**************************************************************************
*                      BluPlusPlus  -  JAlbum Skin                       *
*                                                                        *
*                                                                        *
*                By: Armond Avanes (Armond555[at]yahoo.com)              *
*                   http://bluplusplus.armondavanes.com                  *
**************************************************************************

Revision History
=================
This document can also be found online at the following address:
http://bluplusplus.armondavanes.com/history.html



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.8 - January 27, 2006 - Changes since 3.7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Viewer Remarks are now optionally available on index pages.
  Requester: Arn Hyndman
- Croatian language pack has been updated.
  Great thanks to Ivo
- Dutch language pack has been updated.
  Great thanks to Hugo Geyskens
- The new features provided by JAlbum's improved 'Edit' tab and the new
  "Use thumbnail for folder icon" option on the 'Advanced' tab, are fully
  supported.
- If both "Link to scaled down images only" and "Copy originals" are
  checked on the JAlbum-Main tab, a "download image" icon and link will
  be generated under each scaled slide image. In this way, you may have
  both Move-Forward Facility and original image download link active.
- ".divx" and ".xvid" are supported movie types now!
  Reporter: G_ROM
- The "Choose Random Icon for Folders" option on the BPP-General tab
  has been removed as JAlbum now supports this feature directly via the
  "Use thumbnail for folder icon" option on the JAlbum Advanced-Main tab.
- Bug-Fix: The Viewer Remarks feature now works correctly on servers that
  do not recognize the "<?...?>" notation as a valid PHP code block.
  Great thanks to Robert Camner
- Bug-Fix: Nikon cameras' focal length multipliers have been corrected in
  "cameras.properties"; thus the 35mm equivalent focal lengths are
  calculated correctly.
  Reporter: Theron Keller


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.7 - October 29, 2005 - Changes since 3.6
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Croatian is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Ivo
- Romanian is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Alexandru Tudor Constantinescu
- Dutch language pack has been updated.
  Great thanks to Lennart Aangeenbrug
- Bug Fix: An issue with all-numeric album titles has been resolved.
  Reporter: Arnar Sigmundsson
- Bug-Fix: A security hole in the Viewer Remarks feature has been fixed 
  through which a malicious user could bypass the login process to enter 
  Admin mode.
  Great thanks to Robert Camner
- Bug-Fix: Viewer remarks with unclosed embedded html tags are now handled 
  correctly.
  Great thanks to Robert Camner
- Bug-Fix: A cosmetic Frame Preview bug has been fixed.
  Reporters: Paul Van Cotthem, Robert Camner & Al Geddis


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.6 - August 13, 2005 - Changes since 3.5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Hungarian is now a supported language.
  Great thanks goes to Gabor Funk
- German language pack has been updated.
  Great thanks to Matthias Waller
- 35mm Focal Length Multipliers file (cameras.properties) has been updated
  to include more cameras and models.
- Bug Fix: When "folderFooter" is defined in a "meta.properties" file, 
  the footer is now applied to slide pages in addition to index pages.
  Reporter: Benjamin
- Bug Fix: A rare issue with creating the MySQL database table has been 
  resolved (Viewer Remarks feature).
  Great thanks to Jeff for reporting and to Robert for fixing the problem
- Bug Fix: An issue with 35mm equivalent focal length calculation, which
  in some rare cases terminated album generation, has been fixed.
  Reporter: Troy


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.5 - April 30, 2005 - Changes since 3.4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Bug Fix: The "Flash" field (photo metadata) is interpreted correctly in
  numeric mode which was ruined in the previous version.
  Reporter: Kaya
- Bug Fix: No more warning message on web server when you enable 
  Viewer-Remarks feature.
  Reporter: lucnaus


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.4 - April 27, 2005 - Changes since 3.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Ukrainian, Swedish and Russian are now supported languages.
  Great thanks and credits go to Serhij Dubyk, Daniel Hasselqvist and
  Aleksey Zholdak
- The BluPlusPlus "copyright" variable was renamed "albumCopyright" to
  resolve a conflict with the JAlbum variable with the same name.
- Bug Fix: "bpp-generated" has been added to the 'Ignore Pattern' on the 
  JAlbum Advanced tab so that no files in "bpp-generated" folders are 
  processed when 'Output to image directory' is chosen on the JAlbum Main 
  tab.
- Bug Fix: Javascript errors no longer occur when keyboard navigation is
  enabled.
  Reporter: Oscar
- Bug Fix: Double quotes in image comments are handled correctly.
  Reporter: Kevin
- Bug Fix: The hyper links from slides to original images are correctly
  encoded now (if 'URL-encode links' is ON).
  Reporter: Alexander Skwar
- Bug Fix: The "Flash" field in photo metadata is interpreted correctly.
  Reporter: Kaya


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.3 - April 06, 2005 - Changes since 3.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- BluPlusPlus is again runable under Java v1.3.x. Some v1.4 APIs were
  mistakenly being used in the previous version.
- Slovak is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Peter Bachraty
- Italian language pack has been updated.
  Thank you Marlon for your continuous support
- The rendering issues of Frame-Preview are fixed.
- The visibility of pages' bottom shadow can now be controlled via the
  style/theme.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.2 - March 30, 2005 - Changes since 3.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- URL encoding problem has been resolved. No more plus ("+") sign you'll
  get on the URLs, which makes them compatible with more servers.
  Great thanks to Oliver
- Catalan language pack has been updated.
  Great thanks to Pere Grau


