help with index file that reads and displays subdirectories for a photo album

[w33d5]

I'm looking for a little help in making an index file to read the subdirectories in the same folder and display the links in a table.

i am loading photo galleries using google's picasa onto my host and since picasa exports the albums as folders (I am using a simpleviewer template) i would like to use a script to read the subdirectories in the \photos directory (where the index file would also be located) and display the folders in a clean table format, say 3 columns by an infinite amount of rows...i'm guessing that paging (p1, p2, p3, etc...or a next/previous link) would be too difficult. the key is so that if i create a new directory that is readable that it shows up in the table.

any suggestions on either which scripting language would be best javascript, php, etc...

here's the structure

\photos
------\album1
------\album2
------\album3
------\album4
------\album5
------\album6
------\album7
------\album8
------\album9

essentially how i would like the index page to show links to those directories in a table format.

album 1 | album 2 | album 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
album 4 | album 5 | album 6
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
album 7 | album 8 | album 9
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

so that when i add a folder called album 10 the index page will pick it up and add it to row 4 column 1.

ultimately i would like to take it further and add a file in all the directories called collage.jpg that is unique to the particular album and have a thumbnail of that photo show up above the link in the table.

[epots9]

in order to read the folders from the server you'll need to use server-side scripting (PHP, ASP.NET, atc.)

good luck