Frequently Asked Questions

General

Is Arles still being developed?

No. Most people have moved their images into the cloud using solutions like Flickr, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. If you still want to put images on your own website I recommend Wordpress. Arles is still available to provide those who still use Arles a place to download it.

Installation

How do I install Arles Image Web Page Creator?

To install Arles download the latest version run the arles.exe file and follow the instructions.

What are the minimum system requirements?

Windows XP/Vista/7; both 32bit and 64bit versions work fine; 1Ghz processor; 512MB memory; 100MB hard disk space.

I lost my registration information. Can you resend it?

Arles is free now. You can find a free registration code on the download page.

Is there a Apple Mac version available?

No, Arles Image Web Page Creator is for Windows only. There are third party solutions, like Parallels and VMWare Fusion, which allow you to run Windows applications on a Mac computer.

Usage

Is there a manual?

A manual in pdf format is available on our download page.

How do I upload generated files to my web server?

Arles has a built-in FTP Publish feature to upload your gallery to a web server.

To transfer an image gallery to your web server:

In the Arles Image Web Page Creator window select the Tools menu > FTP Publish.

Where can I find generated thumbnails, images and HTML files?

All the generated files and folders are located in the Target Folder as specified on the Files tab in the Arles Image Web Page Creator window.

How can I produce the sharpest images?

If your images look fuzzy after resizing, make sure you have a Sharpen filter selected in the thumbnails options window.

For photo-realistic images we recommend to use the Lanczos 3 or Mitchell resample method in combination with a Sharpen filter. You can also select the Sharpen more filter, but this generally degrades the image quality. If you want to enlarge images, the Mitchell resample method is generally your best choice.

For graphics use the Lanczos 3 resample method. A sharpen filter can also improve sharpness, but again you have to watch out for ringing artifacts.

How to create multi-folder galleries?

Say your images are organized as follows:

C:\images\holiday
C:\images\holiday\spain
C:\images\holiday\greece
C:\images\friends\johns_birthday
C:\images\friends\cathy

and you want to create an overview page in the C:\images folder linking to the subgalleries.

In the Image Web Page Creator window select the Files tab and select the Add Subcategories option.
In the Image Web Page Creator window select the Tools menu > Multi-folder processing.
In the Multi-folder processing window select your top folder (e.g. C:\images) as Root folder.
Set the Target folder type to Other folder. You can select other target folder types, but this is discouraged, because the files generated by Arles will mix with your original images making things less organized.
In the Multi-folder processing window select a Target folder where you want all generated files to be stored.
Click the Find Folders button on the Toolbar to find all subfolders with images.
If you are satisfied with the results click the All button.

How can I disable the Internet Explorer image toolbar?

The Microsoft Internet Explorer shows a popup toolbar when you hover with your mouse over large images. To disable this toolbar:

In the Arles Image Web page Creator window in the Image Pages tab click the Advanced button.
In the Advanced Image Pages window select the Advanced Index Page Properties window tab.
Select Disable Internet Explorer image toolbar.
Recreate the gallery by clicking the All or HTML button in the Arles Image Web Page Creator window.

How to disable the Internet Explorer script warning message?

When testing the generated gallery pages on your local computer in Internet Explorer you may see the following warning message:

"To help protect your security, Internet Explore has restricted this webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls that could access your computer."

The good news is that it won't show up once you have uploaded the gallery to your webserver. The warning does get in the way though when testing galleries on your computer. To get around it you may want to consider using another webbrowser like Firefox or Opera. Or you can disable the warning as follows:

In Internet Explorer select the Tools menu > Internet Options.
In the Internet Options window, select the Advanced tab.
In the security section select the Allow active content to run in files on My Computer option.

How can I change font size or face?

Fonts can be changed in the Arles Image Web Page Creator window by selecting the Edit menu > Font and Style Options.

How can I link the thumbnails directly to the images (without image pages)?

To create a gallery with thumbnails that link directly to the images:

In the Web Page Creator window select the Index Pages tab and click the Advanced button.
In the Advanced Index Page Options window select the Thumbnail Links tab.
Set Link to to Images.
Recreate your gallery by clicking the All or HTML button in the Web Page Creator window.

How to remove the "Generated by Arles Image Web Page Creator" link from the generated HTML pages?

To disable the Arles links:

In the Arles Web Page Creator window select Tools menu > Options.
In the Web Page Creator Options window, select the HTML tab.
In Arles 8 and newer: Unselect Show Arles link in gallery.
In Arles 7 and older: Select the Hide link to Arles web site for All galleries option.

Can I use Arles together with Microsoft Frontpage?

Yes. To use image galleries created by Arles Image Web Page Creator in Frontpage 2000 or 2003 you have to follow three steps:

step 1: Create a gallery in Arles

Open Arles Image Web Page Creator.
Select a Source folder with your images.
Select a Target folder for the generated output.
Click the All button.

step 2: Import the gallery into Frontpage

To import your image gallery created with Arles Image Web Page Creator into Frontpage:

Start Frontpage and open your web site.
Select the File menu > Import.
Select Add Folder and select the Target folder you specified in Arles.