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.1 - March 16, 2005 - Changes since 3.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Some minor coding modifications to make the skin compatible with the 
  latest JAlbum (the second release-candidate) changes.
- Bug Fix: BPP can be run in Console mode again. Some accessibility
  issues were causing problems when running in this mode which have been
  all fixed now.
- Bug Fix: The problem has been resolved with selecting the frame types 
  on the user interface.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 3.0 - March 04, 2005 - Changes since 2.10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- BluPlusPlus now uses a new method of creating frames. Based on
  XBorderFilter, this allows far greater control over frames than was
  possible previously. Frame styles can be set separately for slide images,
  movie images, thumbnails and folder thumbnails. There is a "Preview"
  action present too. You can see a preview of your selected frame even
  before creating your albums!
  Great thanks and credits go to Jens Troeger and Gordon Dodge for their
  great contribution and support on this feature
- BluPlusPlus now supports a "Viewer Remarks" feature that allows those 
  who view an album to leave remarks about the slide images. This feature 
  requires that albums be accessed from a web server that supports PHP and 
  MySQL. An administrative mode is provided to allow password protected 
  access for remark editing and deletion. This feature is enabled from the
  "BluPlusPlus-Viewer Remarks" tab.
  Credits and great thanks goes to Robert Camner for his outstanding
  contribution on this feature
- Text truncation now permits control over the maximum number of characters
  that will display in the top path bar and in thumbnail captions. This
  prevents an "overflow" situation that could ruin the appearance of
  albums. Text truncation is enabled on the BluPlusPlus-General tab.
- Any EXIF or IPTC information can now be displayed for thumbnails as part 
  of their captions or tooltips.
  Requester: Pieter Coertzen
- The new "Audio Console Dimension" field permits one to specify the exact
  dimensions desired for the audio player console. (if "Show Audio Console"
  is enabled of course)
- The slide show delay interval can now be set separately for the movies.
  Added new variable ('slideShowMovieDelay') in this regard with
  corresponding GUI support.
- Norwegian is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Pål Rønningen
- Italian language pack has been updated.
  Thank you Marlon for your continuous support
- The default "ignore pattern" has been changed to exclude the files that
  begin with '.' or '_', or have extensions ".wav", ".mp3", ".wma", ".voc",
  ".mid", ".au" and ".rm". They will not be processed as images by BPP.
- The BPP user interface has been changed. Two new "Advanced" and "Frames" 
  tabs have been created to cover some of the more advanced features, and
  the framing related things.
- The rarely used 'slideCommentPrefix' and 'slideCommentPostfix' features 
  have been removed from the BluPlusPlus-Slide tab.
- For the sake of consistency, the 'Slide Page Thumbnail Ratio' has changed 
  from a decimal to a percent. For example, the default is now "50"
  (for 50%) rather than "0.5".
- Bug Fix: Incorrect image shifting on mouse-over no longer occurs when
  Context Help is set to 'StatusBar' or 'Both'.
  Reporter: Jonathan Cohen
- Bug Fix: Embedded HTML tags in the Album Title field are handled 
  correctly.
  Reporter: David Clayworth
- Colored bands and decorations around images are now referred to as
  "Frames" (replacing the former term "Borders").


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.10 - January 10, 2005 - Changes since 2.9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- A minor modification to run under JAlbum v5.2 as well as the previous
  versions. There is a minor change in JAlbum v5.2 which makes it
  incompatible with the previous versions of this skin.
- A fix to OutOfMemory problem for the big albums.
  Great thanks to Igor Lubashev for his contribution on this part


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.9 - October 23, 2004 - Changes since 2.7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Album processing is significantly faster when "Include Jump-To-Page
  Facility" is specified on the "BluPlusPlus/General" tab.
  Great thanks to Robert Camner and all other guys who kindly helped me to
  track and fix this issue.
  Reporter: Felix
- Bug Fix: The "Jump-To-Page" dropdown menu now correctly reflects the
  customized folder names (set by 'folderTitle' in meta.properties).
  Reporter: Chane Cullens
- Bug Fix: The navigation button bar is no longer misaligned if "Up Arrow"
  is the only icon.
  Reporter: Alexandru-Tudor Constantinescu
- Bug Fix: "External Home Path" behaves correctly when the path starts
  with "/".
- Bug Fix: When "Link to scaled-down images only" is selected, BPP no
  longer incorrectly generates an "original" slide html page.
  Reporter: Scott
- Bug Fix: The small "overlay" icons used on index pages to indicate that
  a thumbnail represents a folder or a movie now display correctly on all
  platforms and browsers.
  Great thanks to Joseph Gan for reporting this issue and contributing
  the fix for it.
- Bug Fix: The pages' layout has been made more compact by the removal of
  unnecessary reserved space for features not selected for a particular 
  album.
  Reporter: Yann
- Bug Fix: BPP now works in console mode with online printing service ON.
- Support has been added for the "mypix" online printing service.
- The generated HTML code is more standards-compliant.
  Great thanks to Gorm Vognsen Jensen
- It is now possible to specify both the height and width of the movie
  player window on slide image pages; the dimensions are set on the
  "BluPlusPlus/Slide" tab. To accomplish this, the 'movieSlideRatio' user
  variable has been replaced by the 'movieSlideDimension' user variable.
- More cameras are supported with the 35mm equivalent lens focal length
  calculation
- French language pack has been updated.
  Great thanks to Eric Marcon.
- Danish is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Gustav Johnsen


