How this was all done

subtitle: No one said it was going to be easy*

The photographs were taken using Kokak Kodachrome slide film, either ASA 25 or ASA 64. The slide scanning was done with the HP Photosmart scanner which can scan slides, film negatives or 5x7 prints. It was the SCSI scanner of choice because it was cheap at the time. Even though the scanner came with scanning software, I generally use an excellent scanner program VueScan ($$**) from (www.hamrick.com). His site also has an excellent discussion on scanner models and their relative merits.

The topographic maps ($$) are from Topo! (www.topo.com). The CD's allow you to generate the map in relief which is what I have done in the Sierra presentation. Topo! is now owned by National Geographic Society. If purchasing any of these CD's, a better value is the National Geographic packaging, not the older Topo! Packages. Other maps of Alaska and Canada were from the National Geographic Map cdrom package ($$) which consists of all the Geographic maps issued with the monthly magazine from the beginning to about 1997. The required maps were cropped and screen captured with HyperSnap-DX ($$) from (www.hyperionics.com) and saved in jpeg or png formats.

The resulting jpeg maps were edited to show the shaded areas, red link buttons and trail routes. I used StarOffice 5.1 [www.sun.com] (similar to OpenOffice) and Micrografx Picture Publisher (free with a hardware package) to draw on the topographic maps. Either one of the software packages would not do everything the way I wanted.. StarOffice 6.0 is now sold by Sun for about $80 at many computer stores. The earlier StarOffice version 5.1 was free. The OpenOffice (free) draw module is excellent, but I still use StarOffice 5.1 for some graphic editing.

The html pages were made using OpenOffice [www.openoffice.org}. OpenOffice (free), an open source office suite similar and compatable to MS Office and makes html pages very easily. All the opening pages and pages with imbeded jpeg images were done with OpenOffice including the image mapping.. After looking at some of the html editing software available, OpenOffice seemed to offer all that was needed to do a static web page. It also does tables, frames, etc. It is XML compliant. OpenOffice is a highly recommended (free) office package avalable for various operating systems including Linux.

Linking the hundreds of dots to images or other html pages was beyond OpenOffice, so I use Liveimage (www.liveimage.com) ($$) which is designed just for mapping linked areas on html pages. It is as simple as marking the area and pointing to the link, all in WYSIWYG mode. I have yet to find a comparable package.

The thumbnail html screens were done with ACDSee ver 4 ($$) from (www.acdsystems.com). This superb image viewer is available in a 30 day trial version and is worth purchasing if you work with a lot of images.

OpenOffice does not do WYSIWYG html for Javascripts or Java. For some of the items on the bookshelf I use the highly recommended (free) HTML editor 1^st Page 2000 (www.evrsoft.com) to create more advanced html files and edit existing ones.

Opera is my favorite and recommended browser is ($$) from (www.opera.com), is now available (free) with an advertising banner. It comes in various operating system versions including Linux. Another (free) browser available is Mozilla (www.mozilla.org) in various operating systems also including Linux.

To upload my pages to the web sites I use FileZilla, (http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla), an excellent recommended (free) FTP program. Because of the increase in number of files (over 2500) I'm managing, I have started using Windows Commander 32 (www.ghisler.com) ($$), because it can easily tag new/different files and upload the proper changed files. It is similar to the popular defacto Linux/Unix filemanger 'Midnight Commander'.

Be aware that I have found WYSIWYG html programs, OpenOffice included, at times inadvertently modify pure html code. Things such as borders missing, lost image maps, lost sections, etc. I use the 1^st Page 2000 html editor to fix all the little problems. I also try to check how the html pages work in all the more popular browsers.

To check the web site, I not only look at the web pages on my Windows computer, but on a Linux server on my home Lan. All Linux distributions come with Apache, one of the most popular web servers in the World. The same Linux PC also acts as a NT Server using the Samba program (also included in the distribution), allowing me to log on the the server to view my web pages. Viewing the pages from the Linux server allows me to catch little errors due to the differences between Windows and Linux/Unix servers without checking all the pages via a slow dialup connection. I recommend the SuSE 7.2 distribution (the most recent is 8.1). I have found it easier to manage and perfer it to other distributions, including the popular RedHat distribution. Linux is an excellent bargain. For about $80 you can set up as many servers and workstations as you like without licensing fees to Microsoft. To any Windows PC's on your Lan, your Linux server looks and acts like an NT Server. Such a bargain for a small or medium office environment that most Microsoft distributers will not mention it. I wonder why? If you are not familiar with Linux, (www.linux.org) is a good place to start.

For an overall protective firewall on my Windows PC's I use and recommend ZoneAlarm (www.zonelabs.com). They have a basic (free) and a more comprehensive ($$) version available.

. *Actually there is an easy way to do a similar presentation using National Geographic Topo! Sync USA Check out (http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/sync.cfm) or google search on “topo! sync usa”.

**All software marked ($$) was purchased, but that which I consider a good value. Software marked (free) is an even a better value.