Images Tab

The Include images checkbox toggles whether or not to include images when spidering and building the channel. If images are included, then the Color depth dropdown can be specified to make the images black and white, 4 shades of gray, 16 shades of gray, 256 colors, or thousands of colors. Higher depth images consume larger space and can only be viewed on a handheld device which can display that number of colors.

Beginner tip: To view higher color depths on the handheld: Start the Viewer on the handheld, from the menu, choose Options > Preferences and select the similar depth from the Screen depth dropdown.

Power user tip: There is an upper boundary on the size that a Palm database record can hold. If there is a large, high color depth image, it will either be resized downward or its color depth reduced, in order to fit into the output, rather than leaving an empty blank.

The Show alternative text tags for images not included in output checkbox toggles whether or not to show the alternative text (an image's 'alt' tag) for an image, for images that were not retrieved and included into the output file. This feature is not yet implemented

To fit on a handheld screen, use a thumbnail for any image larger than specifies 2 fields for height and width of images. If an image exceeds these dimensions, then a thumbnail will be used. When a thumbnail is used, there are 3 possible ways to handle thumbnails:

• Always link the thumbnail to a second, full-size copy A thumbnail will be included inline with the rest of the document, and the image can be tapped with a stylus to show the full size image. Beginner tip: In the viewer, often the full-size image will be larger than the handheld screen, so can pan around the full-size image by dragging the stylus on the handheld screen.
• Only use the thumbnail, don't include the full-size version in the channel's output Only the thumbnail will be included--the full-size version will be removed, allowing the output to require less storage space on the handheld.
• Only link the thumbnail to a second full-size copy if the full size version is smaller than specifies 2 fields for height and width of the full size image. If the full-size image is smaller than these dimensions, it is included in the output; if bigger than these dimensions, it is removed.

Reformat converted images which exceed 60kb by reducing allows you to set how you want to handle images with a very large filesize. When converted to the image format used by the handheld viewer, a single image must be under 60kb in size. If you have images that are very high/wide, or are included with a high color depth, the converted image might exceed the 60kb limit. This setting allows you to specify which algorithm you want to use to reduce the images filesize. You can specify to automatically reduce the image dimensions so that it fits under 60kb, or to automatically reduce the color depth so that it fits under 60kb.

Power user tip: The reason for this 60kb uppper limit on a image's filesize is because of the amount of data a single Palm database record, and the amount of data that can be drawn in an offscreen window in the handheld viewer.

Power user tip: It takes a bit extra time for the parser to convert a large image, detect that it exceeds 60kb, and then convert it again to fit under 60kb. For faster processing time, if your output file has a lot of large images, consider using some of the other settings on the images tab to reduce color depth and/or dimension for all files.