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.7 - August 18, 2004 - Changes since 2.6
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The "EXIF Display Mode" drop-down menu on the BluPlusPlus Slide tab has
  been renamed "Meta-data display mode" and a new option has been added to
  display only the contents of IPTC fields ("iptc-only").
  As well "EXIF Display Fields" is renamed to "Custom Metadata Fields".
- Renamed the 'standard' metadata display mode to 'custom'
- Added GUI support for Custom Metadata Fields in BluPlusPlus/Slide tab in
  order to make it easier for users to customize what appears in the photo
  metadata information window for "custom" mode.
- If a slide image contains only IPTC information and no EXIF information,
  BPP correctly detects the presence of IPTC information and enables the
  "i" icon that toggles the display window.
- The photographic field display method in "all" and "verbose" modes have
  been improved a lot both from look&feel and data categorization point
  of view. Now IPTC and JPEG metadata information are separately detected
  and displayed.
- Users can now create their own tag labels for EXIF/IPTC information
  display through the use of "texts/photo-metadata.properties" file.
  Obviously it has internationalization support too (like
  "texts.properties").
  Requester: Gordon Dodge
- The focalLengthMultiplier user variable has been removed; the 35mm focal
  length equivalent is calculated more accurately for both portrait and
  landscape photos. If enough information does not exist for the calculation,
  the 35mm equivalent focal length value is calculated based on the constant
  values contained in the "cameras.properties" file.
  Great thanks to Olivier Biot
- Czech is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Jan B. Krejci
- Bug Fix: The slide page title is correctly set.
- Bug Fix: BPP now works correctly if the root of a local drive is specified
  as the image source directory.
  Reporter: Nick A. Carter
- Bug Fix: The centimeter unit is correctly considered now when calculating
  the 35mm equivalent of Focal Length Multiplier for some cameras (such as
  Fuji).
  Reporter: Nick A. Carter
- Bug Fix: The folder icons specified within the album are no longer getting
  ruined in the case the source image and output directories are the same
  ("Output to image directory" is specified on the JAlbum Main tab).
  Reporter: Jesse Lee
- Bug Fix: BPP now works correctly in console mode.
- Bug Fix: All file names for BPP provided files are now in lowercase; some
  web servers were having trouble with mixed case files.
  Reporter: Robert Camner


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.6 - July 29, 2004 - Changes since 2.5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Version 2.6 requires JAlbum version 4.5 or greater (this allows album
  generation to speed up considerably).
- Incompatibilities introduced by JAlbum 4.5/4.6 have been resolved.
- If a custom icon is used for a movie thumbnail, a small icon is added to
  the thumbnail image so that the viewer can clearly see that the slide
  will be a movie.
- Any EXIF or IPTC information can now be displayed below the slide images
  as part of the caption.
  Requester: Joseph Gan
- A title for an album can be optionally specified on the
  BluPlusPlus-General tab (corresponding "title" variable). This title
  appears in the topbar and links to the topmost index page as well as the
  slide and index page titles. If left blank, the album defaults to the
  name of the album source (input) folder.
  Reporter: Lev Gorenstein
- The ESC (escape) key has been added as a keyboard shortcut for stopping
  a slide show in progress.
- Unused BPP resources (icon sets, borders, and styles) are no longer
  copied to the output folder, thus greatly reducing "file bloat".
  Requester: Robert Camner, Al Geddis and Gordon Dodge
- When a slide image is clicked to show the original image (only effective
  if "Link to originals via scaled images" is selected on the JAlbum Main
  tab), the image is shown in an html page, rather than having the image
  file linked to directly; this permits the disabling of image downloading
  if save protection is enabled. Also, if save protection is enabled,
  the "download to disk" icon will be suppressed.
  Reporter: Antonie Posthuma
- An "original image" slideshow is now possible by clicking on an image
  to show the original image and then starting a slide show either by the
  keyboard (using the 's' key) or by the navigation icons. This feature is
  available only if "Link to originals via scaled images" is selected on
  the JAlbum Main tab.
- If "Link to originals via scaled images" is NOT selected on the JAlbum
  Main tab, clicking on a slide image will take a viewer to the next slide
  in the album. This feature, enabled by default, is set via the
  "Include Move-Forward Facility" checkbox on the BluPlusPlus-Slide tab
  ('includeMoveForwardFacility' variable). A more handier approach than
  changing the mouse position and clicking on "next" arrow.
  Reporter: Mike and Lev Gorenstein
- The "Jump to" menu in the upper right corner of the topbar has been
  enhanced; it is now possible to go to any "sibling" folder directly.
  (Note that this works only for "immediate sibling" folders.)
  Reporter: Rob, Yevgeny Kazakov, Al Geddis and Gordon Dodge
- The slide show delay interval can now be set separately for images with
  comments and images without comments (to enable viewers to have more
  time to read comments). Added new variable ('slideShowCommentDelay') in
  this regard with corresponding GUI support.
  Requester: Andre Payant
- A new Navigation Tips feature can be enabled on the BluPlusPlus-General tab.
  If enabled, an icon is placed in the upper right corner of all index and
  slide image pages; when clicked, a popup box appears giving the viewer a
  list of navigation keys. The newly added variable
  ('includeNavigationHelpTips') controls this feature.
  Requester: Lev Gorenstein
- BluPlusPlus is full XHtml compliant now! :-)
  Reporter: Robert Camner and Gordon Dodge
- The cookie expiration period for slide shows has been extended to 1 hour
  for non-cyclic slide shows and 24 hours for cyclic slide shows.
  Reporter: Robbie
- French is now a supported language.
  Great thanks to Jean-Michel for his contribution
- Traditional Chinese is now a supported language.
  Great thankd to Brian, Ng Chi Ming for his contribution
- A "favorite" icon now displays in the viewer's browser URL location box
  when a BluPlusPlus album is viewed.
  Requester: Lev Gorenstein 
- Bug Fix: The EXIF information box is no longer toggled by a keyboard
  shortcut (the 'i' key) if a given image has no EXIF information or
  "EXIF Extraction" is OFF.
  Reporter: Robert Camner
- Tooltip content set on the BPP-Slide and BPP-Index pages are cleaned
  up by deleting any embedded HTML tags. The HTML tags were causing
  problems.
  Reporter: Lev Gorenstein
- Bug Fix: When using "Random Icons for Folders", the dimension of the
  chosen icon is correctly calculated.
  Great thanks to Igor Lubashev for reporting the bug and sending the fix 
  patch
- Bug Fix: The thumbnails on the slide pages are no longer distorted when
  the FixedShape filter is applied. Instead the maximum thumbnail width
  and height are considered.
  Reporter: Christian Presse
- Bug Fix: BPP no longer has difficulty with invalid negative numbers in
  EXIF information fields.
  Reporter: Bob Strand


