Cut and Paste Simpleviewer for blogs using Picasa Web Albums
I often get questions from people who want to insert one of these photo galleries in their weblog or Google Site. Generally this can be quite a challenge as for most galleries you need to upload files and weblog hosters (like Blogger) often limit the possibilities to do so. So you need a separate webspace to upload the files and embed the gallery in your blog pointing to that other domain. This will not always work and challenges the html and javascript knowledge of many people.
So I decided to create a simple solution for those facing this problem. And because it's so simple I started with the famous Simpleviewer. With nothing more than a Picasa Web Albums account (free) and a few lines of code (grab them below) you can show off your images in Simpleviewer style in Blogger and similar webpages. I'm planing to expand this service to other viewers in the future.
This is a free "cut and paste" service. The files (except the images of course) are hosted on my website. The last image in your galery will always show a short message about this website. The maximum number of images per gallery is fifty. The background colour is set to transparent so it will blend with any existing background. Only public images will be shown, and you can embed public images from any user, not only yours.
How to get the username and albumname
Get your username by looking at the picasaweb.google.com url. Click on any album and you'll see something like this in the address bar: http://picasaweb.google.com/paulvanroekel/. This url contains your username (here it's paulvanroekel ) . Click on any album and you'l see something like this in the address bar: http://picasaweb.google.com/paulvanroekel/Pairs#. This url contains your albumname (here it's Pairs ). Don't use the "#".
Fill in the details to create your own version of Cut and paste Simpleviewer for blogs. No need to install any software, runs in any blog. Pulls is your public images fro Picasa Web Albums and displys them in the world famous Simpleviewer layout. Tested in Blogger with all major modern browsers.
Want to customize this gallery completely? There are also Simpleviewer versions for Picasa and for Picasa Web Albums that offer all freedom to customize it. These versions require your own webspace or PHP installed. A basic knowledge of HTML is sometimes required.