Ever wanted to have a photo gallery, but hate the: thumbnails, resizing, positioning and recoding? iridium takes care of those details for you. After a simple upload, it resizes photos, renders thumbnails and packages it up in a flash application.

It’s just that darn easy! iridium can stand alone or embed itself into your custom Flash documents at any depth and be fully functional.
HIGH TECH = LOW MAINTENANCE
The box above is a working example of the iridium gallery. To access the update application simply right click (control click for Mac users) and choose “update gallery” from the contextual menu. The username and password are “a” and “a” to see the update application.
it just works:

Testimonial type copy to go here about how they love it

User Signature

Testimonial type copy to go here about how they love it

User Signature

Testimonial type copy to go here about how they love it

User Signature

and here's how:
Macromedia Flash is a Rich Internet Application (RIA). It allows you to add features to your website such as: animation, sound and content depth. It’s saturation is nearly 100% of all internet users and its cross platform dependability is top notch.
Flash’s Actionscript 2.0 is some of the jet fuel that powers iridium. It’s what takes the XML data file and: renders menus, attaches thumbnails and attaches large images. Because of its important role we think it’s worth mentioning the power and flexibility.
XML is a standard language that allows web apps to communicate. This allows multiple technologies to communiate with each other. iridium uses it to get: gallery name, image count, thumbnail path and large image path.
PHP is a server side language. iridium’s powerful update gallery feature uses this technology to: look for new folders (galleries), resize all images to the proper width, make thumbnails and package up a detailed XML file.
XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are what give the update gallery tool a flexible skinning environment. If you’re a pro developer who needs to integrate this web app seamlessly, you can easily modify the CSS for 100% visual control.

Web Design, Web animations, PHP, MySQL, Actionscript, Javascript, XHTML, CSS, XML we do it all and it's under one roof. That helps insure the design, efficiency, consistency and (most importantly) functionality of our products and services.

OTHER SERVICES:
CONSULTING
CREATIVE
WEB DEVELOPMENT
ILLUSTRATION
SCIFI/FANTASY PROPERTIES
Q: So, what is iridium?
A: iridium is smart and simple.
After installing iridium into a webpage:
  1. Upload a folder of images (each image 300KB or less in size)
  2. Go to your iridium powered page
  3. Right mouse click on the iridium gallery and choose "Update Gallery"
  4. Let the update utility run
  5. Return to your page containing the gallery and click your browser's reload button
Q: What is iridium?
A: It's promise is to be the easiest photo gallery to maintain. To do this, the application uses a combination of many technologies and standards to make updating and managing a gallery simple and fun. See the live demo above.
Q: How much does it cost?
A: It's a flat $100 for one license. A license is good for one domain. Currently, we're accepting payments through paypal. They're a the most popular online transaction company, and they power ebay so we feel comfortable with them.
Is iridium just not going to fit with your site's design? Customizations can be done for extra fees.
Q: What do I need to run it?
A: Very little tech know how (basic HTML and FTP skills).
You and your site's users will need the popular Flash plugin.
Your web server will need to run PHP 4.3.1 or better and you'll need a few photos to get started (under 300KB ea).
Q: How do I put iridium in my webpage.
A: The iridium gallery comes with a stripped down HTML file (iridium.html). You can open that up and take the HTML code you need or copy and paste the following code: <!-- BEGIN iridium --> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com /pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="560" height="340" id="iridium_v1" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="movie" value="iridium_v1.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="scale" value="exactfit" /> <param name="salign" value="t" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /> <embed src="iridium_v1.swf" quality="high" scale="exactfit" salign="t" bgcolor="#000000" width="560" height="340" name="iridium_v1" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> <!-- END iridium -->
Q: What is FTP? How do I get the HTML page on my server?
A: FTP is the near universal method all websites are updated and maintained through. It stands for File Transfer Protocol. If you've ever copied a file from one folder to another then you understand FTP. Just imagine that the folders you copied between were two computers and you've got it! There are many FTP programs available and most website editing programs have them built in ( Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver).
Q: Do I have PHP?
A: If you've been given a web space with a dialup account or other internet connect account the answer usually is no. Check with your server administrators/site host to see if they offer PHP. For example, this site is hosted by FatCow. They support PHP, ASP, MySQL and a plethora of other "server side" technologies. ATOMILUX, INC. pays annually for this site to be hosted here for roughly $100/yr. There are many web hosting companies with differing prices and services that offer PHP.
Q: What is XML and do I have it?
A: You'll probably never see it, but should know it's another technology iridium uses. If you're the technical type, look in /iridium/gallery/pictures/gallery.xml. The iridium update application maintains it for you. The Flash portion of iridium gets its information from this file to display: thumbnail image, large image, gallery name and gallery total count. Most users won't need to touch it, but should know iridium needs it to function.
Q: Do I have GD library and what is it?
A: iridium's update application utilizes a part of PHP 4.3.1 that can dynamically resize and create files on the fly. It's one of the cornerstones iridium is built on. iridium's gallery update application will check and make sure you have and are able to run PHP's GD library for you, so don't worry. This too is something you'll never have to touch or see, but again should know it's a necessity for iridium to work properly.
Q: Do I have Flash?
A: Flash is a plugin offered by Macromedia for all web browsers. iridium does NOT function without it. click here to test for the flash plugin. A download link is available at the site if needed.