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.5 - May 30, 2004 - Changes since 2.4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Removed the JDK 1.4 dependencies. Now it's fully runnable under JDK 1.3


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.4 - May 27, 2004 - Changes since 2.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- All JAlbum built-in filters can now be managed by the newly introduced
  GUI :-) They're all grouped and accessible under 'Filter management' tab.
  No more need to manually configure the filters using user variables in
  the Advanced tab.
- Choosing any style/theme will lead you to the user variable default
  values for that specific style. Currently some default values are defined
  there for each style so as you change the style, its specific values
  (such as the border types, icon set and so on) are loaded and affected
  on GUI. They're all defined in "res/styles/<StyleName>/theme.properties"
  files and easily can be changed.
- Added new 'includeBlendingEffectOnSlides' and
  'includeBlendingEffectOnIndexes' variables to control whether or not to
  include the blending effects on slide and index pages. Also added GUI
  support for better managing the stuffs (See Index and Slide tabs).
- Added new 'slideCaptionContent' variable for controlling the exact slide
  information you want to see on each slide page (at the bottom of the 
  slide). GUI support is provided at Slide tab.
- Added new 'cyclicSlideShow' user variable for controlling whether
  to include cyclic Slide Show or not. GUI support is provided at Slide
  tab.
- Added new 'contextHelpStyle' user variable (with corresponding GUI
  support on General tab) to control the context help style using
  in album. The default is 'ToolTip' but you can specify to show the
  context help in 'StatusBar' or the 'Both'.
- Added new 'navigationBarVerticalLocation' user variable (with
  corresponding GUI support on General tab) to control the navigation bar
  vertical location in album. The default is 'Top' but you can specify
  to show it at the 'Bottom' or the 'Both'.
- Variable 'thumbnailNoteContent' renamed to 'thumbnailCaptionContent'
  as well as 'folderNoteContent' to 'folderCaptionContent' for better
  reflecting the goals!
- Added new border types:
  bracket_black, bracket_horizontal_black, bracket_vertical_black,
  bracket_white, bracket_horizontal_white, bracket_vertical_white,
  shadow_artsy, shadow_autumn, shadow_christmas, shadow_expedition,
  shadow_gray, shadow_hakki, shadow_dark
  Contributed by: Georg (Shorshe) & Gordon Dodge
- Added 2 new icon sets: black & white
  Contributed by: Georg (Shorshe)
- Added "White" album theme/style suitable in combination with the new
  "black" icon set
- Added many new "top-bar" graphics to "res/topbars". All in per-style
  basis. You can change the defaults by editing the styles (CSS files)
  and point to whatever topbar you want.
- No more vertical scrollbar on pages when it's not needed!
- Bug Fix: The movies and sound annotations are copied regardless of what
  the "Copy Originals" status is, because they're all needed in any case!
- Bug Fix: The movies and voice annotation files are copied into "slides"
  folder instead of the root to avoid any problem with Windows Media Player
  (it does not play the media files outside of the current folder!).
- Bug Fix: The movie thumbnails were not shown with the right aspect
  ratio on slide page, when the .thumb image for movie is specified.
  Great thanks to Yevgeny Kazakov for reporting and fixing this bug.
- Bug Fix: If the Slide Ratio was set to any value other than the default
  0.5, the columns with the slide thumbnails were horizontally aligned to
  the left in rather than center as intended.
  Great thanks to Yevgeny Kazakov for reporting and fixing this bug.
- Bug Fix: The FixedShape filter is now treated correctly.
  Reporter: Joseph Gan
- Bug Fix: The sibling slides preloading/prefetching works now if "Link To 
  Originals" is selected.
  Reported & Fixed By: Mark Fyvie


