This chapter gives an overview of how to create and customize a show. It assumes familiarity with Envision, either through reading the User's Guide or using the product.

Figures 1 and 2 are to be used as a reference in the rest of the chapter.

Make a show and customize the content, if necessary

1. Use your Web browser to find a site with interesting images. Find the page closest to the images you're interested in.
2. Paste its URL into the URL box in Envision's main window.
3. A. If there are links before the pictures of interest, control-click on the first link of interest (it may be text, or it may be an image) and copy its URL. Paste that URL into Envision's Start scan at URL field in the Basic pane of the Settings dialog. Likewise, if there are links after the images of interest, control-click on the last link of interest (it may be text, or it may be an image) and copy its URL. Paste that URL into Envision's End scan at URL field.
   B. Alternately, or additionally, to restrict the show to a certain subpart of the site, enter the appropriate first part of a URL in the Only scan URLs that begin with field.
4. You may want to disable main page images. You'll usually want them off UNLESS they're true thumbnails (they point directly to larger images, not to pages containing larger images) and you have thumbnail substitution on (which is the default). To disable main page images, uncheck Show pictures from main page in the Basic pane of the Settings dialog
5. For the purpose of tuning the show's content, you'll want to shorten the time that images are displayed, since for now you just want to see which images are included in the show. You can do this in two ways:
   • open the Settings dialog, go to the Basic pane and change Seconds between pictures to 1, OR
   • use the Display Mode control in the main window's toolbar to switch to thumbnail mode
6. Start the show. Depending on the speed and size of the site, the show may take a while to complete. You can tell when a show is complete by checking the status bar in thumbnail mode, which will say "Downloads complete." If the exact images you want are displayed, you're done with tuning the content, and you can go to Customize the show's appearance (below). If the expected pictures don't show up, go to step 7. If too many pictures show up, go to step 9. As you continue tuning the content, you may find it useful to continue to use the status bar in thumbnail mode to see if the number of images that meet criteria changes as you change the show's settings. This will be especially useful for large shows.
7. If the expected images do not show up go to thumbnail mode (using the Display Mode control in the main window's toolbar) and reduce minimum picture size to zero (in the Basic pane of the Settings dialog, set Minimum displayed picture size (KB) to 0).
8. If the expected pictures still don't show up, go to step 10. If too many pictures show up, go to step 9.
9. If too many pictures show up, drop down the Info drawer (click the Info icon in the toolbar of Envision's main window) and then click on pictures (in the display area of the main window) that you want versus ones you don't, looking for differences in the Info drawer. These differences might be one or more of the following:
   • Size (in KB and in height and width) - The images you want are usually larger, in KB and height and width in pixels. You may be able to use the information from the Info drawer to set Minimum displayed picture size (KB), Minimum displayed picture width (pixels) and Minimum displayed picture height (pixels), all in the Image selection pane of the Settings dialog, to eliminate some, if not all unwanted images.
   • File suffix - Ad images and control graphics (buttons, arrows, etc) are often in GIF format, while high quality images are often in JPEG format. If you see a lot of unwanted images whose file name end in .jpg, check Skip GIFs in the Basic pane of the Settings dialog.
   • Host names - This is actually a case of similarities rather than differences. If you see a lot of images that look like they're ad-related, and the Info drawer shows a URL for these images that has a host name like "ads.adserver.com", you can tell Envision to skip all images from that host. Go to the Image selection pane of the Setting dialog, click the Show hosts button and add the host name. Make sure that the associated popup menu says Skip pictures from listed hosts.
10. If the expected pictures still don't show up, you'll need to look at other criteria in the Site Scan pane of the Settings dialog, especially the number of levels to scan (particularly useful in combination with Only scan URLs that begin with). If you change any settings in this pane, re-scan the site and then go back to item (6) above. You may also want to check the troubleshooting chapter of this User's Guide.

Customize the show's appearance

When you have the content the way you want it, you may want to customize the show's appearance. A good approach is to consider changing

1. display interval for each image
2. background color of the main window
3. transition effects from one image to the next
4. display of images' captions (if any)
5. how to fit images into the window and whether or not to expand each image (if necessary) to fill the window
6. the show's poster image
7. the order in which images are presented (serial or random)
8. the window size
9. display of the toolbar and status bar

Forward to Troubleshooting
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