I just wanted a simple way of creating an html page that showed some pictures I had taken. Don’t really want to use Facebook nor Picasa because I’m stubborn. I would also want to keep my albums in my /home directory. Not really certain if its possible with Picasa, but I know its possible with the tool I am using.

I also wanted to avoid applications that run in the web server and need to handle access. I just want to create an html quickly and be able to have it locally and in whatever web server.  Whatever web server means that it does not need to support php, Python nor cgi….  Finally, I am looking for something that is self-contained in a directory.  This will give me the opportunity to just “copy/paste” stuff to and from servers.

I first found the Porta project, but quickly  discarded it because it was only for windows. In the webpage it stated that it could be used with wine which almost convinced me to install it. But I kept looking for something that was more Linuxy and kept Porta as a plan B; in case I did not find anything else that suited my needs.

After looking further, I found Jalbum and immediately fell in love :).  it’s easy to use and creates really nice albums. It installs effortlessly in my Fedora 14. It’s Java based and very user-friendly.  My Awesome window manager sometimes has communication problems with Java based GUIs like Jalbum; but I consider it a minor nuisance that I could easily ignore.

In a matter of minutes I created my first album and uploaded it to the universities servers. No need for php nor any fancy scripting language.  Just plain old html and css (AFAICT). The album I created is located here.  It contains some pics from my trip to Zackenberg, a scientific research station in the high arctic.