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.3 - March 08, 2004 - Changes since 2.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added new slide prefetch facility. You can control whether or not to
  prefetch the sibling slides of the current one using 
  'prefetchSiblingSlides' variable.
- The amount of information displayed on index pages for both the slide 
  and folder thumbnails are fully customizable now using the newly 
  introduced 'thumbnailNoteContent' and 'folderNoteContent' 
  variables. A long awaited and greatly voted feature!
  Reporter: David Hart
- Scrollbar styles (colors actually) are back again :-)
  Really great thanks to Mike for coming up with a good solution for this
  long lasting bug!
- Fixed the movie thumbnail size calculation bug!
- The padding and margins of the styles changed a bit to look better on 
  Opera browser too. The pages were containing some spaces around. Fixed 
  now!
- Added Brazilian-Portuguese translation support.
  Brilliant thanks go to Ricardo Pescuma Domenecci for his great job.
- 'actionType' variable renamed to 'iconSet' for better reflecting its real
  usage.
- Fixed a javascript bug on Shutterfly.com order printing service.
  Thanks to David Hart for reporting and fixing this bug.
- A scripting bug-fix on 'albumfiles.txt' when it was containing different
  photos from different folders.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.2 - February 04, 2004 - Changes since 2.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Movies are handled/played correctly on different platforms and different 
  browsers.
  Thanks to Robert Camner, Gordon Dodge and Al Geddis for bringing up this
  issue and fixing the problem :-)
- Slide and index background background sounds are now handled way better 
  and working just fine on different platforms and different browsers.
  Thank you Robert & Gordon for your active contributions.
- Added 'showAudioConsole' user variable to control the display of 
  background voice annotations' console.
- Russian translation added.
  Great thanks to Yevgeny Kazakov.
- Polish translation added.
  Great thanks to Pawel Piskunowicz.
- Added support for Shutterfly.com online printing service. This is 
  controlled via 'shutterflyPrintingSupport' variable (can also be set via
  the GUI).
- Added new variable ('includeSaveProtection') for controlling whether or
  not to protect the album images from being saved via right-click or
  context-menu.
  Great thanks to Nachtzuster for contributing on this feature.
- Added new variable ('movieSlideRatio') for controlling the size of the 
  movie slides.
- Added 'SlideDimension' as a new attribute for customizing slide 
  thumbnails' tooltip content. Previously supported 'Dimension' attribute
  leads you to the original file dimension not the slide.
- 'includeExternalHomeInPath' variable is not used anymore and instead a 
  new and more flexible variable ('externalHomePath') is introduced!
  You can exactly contol the external home path by this variable and it's
  no more hardcoded to just one level upper!
  Thanks to Robert Camner for raising up this issue for having more control.
- Choosing random icons for the folders is really done in random order now
  rather than just choosing the first image constantly.
  Thanks to Ricardo Pescuma Domenecci for his code contribution.
- Blend-Effect on slide pages is back there working fine ;-)
  Great thanks to Ricardo Pescuma Domenecci for tracking the problem and 
  contributing a solution for.
- The folder icons outside the albums are threated correctly now. They're 
  copied inside the album to keep the consistency.
  Reporter: Igor Lubashev
- The long paths do not blow out the entire top path bar anymore! Instead 
  the page will get a horizontal scrollbar to cover the whole.
- Fixed the problem caused by slideshow play/pause actions when the pages 
  were downloaded with slow connections (bad layout effect because the 
  play or pause buttons were inserted later by JS).
- The default action type changed from 'bright-matte' to 'universal' to 
  fit the best with the rest of environment and styles. 'bright-matte' has
  been mostly designed for bright backgrounds as its name suggests!
- Improved GUI to automatically detected the available langauges, action 
  and border types. They're no more hard-coded! You can easily add your 
  own types in proper directories and BPP will automatically detect and 
  show them on GUI.
  Thanks to Yevgeny Kazakov for raising up this idea :-)
- Added "About..." tab to skin GUI with a list of important links for 
  quick access to resources.
- Some minor bug fixes and improvements.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.1 - December 17, 2003 - Changes since 2.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Improved GUI to better manage the things. Now all the controls are 
  visible on screen :-)
  Reporter: Burt G.
- Updated Italian translation.
  Thanks to Marlon.
- The original image is no more opened in the same windows as the slide is. 
  It has its own window now!
  Reporter: Peter Bijkerk
- Encoding is no more fetched from language pack. Instead it's got from 
  JAlbum itself (more consitency as well as covering a bug).
- Added GUI support for selecting the album generation language. No more 
  manual setting is needed!
- Defining an invalid folder icon path is no more flawing the whole album
  generation but handles it by informing the user of. Also invalid slide or
  index background image path will lead to a warning.
  Reporter: Robert Camner


