Height & Width of Images

[magicalwonders]

I've not been able to find much info on specifying the height and width of images in Actinic.

Many of my graphics will be small thumbnails 100 x 100 px so presumably I will be able to control these by using Netquotevar:ImageHeight and Netquotevar: Imagewidth.

However, the pics that show in my extended info will be all sorts of shapes, sizes and proportions. Is there a way to size these on a case by case basis?

So two questions really. How do I set the above Netquotevars to = 100px?

And is there an easy way to set the height and width for odd size pics?

Hope someone can advise


Myles Sinclair

[EaglesNest]

However, the pics that show in my extended info will be all sorts of shapes, sizes and proportions. Is there a way to size these on a case by case basis?

Hi Myles,
To set individual extended image sizes you would set them on each product page via the Extended Info Tab, next to the filename there is a entry box for the size of the popup which in effect would be the imagewidth but you would have to adjust for the text either above or below including the close window link to set the pop-up height correctly.

It looks to me as though the size of the image is determined by the information contained within the image itself. So, if the image is 100 wide and 50 high then IMAGEHEIGHT would = 50 and IMAGEWIDTH would = 100 through the programming. So I would think that if all of your images are already 100x100 that is the way they will display. If this isn't correct, please someone step all over me...

Eagle

[Univiz]

An alternative would be to resample your images to uniform sizes before adding to Actinic - obviously depends on how many images you have.

On a site I'm currently working on multiple images have been combined into one new jpg per product for the extended info popup page.
The advantage being that the one jpg can be referenced from the 'image' field and as all the resampled and/or combined images are the same size, the default size for the extended info popup page can be set in Design Options | Layouts | Extended Info Page ... sizes. I haven't bothered about the height, allowing the popup page to generate vertical scroll bar if needed.

Regarding resizing thumbnail and smaller images, these can be batch resampled. I use ImageForge Master Tools [www.cursorarts.com]. The program does various other things but I just use it for batch resizing thumbnails.

Hope this helps.
Regards, Sharon

[magicalwonders]

Thanks Eagle & Sharon,

I've just been studying the AUG again! and it does seem as though the height and width for images are extracted from the images themselves. (If I've understood the Netquatevar dictionary at the back correctly)

One less thing to worry about!

The images shown in Extended info appear to be controlled by Netquotevar:Infoimage. This involves a couple of templates, one of which is Act_productline.html. Images in this template are attributed height and width from the source image. So although the AUG doesn't actually say so, I'm assuming that pics shown in Extended Info are automatically assigned Height and Width.

But we all know what assuming can do!

Best wishes,

Myles

[EaglesNest]

The images shown in Extended info appear to be controlled by Netquotevar:Infoimage. This involves a couple of templates, one of which is Act_productline.html. Images in this template are attributed height and width from the source image. So although the AUG doesn't actually say so, I'm assuming that pics shown in Extended Info are automatically assigned Height and Width.

Hi Myles,
I think that all the images are automatically sized according to their information embedded in the image. The only thing that I can see to do would be to resample the images as Sharon suggests and then use the example she gave relative to setting the default size of the popup. I too wish there was a way to control the IMAGEHEIGHT IMAGEWIDTH variables, cause is would make it a "whole" lot easier than resampling 3000 plus products.

Eagle

[NormanRouxel]

You can resize all your images at one go with the freeware Irfanview ( http://www.irfanview.com/ ).

Alternatively you can alter Act_ProductImage.html to fix the width or height. E.g. change it to

<!-- ProductImage HTML begin -->
<!-- This file is used to build the product image markup. -->

<IMG SRC="NETQUOTEVAR:IMAGEFILE"
	  ALT="NETQUOTEVAR:ALTERNATETEXT"
	  BORDER=0
               width=100
	  NETQUOTEVAR:OTHERIMAGEMARKUP>
<!-- 	  NETQUOTEVAR:IMAGEHEIGHT NETQUOTEVAR:IMAGEWIDTH -->

<!-- This file is used to build the product image markup. -->
<!-- ProductImage HTML end -->

Will display all product images 100 pixels wide (with a proportional height). You could change this to fix the height instead. Don't fix both width and height at the same time unless all your images have the same aspect ratio.

Norman

PS resizing them all down is best as this will mean smaller files for the customers to download.

Fixing the width won't change the file size so there may be more to download than is necessary.

[Univiz]

Just downloaded Norman's recommendation of Irfanview and am seriously impressed - Many thanks Norman!
Regards, Sharon

[magicalwonders]

Thanks for the code Norman and the link for the software.

Sorry I'm being a bit of a dimbo on this. I just want to check I've understood the process of how Actinic treats images. I understand that the Netquotevar:Imagefile takes the size of the image from the source (image) file. Does the Netquotevar calculate image sizes on the fly as it is downloading the page?

From what I have read, (in my Dummies book!) images that specify height and width make for faster page downloads.

My initial pics on each page of my site will be small thumbnails, about 100 x 100px. I'm using your multi-columns code Norman!

Will specifying both height and width (as they'll all be the same size) be more efficient than allowing the Netquotevar:Imagefile to do its job? I suspect it will, but some reassurance would be great!

Many thanks

Myles

[NormanRouxel]

Myles,

Actinic works out the image sizes when building your pages and then embeds that info in the generated HTML.

It doesn't really speed up the page load time when you use height= and width= parameters. However it does allow the browser to know how much space to allow for the images before they are fully loaded and this prevents your page from continually rearranging itself when each image finally arrives.

The best thing to do is to let Actinic do all the work and to use Irfanview (or some other tool) to resize all your images to the same width. You do this by making copies of your images into a new folder so you can preserve your originals for future use.

Assuming that most images will be downsized then this method will make your pages load faster as the size of the image files will have reduced.

The fudge regarding Act_productImage.html will sork but is only recommended if you have trouble resizing all those images.

Norman

[magicalwonders]

Thanks Norman,

Have you ever thought about writing "Actinic for Dummies" ? I bet it would be a big seller. I'd buy a copy!

Best wishes,

Myles