I am looking for a software program or to make a software program that
will allows someone to "browse" a directory remotely or in a
stand-alone program.  For example, I have a folder on my computer
called "My Pictures" with 1000's of sub-directories with 10,000's of
pictures inside those sub-directories.  I want to be able to easliy
send something to my family that allows them to browse the directories
and see the directory names and file names.  I don't want to leave my
computer on or have to have my computer on the internet to do this. 
Ideally it would be a file that anyone could open (some of my family
is not very computer literate).

It would be perfect if they could maybe
check the directories that they would like and have it generate a
report back to me so I can burn them copies of the photos.

I'm an experience Java programmer so if there is anything that would
help me program this I'd like to know.  If there is already software
that does this I will just buy it.

Thanks.

What you appear to want is something that will export your directory
structure (eg: Directory and File names ) into a format that others
can read.

Personally I would build a series of HTML files and distribute those
for local browsing - one big file would be painful.

Generating the report would, I think, require kicking off a little App
that adds the file name to a list.

Realistically what you really want is a system to perform selective
directory synchronization.