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 2.0 - December 14, 2003 - Changes since 1.11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- BPP has got its own GUI for doing most of the skin customizations :-) It's
  far easier and simpler now to customize your favorite skin! Thus the 
  minimum JAlbum version, to run BPP under, will be v4.1.
  Great thanks to David Ekholm for adding GUI support.
- Added per-folder user variable control :-) All of the album level user 
  variables can be overriden for any of the album folders and their subfolders 
  (via "variables.properties" meta file which can be placed within any folder).
- Added per-folder theme/style! Each folder can have its own theme/style by
  specifying "style" variable in variables.properties (e.g. style=Bluish.css).
  Now you can easily use different themes for each of your sub-albums :-)
  Not specifying anything for a folder will lead to the default style, user 
  has chosen on JAlbum's "Main" tab.
- Added many new styles/themes such as Arcs, Artsy, Autumn, Canvas, 
  Christmas, Expedition, Glacier, Gray & Hakki.
  Great thanks to Yevgeny Kazakov & David Hart for contributing on this 
  part.
- Added Spanish, Catalan and Dutch languages support.
  Brilliant thanks go to Manel Rodero and Peter Bijkerk for their
  contributions.
- Added voice annotation support for folders. They will be played on the
  first index page of the folder. Please refer to UserGuide.txt for more
  information on usage.
  Thank you Marlon for bringing up this issue.
- Added background image support for folders. They will be displayed on 
  the index and slides pages of the folder. Please refer to UserGuide.txt 
  for more information on usage.
  Thank you Marlon for bringing up this issue.
- Added 3 new variables to control the folder thumbnail border attributes 
  separately as many users had requested this feature :-).
  'folderThumbnailBorderType' for the type, 'folderThumbnailBorderSize' as
  for size and 'folderThumbnailBorderColor' to control the color.
  All of them are optional and not defining them will cause the skin to use 
  the slide thumbnail borders attributes for folders too.
- The dimension of the thumbnails on slide pages can now be separately
  controlled via the newly introduced 'slidePageThumbnailRatio' variable
  which is calculated against index page thumbnails' size.
  Reporter: Igor Lubashev
- Thumbnail labels on index pages no more collide when they're too long.
- Added a hack to overcome the problem while 'chooseRandomIconForFolder'
  is "true" and the randomly chosen icon is in GIF format. JAlbum was 
  converting the slide and thumbnail images to JPG and caused inconsistency 
  problems (BPP was refering to GIF while the actual file was in JPG).
  Repoter: Bob
- Fixed the slide pages' thumbnail distance from the screen edge.
  Reporter: Robert Camner
- Customizations of the album root folder's title (via meta.properties) 
  are considered now if there are any.
  Reporter: Yevgeny Kazakov
- The scaled down icons for the folders (those directly selected or chosen 
  via the Random method) are preserving correct aspect ratio.
  Brilliant thanks to Igor Lubashev & Yevgeny Kazakov for reporting this 
  bug and contributing the patch.
- The specified folder icons are no more copied blindly IF there are 
  thumbnails generated for them. The thumbnails will be used instead to
  decrease the album size and more important the download size.
  Great thanks to Yevgeny Kazakov & Igor Lubashev for their ideas/solutions
  on how to fix this flaw.
- The texts of the thumbnails on index pages are in bold to be more 
  eye-catching!
  Thanks to Igor Lubashev for bringing up this issue.
- The drop shadow at the bottom of the pages is no more looking bad when
  using it with different themes (background colors). The shadow is 
  dynamically generated at runtime (JS) so is easily adapted with different
  background colors without having to have different resources for each.
- The key assigned for going to index (from slide pages) or one level upper
  (while you're viewing an index), has been changed from "Up Arrow" to 
  "Page Up" for better navigation (as "Up Arrow" is used for scrolling the 
  page itself).
- Fixed the wrong generated table tags for EXIF Information (caused 
  problems if the browser were a bit picky!) as well as some XML style tag
  formats in HTML and missing TYPE attribute of <SCRIPT> blocks.
  Great thanks go to Greg Kolanek for reporting these flaws.
  
IMPORTANT RELEASE NOTES:
* The following changes are for making all the variable names consistent:

- All the boolean like variables (with yes/no values) have been converted 
  to real booleans. So from now on, BPP is accepting "true" and "false" 
  values for those variables!
- All the variables with "Exclude" postfix have been renamed to "Include"
  and the "Exclude*" variables are deprecated now. So the "true" value for
  these variables will mean "Okay! Include The Feature" from now on!
  This is just for simplifying the stuffs as it's easier to think of "true"
  for "OKAY! Include" and "false" for "Do NOT Include".
- All variables start with lower case now!
- All the variables with underscore ("_") in their names have been renamed 
  to remove the underscore. 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.11 - November 12, 2003 - Changes since 1.10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added keyboard navigation support for slide and index pages. This can be
  controlled by the newly introduced variable 'ExcludeKeyboardSupport'. 
  Please refer to UserGuide.txt for key mappings.
  Special brilliant thanks go to "Dan Stefanescu" for contributing this 
  feature.
- Added German language support :-)
  Great thanks go to Henning Waltemathe for the contribution.
- Added 3 new variables to control the thumbnail border attributes 
  separately.
  'ThumbnailBorderType' for the type, 'ThumbnailBorderSize' as for size 
  and 'ThumbnailBorderColor' to control the color.
  All of them are optional and not defining them will cause the skin to 
  use the slide borders attributes for thumbnails too.
  Reporter: Robert Camner
- Added new border type ('black-frame') which fits better on 'Black' 
  theme/style. Contributed by David Hart. Great thanks for his effort.
- Bug-fix on bad index page layout when the folders had got BIG customized 
  icon via "meta.properties".
  Reporter: Nick A. Carter
- Bug-fix on cell sizes of thumbnails on index pages. They were not 
  calculated correctly, leading to a not so suitable layout.
- Folder titles in index pages are all aligned in one row.
- Jump-To-Page combobox is no more get included if there are only one 
  page (even if 'ExcludeJumpToPageAction' variable is "false")!
  Reporter: Marlon
- Original image download icon (on slides) is not displayed when there 
  isn't any original image (When "Link to scaled-down images only" option 
  is selected).
  Reporter: Marlon


