.  The only thing missing is an cover image. I modified the script (only superficially) to display cover.jpg as the album cover. (The right way, of course, is to read the filename from a config file, feed it into the layers of functions. if the file doesn’t exist, use a generic cover, blah blah. I just used a <img> tag…Ha)