Image Navigator

Overview

This applet creates a navigator (an image thumbnail viewer displaying a grid of images); a directional control for cycling through the grid; and an image viewer for displaying the currently selected image. An image can act as a link to another page, which will be displayed in the browser. Note: At the time of this release, this applet runs only in Netscape Navigator 3.0.

The navigator shows all the images at once. The current image is highlighted with a yellow box. The images are automatically scaled to be the same size. However, the viewer window resizes to display the current image at its correct size. Ideally, all images should be the same size for smooth transition from one to the next; differently-sized images will work, but the transition will not be as smooth.

This applet is suited to displaying a series of related images: for example, views of the same object from different perspectives.

Setting up the navigator

When you drag this applet to the HoTMetaL PRO document, a dialog box (called a Design-Time Control) appears; this enables you to set up the navigator.

The fields in this dialog box should be filled out as follows:

Applet Parameters

• Height and Width specify the amount of space in the main browser window that will be reserved for this applet. Since the images are displayed in a separate window, you can set both of these values to 0 (zero) if you like. If you choose positive dimensions, the applet will be displayed as a grey rectangle.
• Site Root Dir: choose the folder in which the HTML page containing the applet has been saved. (This is necessary if you wish to preview the applet from your local disk.)
• Use FastLoader: a program that speeds up the loading of the applet.

Rotator (navigator) Parameters

• Wrap: will cause the highlighting in the navigator to wrap around a row or column if you try to navigate past the outer edge of the grid.
• # of Rows, # of Columns: number of rows and columns in the navigator grid.
• Target Frame: if you want the pages that are linked to individual images to be displayed in a particular frame (if a frames-based document is being displayed in the browser), enter the frame name here. Hint: to display the page in a separate browser window, enter an undefined frame name.
• Background color: not used by this applet.
• Image Relative URL, Destination URL: click on Add to choose a filename or URL for an image, and optionally, a page that is linked to that image; click on an existing entry and then click on Edit to change the entry (you can also edit an entry by clicking once on the entry in the list to make it editable, and then typing your changes); click on an existing entry and then click on Remove to remove the entry.

Click on OK when you have finished the setup. You can display this dialog box again by right-clicking on the applet icon and choosing DTC Properties... from the pop-up menu.

Running the navigator

When the browser opens the page, it automatically loads the applet and displays the viewer window: this displays an image and the directional control. Click on Launch Navigator to display the navigator window. Use the directional control to highlight images in the navigator--the viewer will display the highlighted image. Clicking on the image in the viewer will cause the browser to display the document linked to the image (if there is one).