One of the things I’ve noticed when seeing slide shows created by others is that nearly everyone is either not adjusting the default frame rate of their movie, or they’re not setting it as high as it could be. By default, Flash MX 2004 creates new documents with a frame rate of 12fps, which is way too slow (please, Macromedia, up this). I always start with a setting of 31fps. Why? Animations are smoother, applications are more responsive, and ’31′ in particular has produced the most consistent cross-platform results for my work. (You can read more about the ‘magic frame rate’ here).
All that said, don’t be afraid to push your frame rates even higher than 31 — the online demos of SSP on this site all use 60fps. It doesn’t sound logical, considering that the human eye isn’t capable (or so I’ve heard) of detecting higher frame rates than 30 or so, but 60 adds some extra butter to the mix for a very snappy, smooth feel.
So in summary, make a habit of changing your movie’s frame rate each and every time you create a new document in Flash for use with SSP or anything else.
Mean Tangerine, maker of fine pixel fonts for Flash and more, has kindly made available to registered users of SlideShowPro two free pixel font families — MT Resolution and MT Disclosure — for you to use when building your slide shows. Mac and Windows versions are available as a single download. Login to your user account to get them both. Thanks MT!
How this snuck into the released 1.0.2 update when it had been fixed beforehand is beyond me, but a bug in regard to tnPath is still out there. If you set “tnPath” to an empty attribute, or remove it from the album element, and keep “Show Thumbnails” set to “True,” a white ‘loading’ box will still appear above the numbered navigation when engaged by a user. I had updated this (or so I thought) so that the box would only appear if a thumbnail image was found — so you can mix albums with and without thumbnails — but something fell out of the cart on the way to market. I’ll get it nailed down for 1.0.3.
It took a while, but SlideShowPro has finally found its way through Macromedia’s rigorous QA testing process and has been added to the Macromedia Exchange. Nothing special really — just a link back this site — but at least people will know that Macromedia has poked and prodded and given it the thumbs up.
You wanted forums? You got ‘em. Check out the new SlideShowPro support forums. They are open to anyone willing to register. Keep in mind that this is brand new, and there could be some formatting bugs along the way to work out, but from what I can tell it appears to be working just fine. So if you have any troubleshooting questions, requests, bug reports, or want to show off your creation, sign up and post!
(And by the way, I highly recommend PunBB if you’re looking for open-source forum software. Very easy to use, and the markup it generates is incredibly clean and light).
If you use OS X and are interested in applying watermarks to your images (a question that’s been asked of me a few times lately) you should definitely check out PicMark. Lots of filters, options, and very easy to use. And it’s free too.
I’ve received numerous requests from people outside of the US — and some that simply don’t like PayPal — that have inquired about alternate an alternate payment provider. I’ve looked at 2checkout, but they have a rather stiff sign-up fee (which is bizarre considering they take a chunk out of whatever you sell). If anyone has a suggestion for a service similar to PayPal, without sign-up fees, and can process international payments, please drop me a line.
News subscriptions
Stay where you are. We'll push the news to you.
Subscribe to RSS feed Follow SlideShowPro on Twitter
