PictureIQ's TransForce can help. TransForce is a dedicated imaging server appliance that takes a single high-resolution image and re-purposes it on the fly for each request, whether it be for a 75-by-75-pixel GIF thumbnail, a 200-by-200-pixel JPEG for a main catalog page, an enlarged version of the picture for those who click to see a detailed view, a PNG for a phone in Japan, or an 8-bit GIF sized for a handheld device. TransForce can even adjust resolution depending on traffic conditions on the server. All the variants are created in real time; there are no files but the originals to store and retrieve, and those can be on any server on the network.

To use TransForce, you build virtual directories into the paths of image tags in templates. Graphics technicians or employees coding pages need to know nothing except that "sunglasses.tif" gets plugged in at the end of a path in a template, both on the thumbnail page and on the standard page. The server takes care of displaying a thumbnail GIF on one page and a standard 300-by-300 JPEG on another.

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In our tests, TransForce seemed to create and hand-off requested images as quickly as a traditional server could locate, retrieve, and serve stored ones. Image quality was consistently good, in part due to support for output that suits the task, such as GIFs with optimized and custom palettes. The time saved creating and managing files is a real plus, even if the images were stuffed through a batch grinder. Best of all, it takes almost no effort to add a file size for any new browsing appliance that hits the market.

TransForce uses dual Pentium III 800MHz processors, 1GB SDRAM, and dual 9GB 7,200-rpm SCSI drives in a 1U rack-mountable box. It transforms original images to the desired size and quality, then caches the tailored images. A company spokesperson says the first transformation of images take slightly longer than those subsequent, but producers can stuff the cache with a first version of images likely to be sought. You can use TransForce's rules to get even better performance. For example, you can have it serve up 75-percent quality JPEGs instead of more detailed (and thus larger) files during conditions of high demand. TransForce measures demand according to the request load it receives. It does not parse or respond to traffic on the Internet at large. However, since traffic on a Web server that uses the TransForce image server would probably parallel the traffic on the TransForce, the net result is about the same.

TransForce doesn't require a lot of hocus pocus integration with your network or your Web server since it works "off to the side." To begin, you connect it to the network, and hook up a monitor and keyboard to the provided console cable adapter. The Linux 2.4 kernel boots and initializes for the maiden voyage. Enter a login and password, and provide a static IP address, DNS, and gateway.

Once the hardware is set up, you can go to any browser to check that the device is configured properly. Browsing to the IP address of your TransForce server brings up a graphical management interface—no need to learn a proprietary scripting language.

TransForce is a separate server that works in conjunction with any Web server on any platform in a 10/100 network environment. You don't integrate the appliance with the Web server at all. You manage it by setting up rules using built-in software over an SSL browser graphical interface. Page designers then code image tags that call the rules into play.

The management software displays a menu of four choices:

• Server, for configuring server and cache settings.
• Edit, for building and testing rule sets.
• Activate, for turning on rule sets.
• Reports, for information about visitor requests to TransForce.

TransForce comes with a collection of commonly used rules, such as ThumbnailSuffix, PeakTraffic, and PocketPC, each designed with modifiable parameters for particular situations. For example, the ThumbnailSuffix rule applies whenever a request contains the characters _th at the end of a file name, and might cue TransForce to deliver a 75-by-75-pixel JPEG of the image, preserving the aspect ratio, and padding the narrow axis of a non-square image with a specified matte color. You can indicate that you want to deliver files of a certain format, resolution, or size by inserting virtual directories such as /MAKEGIF (for format), /85PERCENT (for resolution), or /THUMBNAIL (for size) into the path in the image tag.

Setting the initial rules is not much work, but TransForce gives you a lot of conditions to play with. You can fill in rule forms with conditions and actions to specify the virtual path rules, server demand rules, universal rules, browser type rules, file name rules (prefix or suffix), and cookie rules, which can be used to interact with anything you can supply a cookie for.

Once the rules are in place, a designer (or a Web page generation process) must replace traditional graphic file specifications with mark-ups that specify on-the-fly imaging instructions for TransForce. That's easily accomplished with a global search-and-replace in your Web editing and maintenance software, or within departmental templates.

If that's not simple enough, you can turn to the excellent documentation, which also explains options such as automatically adjusting brightness, flipping, rotating, and more. TransForce has separate manuals for IT and Web graphics people.

At $39,950, TransForce isn't for everyone, but enterprises that serve up a high volume of images, delivered in multiple sizes and traffic conditions, should take a close-up view of this latter-day Gutenberg contraption.

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