Been a while since we made one (they’re more work than they appear, trust me), but the release of SlideShowPro ThumbGrid warranted a new screencast showing how the component loads data from SlideShowPro for Flash / Director, and how the layout can be adjusted to create a wide variety of thumbnail interface options. Check it out if interested.
Teased earlier today via Twitter (you are following us, right?), we’ve added a new component to our stable of products: SlideShowPro ThumbGrid.
Before we get into what ThumbGrid is, first a little history. Ever since a thumbnail navigation was added to SlideShowPro for Flash we’ve been asked the same questions over and over by those looking to customize the component.
One, how can I hide everything in SlideShowPro for Flash’s navigation except the thumbnails (and use my own buttons)? Two, can the navigation be displayed vertically? Three, can I display more than one row of thumbnails in a single viewing? There were others as well, but they all alluded to the same request — complete flexibility and control over navigation thumbnails.
Total flexibility wasn’t possible within the confines of SlideShowPro for Flash (and we didn’t really need to add even more parameters and code), so we started from scratch, broke out of the box, and built something entirely new.
Think of SlideShowPro ThumbGrid as a “sister” component to SlideShowPro for Flash. You hide SSP’s navigation (if you want to), assign its instance name to ThumbGrid, and publish. The two components communicate with each another, and all of ThumbGrid’s data is loaded from SlideShowPro for Flash (so there’s no duplication of data or additional XML files to code). When paired with our CMS product SlideShowPro Director, you can instantly populate ThumbGrid.
Design wise, you can do everything from build a single horizontal row of thumbnails (like the embedded nav in SlideShowPro for Flash), a single vertical row, or multi-row/column layouts with however many rows / columns you want. The thumbnails render horizontally or vertically, so you can design a wide variety of thumbnail navigations with a single component.
In the spirit of complete flexibility, and because most Flash developers would turn it off anyway, ThumbGrid doesn’t have an embedded navigation. You interface with it using just the mouse, or you can augment the component with your own external buttons that call methods in ThumbGrid. Mix together all the methods/events that both SlideShowPro ThumbGrid and SlideShowPro for Flash offer and you can theoretically build a duplicate version of SlideShowPro for Flash’s navigation, if you really wanted to.
There’s plenty more to read on the product page itself, and you can see a live “Kyoto” example here as well.
We hope you like it, and we can’t wait to see what you do with it!
SlideShowPro for Flash 1.8.9.7 released
New point release that tweaks a few edge-case issues in the AS2, AS3 and Standalone versions of the component. See what’s been updated in the version history.
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