SlideShowPro News

04.22.08  |  SSP for Flash 1.8.4 / SSP for Lightroom 1.2.5 released

Small update that patches an issue with the Dissolve transition style in both products, plus tweaks to permalink loading and album preview formatting in the Flash version.

Both updates are free, as always, and can be downloaded through your account center profile page.

04.17.08  |  Director 1.2 Beta 4

As betas usually go – two steps forward, one step back. With the new metadata functionality we introduced in Beta 3, we inadvertently broke the link template functionality. Also, the new EXIF/IPTC dialogues were not showing up in IE 7. We’ve fixed both of these issues with Beta 4, now available via the account center.

As always, we appreciate your feedback (good or bad) through the 1.2 beta forum.

04.16.08  |  SSP for Flash 1.8.3 / SSP for Lightroom 1.2.4 released

New versions of SlideShowPro for Flash and SlideShowPro for Lightroom are now available. Version 1.8.3 of SlideShowPro for Flash includes a handful of bug fixes related to transitions and scaling (full version history here), while the 1.2.4 build of SlideShowPro for Lightroom simply brings the gallery up to the same build as the Flash version.

Both updates are free, as always, and can be downloaded through your account center profile page.

04.16.08  |  Director 1.2 Beta 3: EXIF/IPTC support expanded

Although the major focus for Director 1.2 has been implementing the new API system, there was one other thing we have been itching to improve for some time now. As many of you have pointed out, most images are embedded with a rich set of metadata about when the image was taken and what settings were used. This valuable data is known as EXIF and is inserted into the file by the camera itself at the time the image is taken. Likewise, it is common for images to include IPTC data, which is data that is input in imaging software such as Photoshop or Lightroom. Many photographers use this data to identify the copyright owner, give the image a caption, and so on.

Up until now, Director has been mostly ignoring this data. However, starting with 1.2 Beta 3, we’ve revamped the album settings tab to expose quite a few EXIF and IPTC fields. We’ve also exposed more Director data, allowing you to quickly create dynamic captions and titles with a mix of Director, IPTC and EXIF data.

Director 1.2 Beta 3 is now available in the users area. Please do remember it is still in the beta stage, so use with care. Screenshots of the shiny new stuff:

04.07.08  |  Taz Goldstein

One of the more unique customizations of SlideShowPro for Flash, the video portfolio site of LA based director Taz Goldstein has a clever layout and great content to match. The layout slices an image of Taz in two, with the top area comprised of a SWF, and the bottom being regular HTML. The SWF loads with a darkened version of the top half of the photo, then SlideShowPro for Flash appears with the same image as the first, but at full brightness, textual navigation cues set inside, and a tad shorter so that the darker version still shows underneath the navigation (which has its background alpha set to semi-transparent. From there the image changes to videos to present three pieces from Taz’s portfolio, of which the second one is really quite funny — especially for fans of the 70s Battlestar Galactica (of which I most certainly am). Check it out!

04.04.08  |  SlideShowPro for Lightroom 1.2.3 released

This release brings the Lightroom version of SlideShowPro up to date with the latest Flash build, plus a new export option: permalinks. This has been available in the Flash version for a while, but wasn’t added to Lightroom because of the technical issues in doing so. But they’re in there now, and make it quite easy to copy a direct URL to a particular piece of slideshow content. You can read more in the updated SlideShowPro for Lightroom User Guide (the new “Extra options” chapter). Update can be downloaded here.

04.04.08  |  SlideShowPro for Flash 1.8.2 released

Version 1.8.2 is now available for download. This release incorporates the changes to permalink functionality described earlier, a rewritten chapter on permalinks in the SlideShowPro for Flash Customization Guide, plus a couple of other small fixes. Update can be downloaded here.

04.03.08  |  Permalink problems explained. Important changes ahead.

Lately there have been reports of issues when using the permalinks option in SlideShowPro for Flash. The problems stem from two factors unrelated to the component itself, but important nonetheless. First, there’s a bug in the latest version of Flash Player 9 (9.0.115.0) for Internet Explorer on Windows that prevents javascript communication between SWFs and HTML (with AS that doesn’t use ExternalInterface — more on that in a minute). Two, in another IE related problem, SWFObject 2.0 — the popular javascript method for embedding SWFs — has issues when using VBScript, which is part of the process for how permalinks are used in IE.

Now, both of these problems are related to the fact that SlideShowPro for Flash’s method for using permalinks dates back to Flash Player 7, before Macromedia made Flash/Javascript communication easier with their ExternalInterface class in Flash Player 8. It’s precisely these old-school ways of communicating with Javascript that’s causing both of these issues.

We could wait and see if Adobe fixes this problem in the next build to Flash Player 9, but if history is any indication (been doing this longer than I’d care to admit), this holds a good chance of not being resolved; especially since Adobe has been making numerous security/scripting changes to Flash Player 9 lately, and I doubt they’ll be in the mood to open holes to allow outdated code to work.

With that, the next point update to SlideShowPro for Flash will get rid of the old school way and support ExternalInterface instead, which will cut out a bunch of unnecessary code and make permalinks easier to deploy. The downside though is that users of Flash MX 2004 will not be able to use permalinks. They will only work when published from Flash 8 or Flash CS3.

But as we’ve mentioned before with the updated transition styles, the vast majority of people these days are using Flash 8 or newer, so it’s a change that shouldn’t affect that many people.

So if you’re having permalink problems, hold tight. A fix is on the way soon.

04.03.08  |  SlideShowPro for Lightroom 1.2.2 released

Small patch to fix a couple of bugs found in the previous build. Click here to read the updated version history.

04.02.08  |  Adobe Lightroom 2.0 public beta out in the wild

Want to see what’s coming in the next big update to Adobe Lightroom? Well, you’re in luck. Adobe has just released a public beta for Lightroom 2.0 that new or existing Lightroom users can try out. If you don’t own Lightroom 1, it’s a 30 day trial. If you do, you can use it until August 31, 2008.

As for SlideShowPro for Lightroom, we’ve been testing it with earlier (private) 2.0 betas, and everything works as expected. So you can use the extension with it just the same.