"Visitors will have the same rich viewing experience whether they are using a Mac or PC and can experience .Mac Web Gallery photo albums in their choice of views, including mosaic, grid, slideshow or carousel," claimed Apple officials.

Movies - which can be restricted to online viewing or enabled for download for use on a computer, iPod or Apple TV - can be higher than DVD resolution, while photos are said to be suitable for printing at sizes up to 40.5 by 50.8cm.

".Mac Web Gallery is an awesome way to share photos and movies on the Internet with friends and family," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "You can share your favourite photos and movies with anyone on a Mac or PC, and they can turn them into high-quality prints as well as contribute photos to your site using a web browser or email."

To allow users to take advantage of the new features, Apple has increased the storage space associated with .Mac accounts from 1G to 10G (2G to 20G for Family Pack customers). Additional storage can be purchased. The maximum email attachment size has also been increased to 20M, and Apple claims to have improved spam filtering.

Other changes to .Mac mean that, in conjunction with iWeb 08, users' sites can incorporate dynamic web widgets including Google Maps, Google AdSense and .Mac Web Gallery albums, plus HTML snippets from sites such as YouTube. Personal domain names can also be used for .Mac websites.

A .Mac subscription costs $US99.95/$A139.95 per year for an individual account or $US179.95/$A249.95 for the Family Pack with one master account and four sub-accounts.