Would like some help on some questions

[currysteph]

I have a current family .html site. But it needs to be updated so Im thinking of using Xara Web Designer.

My 2 questions:

1. I have 1000's or photos (which grows each year). What is the a good way to have a page that has 100's of photos that can be enlarged when hovered over and dowloaded in original size when clicked or right clicked.

any example site or tutorial video on photo galleries?

2. I also have around 50 or so family videos (which also grows each year) currently these videos are played with a windows media player activex plugin and my video format is .wmv. What format does the xara video player widget play? Will I need to convert all my videos to a different format and what about retaining a good quality for these videos (as they are an archive of our daughters growing up.)

any example site or tutorial video on video galleries?

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Stephen

[steve.ledger]

I have moved your thread to the correct forum for your questions.

1. I have 1000's or photos (which grows each year). What is the a good way to have a page that has 100's of photos that can be enlarged when hovered over and dowloaded in original size when clicked or right clicked.

Too many options to discuss in one post.
There are many gallery scripts that can be used and embedded into Xara Web Designer pages.
PICASAWEB has a very simple embeddable slide show which works directly from your PICASAWEB albums.
It is really not viable to use Web Designer to directly handle thousands of photos because after each update of your site you must upload the entire site again, not just the changes.

2. I also have around 50 or so family videos (which also grows each year) currently these videos are played with a windows media player activex plugin and my video format is .wmv.

You can continue to use this format and embed them via a placeholder using the same code you are using already.
Alternatively you can embed any other video type uploaded to services such as YouTube, Vimeo and others.
If you want to keep videos on your own site, JWPlayer is an open source player of .MP4 and .FLV
All these are easily found on the web and discussed already in many threads at Talkgraphics.

What format does the xara video player widget play?

There is no Xara video player widget. You can embed any video type via a placeholder using the appropriate code..

any example site or tutorial video on video galleries?

By now there are hordes of examples, tutorials and videos at Talkgraphics, even some at Xara.com - please read through the relative forums and use the TG search facility before asking because believe me, your questions have been asked and discussed many times before - there's a huge resource here, make good use of it because it's all free .

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Stephen

Welcome to the Forums Stephen.

[currysteph]

"It is really not viable to use Web Designer to directly handle thousands of photos because after each update of your site you must upload the entire site again, not just the changes."

OUCH...my site is about 25G in size...no way I could upload it each and everytime.....why is it set up this way?

[steve.ledger]

.....why is it set up this way?

Because Web Designer is not an application aimed at those who need to create and maintain 25 gigabyte sized websites.

[currysteph]

I can understand that but its just a fancy html editor....seems like it should be easy enough to only upload changes in a site....

Im seeing if i can do a workaround by creating my site in Web Designer and then managing it withing Frontpage.

not sure if it will work but Im thinking it should

[steve.ledger]

I can understand that but its just a fancy html editor....

Web Designer or Xtreme 5 are NOT html editors, fancy nor otherwise.
Unlike Dreamweaver or Front page, there is no html to edit during the design stage.

The graphical created and managed WYSIWYG design is exported to HTML by way of Xara's html filter and while possible to edit (post export) in a text editor, it not advised as any future changes made to the design in Web Designer will overwrite any changes made when exported.
Also the outdated FrontPage may change the exported code and cause positioning problems.

[currysteph]

Ok so I mis-spoke there...I know it is WYSIWYIG layout design tool but there is the underlying .html code when you export you site. And from that Im hoping that when I make small design changes I can export the site to my HDD then from Dreamweaver or Frontpage simply upload the changes and not the entire site everytime...havnet tried it yet so I dont know...but seems logical to me at the moment.

[steve.ledger]

Stephen, I am not trying to dissuade you from using Web Designer (or even upgrading to Xara Xtreme5) to create web sites, but what I am trying to tell you is that neither may be at all suitable for the kind of site you wish to re-create (the 25 gigabyte kind )

Xara's absolute positioning CSS html does not import cleanly into DW or the outdated FP, therefore your pages once re-saved in DW or FP may be broken.
However, and most importantly, should you wish to further develop your site in Web Designer (add images, buttons, pages and so on) not only will all of your earlier post export editing be lost, but you will STILL need to re upload the entire site again whether you post edit the HTML or not. This is because Xara exports all images sequentially *numerically* to the index_htm_files folder. Images do not retain their imported names or even page and export sequence.

It's a limitation I agree, but it's currently the way it works and should be clearly understood to avoid damaging ones calm later.

All these tips and pitfalls have been discussed many times over, I strongly suggest you read as many threads as you can about these topics and thoroughly test Web Designer to see if it suits your purposes before investing too much time in it. WD and Xtreme are fantastic applications which blow away almost everything else out there once you understand it (which is pretty easy to do). Treat it like Dreamweaver (a much more costly software not aimed at the same demographic as WD) or Frontpage and you may be quite disappointed and then unfairly blame the software.

The Xara team have worked long and hard to create software that requires *zero* html knowledge and *zero* html tweaking.
Edit the exported html by all means if you wish, but consider that it isn't intended for editing.

[currysteph]

Thanks for all your time and answers Sledger....I really do appreciate it. My 25G is mostly in family videos...as I have them for download for family members and I wish to keep a pretty high resolution quality as Im also intending for these to be archival memorabilia for our daughter as she grows up.

Ive been painfully trying to learn web design but for me its yet another application to learn on top of After Effects and other video editing software. I simply was hoping to avoid the time it takes to learn a lot of coding and when I stumbled upon Xara WebDesigner I thought my problems had been answered....but I guess that dream has been shattered :-(

I really think this is a really great product except for this short coming...I see that you are a moderator of the site and if you have any say in future features in the software then being able to upload only changes to a site would be my recommendation...but I guess you already know that.

Thanks again and Ill see what I can do on my end to solve my problem.
Steph

[steve.ledger]

Hi Stephen,

As mentioned in post#2, your videos need not be changed or redone, they can be embedded into a web designer page using the familiar code placed into a placeholder.
Again, I suggest you take some time to read more at TG and start off slowly with Web Designer

Being a moderator at TG does not give me any greater say or influence with Xara or the developers than any user has. I'm just a user of Xara software