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.10 - November 09, 2003 - Changes since 1.9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added support for WMA sound/voice annotation format.
- Fixed the index pages column alignments (especially in the cases when 
  there are not so many columns).
- Fixed the play icon bug in IE. There was a '_' sign at the bottom right 
  corner when the icon was hovered. Great thanks to "Dan Stefanescu" for 
  fixing this bug.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.9 - November 09, 2003 - Changes since 1.7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Upgraded the minimum requirement of BluPlusPlus to JAlbum v4.0.1 because
  of a bug for "External Home" link inclusion, "Jump To Page" bug fix which
  needed some of the v4.0.1 APIs. By having "Jump To Page" action OFF, 
  you can also use v3.5 as the minimum.
- Disabled icons' (actions') tooltips are correctly displayed on Mozilla
  (bug-fix).
- "Jump To Page" combo-box on slide pages is now correctly filled with the
  right slide URLs (bug-fix). Moreover, in some cases, the bug was causing 
  ArrayIndexOutOfBoundException while generating the album.
  Reporter: Peter Bijkerk
- Top bar folders/paths links are fixed to point into the first index page
  on the current folder (both for index and slide pages).
  Reporter: Al Geddis
- There was a bug on when the file/folder name was too long to fit in one 
  row (on index pages). The alignment of the corresponding thumbnail was 
  not correct (it was some pixels upper). It's fixed now!
  Reporter: Robert Camner
- Fixed the navigation icons vertical position on slide pages. They were
  right up against the blue bar. Now they're a bit lower in order not to
  bleed into the top bar.
  Reporter: Robert Camner
- Corrected the spelling of 'EXIF_Fields' variable (it was wrongly spelled 
  as 'EXIF_Fileds'). But for keeping the backward compatibility both the
  correct and incorrect spellings are checked.
  Reporter: Robert Camner
- 'Exclude_FirstLastPage_Actions' variable now has the same effect on the 
  index pages as for the slides (to exclude the first/last page/slide 
  actions).
- BluPlusPlus is internationalized now! And Italian has been added as the 
  first officially supported non-English language (texts available in 
  "texts_en.properties" and "texts_it.properties" files).
  Brilliant thanks to Marlon for bringing up this issue and contributing on
  Italian translation :-)
- Tooltip contents for the folder thumbnails as well as the slide ones are 
  fully customizable now by 'ThumbnailTooltipContent' and 'FolderTooltipContent' 
  user variables.
  Thanks to Marlon for bringing up this issue.
- If user does not enter any number for 'FocalLengthMultiplier' variable
  (or enter zero or another invalid number), the skin will automatically 
  calculate this factor for each slide, based on EXIF meta data. Thanks 
  to 'Lykle' for sharing his code on this part.
- Total slides count are displayed at the top bar of the index pages. 
- Multiline slide comments, or having both embedded and external slide 
  comments, are aligned better along with the comment prefix and postfix 
  (bug-fix).
  Reporter: Al Geddis
- Thumbnail tooltips are displayed on older browsers too (e.g. NS 4.xx).
  Reporter: Al Geddis
- Movie support added for WMV format. Now they're correctly linked from 
  index to slide pages and played fine too.
  Reporter: Al Geddis
- The first, last, next and previous actions title have been improved at the
  slide and index pages to better indicate the situation. 
  Reporter: Marlon
- Added a new theme/style ('Black').
  Thanks to Robert Camner for his contribution on this part.
- Three new user variables have been introduced ('BorderType', 'BorderSize'
  and 'BorderColor') to control the look&feel of the slide and thumbnail
  borders. Four different border types are being supported now :-) The
  default one (shadow), Exhibit-like frame, solid color-based border and no 
  border type. More can be added easily!
  Thanks to Robert Camner for bringing up the idea. This is greatly based 
  on Robert's idea and his sample implementation.
- Added 'ActionType' Variable to control the actions icon type. And two new
  icon sets are introduced. One set ('dark-matte') is optimized for dark 
  backgrounds such as the new 'Black' theme and the another one ('universal') 
  is background independent.
  Great thanks go to Robert Camner for his contribution on this part :-)
- A disabled EXIF icon is displayed whenever there isn't any EXIF information
  available for the slide, for keeping the consistency so that the various 
  navigation icons line up better from slide to slide. BUT if you turn off
  the "Photography Data Extraction" option on "Advanced" tab of JAlbum, no
  EXIF action/icon will be included at all. Thank you Robert & Marlon for 
  the idea and bringing up this issue.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.7 - October 23, 2003 - Changes since 1.6
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- BugFix on top bar path links (they were all pointing to an invalid 
  address at the index pages).
- Fixed the problem (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException) that zero-length text 
  files (image comments, titles and other text files) were causing due to 
  a bug in JAlbum's readTextFile() API. Thanks to Marlon for reporting this.
- Finally slides comment horizontal alignments and vertical positions are fully 
  customizable now via 'SlideCommentHorizontalAlign' and 'SlideCommentVerticalPosition' 
  user variables. Many users have requested this feature. Hope this can make 
  all of them happy :-)
- Slides comment prefix (the word "Comment:" in black) is no more hard-coded
  and user can control this value via 'SlideCommentPrefix' variable. Also
  a new possibility added to have postfixes for the slides' comments and is
  controlled via 'SlideCommentPostfix' variable. These two variables are useful
  when you want to enclose the whole comment inside an HTML tag or so.
- All the PNG icons converted to transparent GIF format for better 
  compatibility with all the browsers (as GIF transparency is supported far
  better even on newer browsers too!) - Thanks to Marlon & David Hart
  for bringing up this thread/issue.
- All the navigation icons (except the UP one) are a bit smaller now 
  (27x27) to have more focus on the slide image itself rather than the 
  bells and whistles - Thanks David for mentioning this small but important 
  issue.
- New folder icon :-) It's beautiful and I like it!
- Added a new user variable called 'ChooseRandomIconForFolder' for controlling
  whether or not to automatically choose a random image from the image 
  containing folders as folder icon IF there isn't any specific icon defined 
  by 'folderIcon' in meta.properties. Setting the value to "false" will cause 
  the standard folder icon to get chosen IF no specific icon is defined.
- If an image other than the original one is specified for a folder (via 
  folderIcon in meta.properties) or a random image is selected, a mini 