Worried about using a technology that needs a plugin? Don't worry, nearly the entire world has it and it's downloaded approximately 2 million times a day, WOW! See how their plugins have been adopted worldwide over time. (chart screen grab taken from a macromedia whitepaper, original can be found here)
Copyright macromedia 2005.
Q: I tried to update the gallery and all I see is a page with a bunch of technical looking programming stuff.
A: Sounds like iridium's PHP scripts were read as text files. First, confirm that you can run PHP scripts with your server admin or site host. Second, make sure the permissions are set correctly for those files.
Q: Can I have spaces in my folder names?
A: Unfortunately, one of the many technologies that iridium uses doesn't allow for spaces within the folder name. Please use one of the following when making or renaming a folder:
  1. use any numbers
  2. use any letters
  3. instead of spaces, use dashes or underscores
  4. DON'T use punctuation, special characters or spaces
Q: Can I have numbers in my folder names?
A: Pretty sure this one is OK, I'll test it and update the FAQ here. If you have answer before then please email me.
Q: Can I add descriptions for each picture
A: Not currently. We tried it with other galleries and found it to be a VERY time consuming and tedious feature. If you feel strongly about this feature, and would like it added as an option, please enter it on our feature request page to be considered.
Q: Some of my pictures look squished or stretched.
A: Nearly all digital cameras use what's called an aspect ratio. The height is always a percentage of the width. When cropping or resizing your photos use constrained proportions to avoid this. The final size of each large iridium image is 400x300 pixels and 150x113 pixels.
Q: Some of my thumbnails and large pictures get cut or cropped off.
A: Vertical pictures will not currently fit into iridium without cropping. To keep its compact form the visible area only displays landscape pictures. If you primarily have vertical photos or need a different size version of iridium contact us for customization.
Q: I'm a flash developer and might need to integrate this into another flash document. Will it work?
A: Yes, the Actionscript used takes advantage of the _parent tag to address Flash's flattening of objects when importing into another movie. iridium can be burried 1 or 10 levels deep in a Flash doc and still function.
Q: I'm a PHP developer. Will iridium work within my PHP driven site?
A: Yes, iridium's front end is Flash and XML driven while being pretty much self contained. The only PHP call is when the gallery update utility is launched from the contextual menu in the front end. The scripts are isolated in their own folder and should run in a popup window outside your iridium powred page.
Q: I develop in ASP, Perl, or other languages. Can iridium work on my site?
A: If you have PHP running in your environment with the GD library, the answer is yes. The only backend specific functions of iridium that are PHP driven:
  1. dynamic image resizing
  2. dynamic thumbnail generation
  3. dynamic XML authoring.
All those things happen in one PHP window that contains the web app.
Q: The files from my digital camera are HUGE!!!!!, I'm supposed to upload these?
A: Yes, the files from your digital camera will be overkill and iridium doesn't like to update gallery files over approximately 300KB. Rejoice, for you are not alone. A wonderfully functional and FREE program called Web Photo Publisher can come to your rescue.
  1. You can visit their sourceforge project page by clicking here
  2. And you can download it by clicking here
  3. If you enjoy the product consider donating
Q: The gallery update application told me it needed to resize an image and then died.
A: We've witnessed that a web server with 12MB of RAM allocated to PHP will not handle files over roughly 300KB. Sometimes a thumbnail gets generated but the big image can't get resized because PHP crashes.
Q: My new gallery (folder) won't show up in the flash but shows up in the update application. Or, my images aren't showing up.
A: If any of your digital photos have ICC profiles embedded PHP chokes when it tries to resize them. Adobe's Photoshop and ImageReady have a 'save for web' option that allows you to not embed the profile. If you have a large batch of files, I'd recommend using Web Photo Publish. It strips out the profile when resizing.