Introduction to ImajSite

ImajSite is a powerful set of utilities that allows you to organize your GIF and JPEG image files and easily access them using a standard web browser. It runs under Microsoft Windows 95/98 (and probably Windows NT).

Here are some things you can do with ImajSite:

Organize all of the pictures on your hard disk, and view them easily with any web browser.
Create a CD of your pictures which can be viewed on any platform (PC, Mac, UNIX, etc.) with a standard web browser.
Create a web site of your pictures, including thumbnails.
Organize your pictures using keywords and/or groups.

The output can be viewed with Internet Explorer 4.0 and later, and with Netscape 3.0 and later, as well as many other web browsers.

How it Works

ImajSite works at two levels: the directory level and the system level. At the directory level, ImajSite builds an index of all the images files and/or HTML files in the current directory. At the system level, ImajSite can build and index entire directory trees and provide search methods to access the data in those trees. You can use ImajSite at the directory level only (described below), or at both the directory and the system level.

Directory Level Operations

The input to ImajSite consists of a number of image files (JPEG or GIF) along with optional text files containing descriptive text for each image. Each text file must have the same base file name as the corresponding image file. The image files and corresponding text files may have any base file names (except for a few reserved file names). ImajSite will build an HTML slide file for each image file (with the same base file name) which displays the image along with the text from the text file immediately below the image. It will then delete the text file (optional), since it's contents are now contained in the slide file.

Figure 1 below shows the input files and the resulting output files. You can click on an output file in the diagram to display information about that file.

Figure 1

ImajSite automatically creates an index file for the directory, named "index.htm", which lists all of the HTML files in the directory. The layout of the index file is very flexible. It can be as simple as a list of text links, or as complex as a contact sheet of thumbnails. It can display descriptive icons next to each entry which are automatically selected based on keywords in the HTML file. The color and layout can be customized by using configuration files and index template files.

To view the contents of the directory and the images contained in it, simply open the "index.htm" file with any web browser. You can view the image files randomly or sequentially and scale the images so that they fit within the browser window, regardless of the actual image size. ImajSite has the ability to specify the order in which images appear in the index, and the sequential order in which they are viewed (alphabetically, by default).

Running ImajSite

In order to actually build the HTML files for a directory, you need to somehow invoke the ImajSite executable. ImajSite does not have a graphical user interface. It is invoked by simply executing a batch file called a build script in each subdirectory. The build script is always named "makeindx.bat". You can easily execute the build script by double-clicking on the "makeindx.bat" file from a Windows Explorer window.

Figure 2

Before executing the build script for the first time, you must create an icons directory in either the current directory or in one of its parent directories. The icons directory contains shared files that are used by the index and slide files. The icons directory must contain the files supplied in the ImajSite distribution package. You can simply copy the entire "icons" directory from the ImajSite installation directory to your current directory or one of its parents.

You can add or remove image files or subdirectories at any time, and then simply re-execute the build script to update the index. New slide files will be built for any new images that are added, and existing slide files will be updated only if necessary. The text content of a slide file (from the original .txt file) is always preserved when the slide file is updated. In addition, any file information in existing index or slide files is also preserved.

And That's Not All...

In addition to image files, ImajSite can also index existing HTML files. Any HTML files that do not have corresponding image files are also added to the index. Each directory may have a thumbnail image file which can appear in the index of the parent directory or in search indexes.

System Level Operations

If you have a large number of files, you may arrange the files into subdirectories, beginning with a starting directory (which is where you will start your browser), and any number of subdirectories off the starting directory. The index for each directory will automatically contain links to the indexes of any subdirectories contained in that directory. The diagram at the right shows an example of a system level directory tree:

You can also assign keywords to HTML files (index files, slide files, or other HTML files) and then search for files using keyword search expressions or query search expressions.

In order to perform searches across multiple directories, you must first create an index database. The index database is then incrementally updated by using the maketree command. Once the index database is created, it can be used to create static directories which contain links to items with a specific search criteria. It can also be used in CGI mode to dynamically generate an index based on user-specified search criteria.

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