  folder icon is appended to that image to indicate that it's a folder not
  an ordinary image. Thanks to Nick A. Carter for the code contribution :-)
- You can specify to include the link of your album containing home/parent 
  directory at the top bar. And this can be controlled via 'IncludeExternalHomeInPath'
  variable. This is useful when you have several separately generated albums 
  all in one folder and want to be able to traverse among them. Thanks to 
  Al Geddis for bringing up this issue :-)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.6 - October 12, 2003 - Changes since 1.5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Per-folder metadata is getting supported via "meta.properties" inside each 
  folder :-) You can specify the title, header, footer and icon of the 
  folders as well as the titles and descriptions of their containing files.
  Please refer to "Usage Tips" section in ReadMe.txt to see the details.
- More information provided on thumbnail tooltips. You get image size, 
  dimensions and comment if presents.
- Movies are no more directly referenced at index pages and slides' side 
  bar thumbnails. Instead a file with naming convention like "moviefilename.ext.thumb" 
  will be looked up at the same movie file contained directory. If presents, 
  it will be used as thumbnail for the movie otherwise the standard movie 
  icon will be picked!
- Fixed the hyperlinks color in the included headers and footers was so 
  that they are quite readable now! Thanks to Al Geddis for reporting this
  bug.
- A minor bug fix (on a script error) when "Copy original images" option
  was not set.
- Thumbnail shadows are now lesser than the slide shadows for having a more
  beautiful and miniature view of them. Great thanks to Valentino Ciciarelli 
  for the code contribution :-)
- Improved the top navigation bar. The image & page numbers are displayed 
  at right side of the screen giving it a far better look and more readable 
  view. Thanks again to Valentino Ciciarelli for the contribution.
- No more bad layout (messed up navigation buttons) on slide pages when the
  images are small! Credit goes to Valentino Ciciarelli.
- New "copyright" user variable added to include your own copyright note at
  the bottom of all the index and slide pages. Great thanks go to 
  Nick A. Carter for the code contribution.
- [For Developers Only] All the beanshell & java scripts have been migrated 
  (while refactored) and centralized to common.bsh, slide.bsh, slide.js & 
  index.bsh files for better maintenance! ".htt" files are no more containing 
  any scripts!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.5 - September 30, 2003 - Changes since 1.4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Movie support added for AVI, MOV and MPEG formats on both index and slide 
  pages.
- More voice annotation formats are supported (MP3, MID and VOC).
- Voice annotated images are marked in index pages so they can get easily
  distinguished.
- Picture/Movie/Folder names on index pages are hyperlink now.
- Comment line on slide pages is removed totally to free more space IF there 
  isn't any comment for the current slide.
- Minor cosmetic change on EXIF display Look&Feel.
- 'ExcludeSlideShow' variable added to control the inclusion of Slide Show
  facility of slide pages. This can be useful if your browser does not have 
  a good JavaScript support to use Slide Show feature.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.4 - September 19, 2003 - Changes since 1.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added next & previous N (which can be controlled) thumbnails to each slide 
  page to simplify the navigation which enables you to do long jumps without 
  leaving the slide. You have the option to define the number of thumbnails 
  to include (via 'SlidePageThumbnailCount' variable) as well as to turn the 
  feature totally off (controlled by 'ExcludeSlidePageThumbnails').
- Added new quick page navigation actions. On each index and slide page, there 
  is a quick page accessor within the current image directory that you can 
  easily 'Jump' to any index page you want. This can help a lot for navigation 
  on big directories. As usual, it can be controlled by 'ExcludeJumpToPageAction' 
  variable.
- Used the "&#xbb;" unicode-specifier instead of the ">>" character in the 
  title bar so that the output be more portable (as of JAlbum v3.6, it's 
  supporting unicode)
- Footer comments and copyright information are now displayed correctly on 
  older browsers too (line-breaks are kept now).
- Slide page actions are aligned to center on old browsers too (they were 
  left aligned).
- Blue strip of the top bar and bottom shadow of the pages are now fixed to 
  work on the older browsers correctly (they were not displayed at all).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.3 - September 14, 2003 - Changes since 1.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Shaddow of the thumbnails trimmed a few pixels to allow more on a row 
  (better use of screen space). 
  The default layout is 6x3 now - Thank you Markus
- Added new navigation buttons for directly going to the first and last pages 
  of an image set (both on index and slide views). The buttons' insertion 
  in slide pages can be controlled via 'Exclude_FirstLastPage_Actions' 
  variable. So that if you want a simpler layout with less actions, you can 
  exclude them.
- Added description to the actions (as tooltip).
- File/Image 'date' moved to bottom of the image (slides), beside the image 
  name, to free more space at the top.
- Image sizes are displayed in KB for less than 1MB and in MB for more than 
  1MB files
- The album last modification date is inserted at the bottom of each page
- Setting transparency color for a few of the icons - Thanks to Marlon for 
  mentioning
- Text colors of current style/theme (Bluish) are now a bit improved to be 
  more readable
- Added new style/theme (Bluish2). The title bar text colors are in yellow 
  to be more and more readable on older browsers (NS 4.x and so). The 
  comments and other informations are in a blue consistence with the overall 
  look&feel - Thank you Marlon for the idea :-)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.2 - September 01, 2003 - Changes since 1.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Voice annotations can be added to the images.
- Added more actions the viewer can do, to the bottom of each image slide 
  page. One for downloading the original image and another for accessing to 
  the voice annotation if there is any.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.1 - August 29, 2003 - Changes since 1.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The overall background color of the index and slide pages changed to make 
  them more consistence with the theme.
- Folder & Movie icons are now transparent.
- Preview screenshot added!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BluPlusPlus 1.0 - July 29, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Initial Release! No Changes!! ;-)