Frontpage will now automatically load the complete image gallery into your website.

step 3: Apply a Frontpage Style or Shared Borders to the imported gallery

To add your theme:

In Frontpage select the Format menu > Theme.
Select a theme and apply it to the imported folder.

If you have problems uploading your gallery with the Frontpage Server extensions, use the Frontpage FTP upload feature instead.

Note: Frontpage 2000 sometimes corrupts the file name casing, causing the gallery to be broken on the web server. Rename your images to a lowercase file names to work around this problem.

Can I use Arles together with Dreamweaver, Netobjects Fusion or any other HTML editor?

Yes, you can. Just make sure select the correct Target folder in Arles, to prevent manual copying of the created files.

If you select a target folder, which is not part of your web site structure on your hard disk, you will have to copy all files created by Arles to the correct location. If you forget to copy, for example, the thumbnails subfolder, images will be broken.

Modifying pages generated by Arles in an HTML editor sometimes results in broken links to the images. If you experience this kind of problems, make sure you do not modify the pages after they are generated by Arles. To correct these problems either recreate the image gallery in Arles or use templates. With templates you can create an example HTML page with your favorite HTML editor. Arles uses this example template page to create the image gallery.

Example of how to use Arles together with Dreamweaver

You can use Dreamweaver to create a template file for Arles Image Web Page Creator. Just create a HTML template page and add the required Arles tags using the "Quick tag editor" (Ctrl+T) in Dreamweaver. When you're ready just start Arles and use the template file to generate you image gallery. The Dreamweaver site window is a excellent way to upload your web site, including the generated image gallery, to your web server.

Example of how to import an Arles image gallery in Netobjects Fusion

This tutorial works for both Netobjects Fusion 5 and MX. To import your image gallery created with Arles Image Web Page Creator into your Fusion web site, follow these steps:

Create your image gallery with Arles Image Web Page Creator.
Open your web site in Fusion.
Select the site view.
In the site view select the page under which you want to include your image gallery.
Select Import > Web Site from the File menu.
Select Local (on this computer or network).
Select the index.htm file from the target folder you specified in Arles Image Web Page Creator and click OK.

Fusion will now automatically load the complete image gallery into your web site.

Please, note that due to several limitations and bugs in Netobjects Fusion your success rate may vary. Fusion does not allow you to:

import galleries with frames.
have any spaces in your image files. Fusion is not able to handle image file names with spaces. So make sure your gallery contains only images without spaces in the file name. You can rename images in the Arles Image Explorer.
use navigation quicklists. Fusion MX breaks those.

How can I copy/move my images files without losing image titles?

Starting from Arles 7.2 all title information is now stored in the image file itself for JPEG and Tiff images. To be precise it is stored in the IPTC segment. This means that your titles will always stay with your images even when you copy them outside Arles.

If you are running an older Arles version and for images that do not support IPTC title information is stored in the Arles database. It is therefore recommend to use the Arles Image Explorer and not the Windows Explorer to move those images if you want to maintain image titles. You can move or copy images in the Arles Image Explorer by dragging and dropping them with your mouse or by using copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V). To open the Arles Image Explorer click the Browse button in Web Page Creator window.

How can I batch rename my image files?

To rename multiple image files:

In the Arles Image Explorer select the Tools menu > Rename Files.

How to install Arles on a new computer without losing image titles?

To move your Arles installation and images from to a new computer without losing image titles and other Arles Images Database information:

On your old computer backup your Arles Images Database. In the Arles Image Explorer select the Database menu > Backup.
Install Arles on the new computer.
Restore your your Arles Images Database. In the Arles Image Explorer select the Database menu > Restore and select the backup file.
Copy your images to the new computer. You must make sure that the images are on the exact same location as on the old computer. For example, if your images were in the C:\YourImages on your old computer then you have to put them also in the C:\YourImages folder on the new computer.

The database folder is generally located in: C:\Program Files\Digital Dutch\Arles Image Web Page Creator\Data. You can also copy this folder manually.

How to create an autorun CD image gallery?

Follow the guidelines below to create an arles image gallery on CD and let it open automatically (autorun) when the CD is inserted into a computer.

In the Web Page Creator window select the Index Page tab
On the Index Page tab click the Advanced button.
Advanced Index Page Options window select the General tab select Automatically launch from CD (CD autorun).
Recreate the gallery by clicking the HTML or All button in the Web Page Creator window.

How to use Arles with a shopping cart?

Although we have plans on improving e-commerce support, there are already several users that use Arles to sell photographs or other items. This can be done by making either the image filenames unique or adding a unique ID for each image in the title1, title2 or link field.

To add a image title with an order link
Say, you use the Title1 field for your image/item description and the Title2 field for the shopping cart ID. Then you can set the Image Title, in the Advanced Title Options window, as follows:

<FileTitle1><BR>
<a href="http://www.ecommercesite.com/link/to/shoppingcart.php?itemid=<FileTitle2>">Buy this photo</a>

Arles will automatically replace the <FileTitle1> and <FileTitle2> tags with whatever you have set in the title fields in the Arles Image Explorer. This example would create a image title with a "Buy this photo" line below it linking directly to your shopping cart.

