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Creating
galleries of websites
Say what? Instead of trying to explain it, let me show
you an
example. Click any of the thumbnails to open the
website. You can also create galleries that
link to images of the website.
How does it work?
Arles includes the capability to show HTML pages or
Internet websites as images. In the Arles
Image Explorer you can select any
HTML file
on your
computer and double click it to show it in the full screen
previewer. The page is rendered on the fly and converted
to an image.
If you are connected to the Internet Arles can also
show images of Internet sites. It does that using *.url
files. An URL file is a shortcut to an Internet
address or URL. When you drag an Internet address from
the Internet Explorer address bar to the Windows desktop
or into the Arles Image Explorer a URL file is created.
When you show an *.url file in Arles, the website will
get downloaded and an image of the site created. Just
like with HTML files they will show up in the Arles Image
Explorer and you can view them in the full screen previewer.
And best of all, you can create galleries of them.
To create a gallery of Internet websites:
- Open the Arles Image Explorer and select a local
folder where you want to store the Internet links
(*.url files).
- Use your mouse to drag
and drop URLs from your web browser into Arles.
You can do this by dragging the icon in the web browser
address bar. Dragging links from your browser also
works.


- Click the All button in the main window to create
a gallery.
To link your thumbnails directly to the Internet pages
Now that you have created a gallery, let's
take it one step further and make the thumbnails link
directly to the Internet pages.
- On the Index page tab, click the Advanced button.
- In
the Advanced Index Page options window, select the
Thumbnail links tab.

- Set Link thumbnails to "Custom link".
- Set the custom link field
to <FileLink>. You
can also do this by selecting the drop down arrow.
- Recreate the gallery by clicking the All or HTML
button in the main window.
Caching
Arles uses a cache mechanism to speed up managing
URL images and creating URL galleries. Every time Arles
is started it will check
for new versions of Internet files. You can also reload
any URL file by selecting the file in the Arles Image
Explorer and selecting the
Image menu > Refresh Thumbnail.
Options
To change the original size of HTML and URL files:
- In the main window select Tools menu > Environment
Options.
- In the Environment Options window select the Images
tab.
- Set your preferences in the HTML image load options.
The width and height are the size of the virtual browser
window used to create the HTML and URL images.
Width |
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Virtual browser window width used to create
the HTML images.
Recommended value: 800 pixels
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Min. height |
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Minimum virtual browser height. The generated
HTML image will be at least this height even if
the
HTML page
is shorter.
Recommended value: 800 pixels
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Max. height |
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Maximum virtual browser page height. Web pages
that are longer than this value will be cut off.
Make the
max height a small value (e.g. 600 pixels) if you
only want to show the top part of long pages. Select
a
large value (e.g. 2,000 pixels) if you want to
show the complete web page.
Be careful when specifying large values,
like 5,000 or more pixels. Very large
images will be generated for
long web pages. This will slow down Arles, and
might
in some cases even crash older computers running
Windows
95/98/ME. Only select a value of more than a
1,000 pixels if you have a modern computer running
Windows
2000, XP or better.
Recommended value: 800
- 2000 pixels
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Website load timeout |
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Creating images of websites can take a long time if the site's web server is
slow or if you have a slow Internet connection. When loading takes longer than
the timeout value, the image is generated even if the page has not been completely
loaded. If you are on a slow modem connection you might want to increase this
value to 60 seconds or longer.
Recommended value: 30 seconds |
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