Picasa Photo Album using Feed Ticker Page 1 of 10
Introduction There are many ways to create one or more great looking Photo Albums on a website. The way these albums are managed can differ greatly. Why not take the fast way and use something that is free and easy to use? Picasa! This tutorial describes the steps to create a Picasa Photo Album on your website with the use of the Feed Ticker extension. 1. Creating a Google account 2. Creating a Picasa account 3. Adding images to Picasa account 4. Choosing Picasa Feed 5. Setting up Feed Ticker 6. Using Behaviors 1. Creating a Google account To be able to use Picasa, a new Picasa account has to be created. This can only be done, if you already have a Google Account. If you do not have a Google Account, create one first. Go to www.google.com/accounts and click the Sign Up link in the top right of the page. Complete all the steps to create a new account. Skip this step if you already have a Google account. 2. Creating a Picasa account Once a new Google Account has been created or if you already have a Google Account, a Picasa account can be created. Go to picasaweb.google.com to visit the homepage of Picasa Web Albums. Page 2 of 10
Enter your Email and Password and click the Sign In button. Enter a Desired username and click the check availability button. If the username is available, enter a First name and a Last name and click the Continue button. If the username is unavailable, enter a different name and check the availability again or choose one of the suggestions. Skip this step if you already have a Picasa account. Page 3 of 10
3. Adding images to Picasa account After the login to Picasa, your personal homepage appears. It is now possible to download the Picasa software by clicking the Free Download button. This would allow you to upload photos to Picaso from the local software on your PC. For this tutorial we will describe the way it is done one the Picasa Web Albums website only. Click the Upload button in the Picasa Menu bar. A popup named Upload Photos: Create Album will appear in which you can fill the necessary fields with the information for a new album: Title, Date, Description (optional) and Place Taken (optional). Make sure the Share option is set to Public, otherwise the photos will not be available through a feed. Page 4 of 10
Click Continue to save the Album settings and to proceed to the Upload page. Page 5 of 10
Click the Add Photos button and browse to the folder that contains the photos to upload. Select the photos and confirm the selection by clicking the Open button. The selected images are added to the upload window. Click the Upload button to start uploading. Once all of the selected photos have been uploaded, the newly created album will open with the images in it. Clicking a photo would offer options to add a Caption or a Comment to the selected photo. 4. Choosing Picasa Feed Once photos have been added into your Picasa account, they are immediately available in a RSS Feed. Page 6 of 10
Each separate Picasa Web Album in your account is available through a RSS Feed. Towards the bottom of this page in the right column, the text RSS is present, together with the RSS icon. Right click the RSS link and choose Copy Shortcut or click the RSS link and copy the address from your browsers address bar. 5. Setting up Feed Ticker Start the Feed Ticker extension from the DMXzone tab on the Object bar or select Insert, DMXzone, Feed Ticker from the menu. On the Feeds tab, click the Add feed button in the Current Feeds section. Enter a title for this new feed in the Feed Title field. Paste the Picasa RSS Feed address into the Feed URL field. An example of the feed with standard settings will be shown in the Preview section. Page 7 of 10
Open the Settings tab. Page 8 of 10
In the Look and Feel, Behavior and Animation sections, further settings can be made to determine the way the Feed is shown on the page. You can set what and how the items are displayed, which size, how many items are fetched and how many are shown. Also it is possible to set the effect for the transition of the items. Click on the Refresh button to update the Preview on the right side. After OK is clicked, the extension will be added to the page. Upload the files, that are mentioned in the message, to your live server for the Feed Ticker to function the correct way. When the placeholder for the extension is selected, several settings can be changed in the Property Inspector. After all settings are OK, save your page and upload it to your live server. Preview the result. 6. Using Behaviors The Property Inspector holds a Behaviors link. By clicking the blue paperclip the DMXzone Behavior Connector will be started. With this Behavior Connector you will be able to add other behaviors to you Feed Ticker. Events that are available to chose from are When all the feeds are loaded, Before the current slide appears and After the current slide appears. The Available Behaviors to choose from are on the left side of the window. First select an event in the Available Events section. Then select a behavior from the Available Behaviors section and click the blue arrow in the middle. Now fill the necessary settings for the choosen behavior and confirm them. Clicking OK will close the Behavior Connector. Now save the page, upload it and view it on your live server. Page 9 of 10
Using the Behavior Connector is not necessary. Without any behaviors added, the Picasa Photo Album will show on your page. By clicking on an image, the photo will show on the Picasa website. Page 10 of 10