To link the images directly to the order page

On the Image pages tab click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Image Pages Options window.
Select the Image Links tab and set Link Images to Custom link.
If you set the unique image ID in the Title 2 field set the custom link to:
http://www.ecommercesite.com/link/to/shoppingcart.php?itemid=<FileTitle2>
Recreate the gallery by clicking the All or HTML button on the Web Page Creator window.

How can I protect my galleries with a password?

The only secure way to protect a gallery or any website folder is by setting a password on your webserver. All good web hosts will provide you with an online control panel, which will allow you to set a password on your website or on a folder within your website.

There are some Javascripts options, which claim to provide password protection, but those are quite weak and we do not want to provide our users with a false sense of security.

Bugs and other issues

Why do some thumbnails or images in the gallery not show up for some of my visitors?

This problem is caused by advertisement blocking tools such as the Ad Blocking feature in Norton Firewall and Internet Security or ZoneAlarm Pro. For example, Norton Internet Security 2004 removes all images from the webpages you visit that are 120 by 90 pixels in size.

Disabling Ad Blocking on the visitor's computer corrects the problem, but you can also adjust the size of your thumbnails and images to one that is not blocked (e.g. 121x90).

Why do my Asian, Eastern European or other language characters not show up properly?

There are two different issues here.

1) The characters do not show up properly in the generated galleries:

If characters do not show up properly in the generated galleries:

In the Web Page Creator window select Tools menu > Options.
In the Web Page Creator Options window select the HTML tab.
Set the Document Encoding to Unicode or the encoding for your language.
Recreate the gallery by clicking the All or HTML button in the Web Page Creator window.

2) The characters do not show up properly in the Arles:

If characters do not show up properly in Arles, make sure you use a native version of Windows. In Windows XP can also use the following solution:

In Windows XP select Start menu > Settings > Control Panel.
In the Control Panel select Regional and Language Options.
Select the Advanced tab.
Set the Language for non-Unicode programs to the correct language.

Why do I get a "Can not create target or Arles images folder" error?

Arles creates some folders when creating image galleries. Errors like "Can not create target folder" or "Can not create Arles images folder" appear due to wrong file/folder permissions. Make sure that you have full file permissions set to the folder in which the target folder and all other files and subfolders will be created. You can set file permissions using the Windows Explorer.

Why do the generated images look ugly after resetting the thumbnail or resized image width and height?

Make sure the Ask me or Overwrite option is selected in the Overwrite thumbnails and images option on the Files tab. The New and modified only option is much faster, because previously created thumbnails and modified images will not be recreated. However, if you want to recreate thumbnails or modified images, you must select the Overwrite or Ask me option to force overwriting previously created images.

For example, overwriting is necessary when the size of existing thumbnails or resized images is changed or when a new image file is added to the source directory under an existing name.

Why do some images not show up and appear as broken links?

Broken images on the web server can have multiple causes.

Some advertisement blockers, like Norton Internet Security, remove images of a certain size.
Some FTP applications do not handle file name case well. Use the Arles FTP publish tool instead to fix this problem.
If another HTML editor is used to modify the HTML pages generated by Arles, the pages may get corrupted. It is recommended not to edit HTML files generated by Arles. It is generally easier to use the Arles HTML templates feature instead.

Why does Arles sometimes pause for a few seconds when generating images or HTML pages?

The pause is caused by virus scanners. Especially recent McAfee versions slow down generating images and HTML pages a lot (up to 450%). We recommend to use the free Microsoft Security Essentials software instead. Windows 8 already has built in anti-virus protection.

Why do the Arles generated HTML files contain all uppercase image file names, while Windows 98 explorer shows the file names in title case?

Windows 98 contains an option to hide all uppercase file names from the users (Windows Explorer > View menu > Options > View > Allow all uppercase names). This option is disabled by default, causing file names which are in uppercase to be shown in title case (lowercase with the first character in uppercase).

The behavior described above can cause file name case errors when uploading generated files, as some FTP programs (e.g. CuteFTP) do not recognize this behavior correctly and upload files with an incorrect character case. If you experience this behavior use the Publish Files function in Arles instead or switch on the Allow all uppercase names option in Windows 98.

Frequently Asked Questions

Top 5 most frequently asked questions

General

Installation

Usage

Bugs and other issues

See also

General

Is Arles still being developed?

Installation

How do I install Arles Image Web Page Creator?

I lost my registration information. Can you resend it?

Usage

How to create multi-folder galleries?

How can I copy/move my images files without losing image titles?

How can I batch rename my image files?

How to install Arles on a new computer without losing image titles?

How to create an autorun CD image gallery?

How to use Arles with a shopping cart?

How can I protect my galleries with a password?

Bugs and other issues

Why do some thumbnails or images in the gallery not show up for some of my visitors?

Why do my Asian, Eastern European or other language characters not show up properly?

Why do I get a "Can not create target or Arles images folder" error?

Why does Arles sometimes pause for a few seconds when generating images or HTML pages?