Picstory

Picstory is a reliable Java-based application designed to create stories out of your picture collection in HTML format for easy publishing on the web.

Manual creation mode

Picstory relies on an algorithm that requires user intervention. Unlike modern applications that generate web presentations, Picstory assumes that you have the necessary XML and HTML knowledge for writing some of the code yourself.

Check out the help manual for tweaking the dedicated parameters

Luckily, the application includes a PDF help file that guides you through the whole process. The core engine of Picstory is a JAR file that should be placed inside My Documents section, in a newly created folder named ‘pics,’ together with the picture collection and an XML file.
The latter needs to be created from scratch and should contain your story, in pure HTML code. The presentation should be paid a high amount of attention and should be written in accordance with the instructions from the help document.

Results

Once you have accomplished all of the above, launch the JAR application and press the ‘Build’ button. If the compiling is successful, the application outputs the presentation in a folder called 'webversion.' The files in this folder are the ones that you can test inside a browser and furthermore, upload to your personal website.

Edit the story

In case you want to make changes to the story, you don’t need to upload the whole project and overwrite the files all over again. It’s enough to copy the modified XML file in order to view the adjustments.

Bottom line

To sum it up, Picstory fulfills its purpose, but with considerable efforts from the user. On the other hand, this is an outdated application that does not comply with modern web design technologies. Nonetheless, because it carries out the job it was built for, Picstory deserves a try.