SlideShowPro News

04.30.07  |  IconBuffet icon set (and small Director preview)

The talented lads over at Firewheel Design have crafted a lovely icon set inspired by SlideShowPro, which includes an old-school projector, flash bulb, tripod, camera, and a few other photography-related objects. The icons are part of the IconBuffet community, where members trade icons like baseball cards. Additionally, some of these icons will work their way into the next version of Director, so you’ll be seeing these again in the near future.

04.26.07  |  Wedding Portfolio: La Piccola Selva

The simple, beautiful Italian wedding portfolio site La Piccola Selva is using SlideShowPro to present their collection of wedding photos from Lake Orta. SlideShowPro’s navigation is turned off, and laid on top of a simple stack of photo frames to give the photos a natural, organic touch. The flower petals and plant life around the bottom edges are especially nice.

04.24.07  |  Adobe Flash CS3 and SlideShowPro Compatibility

The “Design” and “Web” editions of Adobe Creative Suite 3 are now out the door. Both include the first Adobe branded version of Flash. Which begs the question — is SlideShowPro compatible with Flash CS3?

You bet! Like the move from Flash MX 2004 to Flash 8, SlideShowPro just works. There is however a slight change to your workflow when adding the component to a new FLA, plus a few finer points intermediate to advanced Flash users should be aware of. I’ll get to Flash in a minute, but first let’s talk about Extension Manager.

Activating existing Flash MX 2004/Flash 8 extension for CS3

The first thing you should do is install Flash CS3 per Adobe’s instructions. When complete, launch Flash and enter your serial number to activate the product. When the Flash finally launches, quit it.

Included with Flash CS3 is a new version of our old friend Extension Manager — now named “Adobe Extension Manager.” Launch it.

When open, you should see a drop-down field at the top of the app window. Select “Flash CS3″ from the list. If you already have SlideShowPro installed for Flash MX 2004 or Flash 8, you should see “SlideShowPro” in the extension list with an unchecked checkbox to its left. Click on the box to activate. SlideShowPro is now available for Flash CS3.

Adding SlideShowPro to an FLA

Here’s where things are a little bit different (and trust me, it’s actually better this way). In Flash CS3, select “New” from the File menu. In the left window pane of the dialog that appears, choose “Flash File (ActionScript 2.0),” not the default choice of “ActionScript 3.0″. Then click OK. When the FLA is created, add SlideShowPro to your movie from the Components Panel like you always do.

What happens if you create a new FLA with the default 3.0 setting? Open the Components panel, and you’ll see. SlideShowPro simply isn’t available. This is a good thing, for it prevents people from accidentally adding SlideShowPro to an unsupported FLA type.

More on Flash Player 9, ActionScript 3.0

All that said, there’s nothing stopping you from changing the Publish Settings of your FLA once it has been created. If you change the publish settings from 2.0 to 3.0, SlideShowPro won’t work. All you’ll see is a white box. You can however publish to Flash Player 9, but you can’t use the ActionScript 3.0 setting. The same goes for any parent movie you try to load SlideShowPro into. Unless the parent is published as 2.0, the component won’t work there either.

Conclusion

So what does all this version stuff mean, really? For nearly everyone using SlideShowPro, not much. ActionScript 3.0 is bleeding edge, and unless you’re using SlideShowPro as part of another application that must be coded in the same language type, this won’t affect you in the least. Just make sure you always select 2.0, and you’ll be golden.

That’s all! Enjoy CS3.

04.23.07  |  Big Director update coming

We’re hard at work on the next update to SlideShowPro Director, which will feature a near-complete overhaul of its user interface. Why the big change? Because nearly a year has passed since the first release of the administrative app, and there are innumerable ways in which it can be improved, expanded, and made easier to use. Brad and I have been listening to your feedback in the forums, kicked around a few ideas of our own, and have made considerable progress over the past few weeks.

If you’re a Director user, but haven’t offered feedback, we want to hear from you! We’ve got the car on blocks with the hood popped open, so if there’s something that bugs you about Director, or ways in which you feel the app can be improved or made easier to use, now is the best time to make your voice heard. Jump into the Director feature request forum and fire away.

In the coming weeks we’ll be posting screenshots, highlighting changes, and again requesting feedback from you. Stay tuned.

04.16.07  |  Photoshop CS2 Companion Script for SlideShowPro

Developer Matt Johnson has churned out a free script for Photoshop CS2 that quickly publishes slide show images and thumbnail images — and the requisite XML file — for SlideShowPro. It’s really easy to use. Simply open the original images you want to use in your slide show, start the script from within Photoshop, and the script spits out all the content SlideShowPro needs. Not only that, but if a photo has XMP data embedded in it, the script will populate the XML file with that data as well. Check it out.

04.09.07  |  Button pack preview: “Quartz”

As promised, here’s a preview of the first button pack to be offered for sale as part of the forthcoming SlideShowPro update that’ll introduce custom navigation icon functionality. The pack’s name is “Quartz,” and as you can see below, it will come with two different sizes of icons to work with — a 24px square version for taller navigation bars (usually as a result of using thumbnails for the nav), and a 16px version for the slimmer ones. The icons are semi-transparent, and will work with just about any colored background.

In case you’re curious, these screenshots are not Photoshopped. They show a beta build of SlideShowPro with the icons swapped out. More to come.

04.02.07  |  Coming soon: custom navigation icons and button packs

One of the questions I’ve been repeatedly asked over the past couple of years is whether SlideShowPro’s default navigational icons can be swapped out. Or more specifically, “is it possible to keep the numbered/thumbnail navigation area, but replace the other buttons with my own?” And every time I’ve replied no, no no.

Well, I decided to do something about it and am now working on the next update to SlideShowPro which will allow you to quickly and easily replace any of the icons with your own.

Not only that, but I’ll soon be offering (for sale) a collection of “SlideShowPro Button Packs” to replace SlideShowPro’s default icons. Each pack will contain two sizes for each icon — 16 pixels square and 24 pixels square. The 16px versions look best with SlideShowPro’s default numbered navigation, 24px with the thumbnail navigation. The icons will also be semi-transparent PNGs, so you’ll still be able to change the color of your navigation bar and the button pack icons will change color as well.

I’ve got one button pack designed and ready to go (a preview of it is coming soon), and will work on a couple more before releasing everything publicly. Expect to see it all in a few weeks!

04.01.07  |  Almasy Photo

Dan Almasy is using SlideShowPro on his wedding photography site. SlideShowPro is presented in a pleasing, clean interface with soft grays, whites and blacks, and housed in a stylish radius shape. Almasy is also using images for his albums in the gallery (by selecting the “Thumb Crop to Fit” Album Type parameter and formatting his images to fit) for a custom, easy to navigate look. And of course there are lots of great photographs to look at as well. Check it out.