New Look

Recently, I came across a new way (at least to me) to display my photos online. I was previously using the default Flickr.com slideshow feature on my main page johnwmacdonald.com to display my photographic portfolio. It suited my needs: provided a relatively clean way for the user to go through the pics in a fairly automated way; photo info was able to be displayed; etc.

Now, I wanted to try something newer. I'm not saying it's waaaay better now, but it's different. I was looking for a change. The new page is now more akin to a portfolio as if you had a hard copy in your hands. You can now zoom in for a closer look. Go to a full page on your monitor. There are several other different options, too. I think it's pretty intuitive to use as well.

However, behind the scenes, it took me much of today to tweak the design to make it functional. Bloody html framesets! The design is based on the website issuu.com (pronounced 'issue'). They provide the basic elements in order to display your custom-made PDF files. Basically, it required that I create a document with all my photos, each on a separate page, in this case a MS Word doc. The next step was to convert (save it) as a PDF file. This conversion, in turn, was accomplished by a free program (http://www.primopdf.com/) which I had to download.

Once I had a PDF file, it had to be uploaded to issuu.com (you have to register first with this site). Once this is done you have the option to embed this html code necessary to display it where ever you want, be it in blogger.com, facebook.com, myspace or on your own website. I chose to display it on my main index page. That's the easy part. The difficult part is tweaking the code to make it operational on one's site. Again, bloody framesets...and MS FrontPage. Anyhow, after a few false leads and broken links that were fixed it all seems to work. Hope it works for you, too.

This is just the mini viewer. To see what the large version looks like, you have to click on over to my main page, www.johwmacdonald.com.