SlideShowPro for Flash 1.9 public beta
Teased a couple of weeks ago, the 1.9 version of SlideShowPro for Flash is now available as a public beta for users to download and try out.
Since our initial news post about 1.9, we’ve received great feedback, and were able to integrate a couple of last requests, including:
Rollover navigation
Navigation Appearance has been updated to include a “Visible on Rollover” option that allows the navigation to only appear when the mouse enters the general area where the navigation is positioned. The navigation is layered above content, instead of being displayed inline, which leaves more room in the Content Area for content to display.
Revised Component Inspector panel layout
Flash’s Component Inspector panel has been pretty much the same for years now, and unfortunately there’s only so much you can do with it (display wise). That said, we figured out a clever way to group parameters together better, and position them underneath headers to make editing the component easier and more intuitive.
Startup
One thing the ThumbGrid demo we posted in the sneak preview exposed was a need to load an album, but not auto-load the first image (so that a thumb could be clicked before anything loads). So we integrated a new Startup parameter that includes an option to do this (“Load Album Then Wait”). We also took the opportunity to move the “Open at Startup” option for Gallery Appearance to this new parameter (“Open Gallery” now), which makes it much easier to find.
Updated wiki docs
Because there are a number of things different and/or new in 1.9, we’ve created a new wiki section for the beta. We’ll be posting revised and new documents here for beta testers to read, and will migrate them all over to the regular “SlideShowPro for Flash” directory when final.
Forums
If you’re interested in trying out 1.9 and would like to provide feedback or report an issue, please visit the forums. There’s a dedicated forum just for the 1.9 beta.
Thanks again everyone for the feedback thus far, and we’ll do everything possible to get 1.9 finalized and ready for everyone to use as soon as possible.
Every month loads of SlideShowPro users share their creations with us. From those submissions we pluck out the ten most creative, beautiful, interesting, or unique examples and post them here as well as in our monthly e-mail newsletter.
In no particular order, here are our top 10 user examples for January, 2008:
http://www.13creative.com/portfolio.htm
http://www.fassaert.com/
http://www.bradswonetz.com/
http://www.jeannettecorbeau.com/
http://www.yorkhovest.com/
http://www.michaelchichi.com/
http://www.cannonballagency.com/
http://yanksing.com/dimsum/dimsum.html
http://photography.jasperespejo.com/
http://sberube.net/
Note: To respect the privacy of our users, only those sites shared directly with us are considered or included. If you’d like us to consider your site for next month, please submit your site through our contact page or post to the Show & Tell community forum.
A few months ago, we tweeted a little tease about the next version of SlideShowPro Director. Code-named “Poindexter”, we’ve been hard at work making Director smarter than all the other kids in the class. Today, we’d like to give you a peek behind the curtain to show you just what we mean.
While we are still hard at work on 1.3 (a beta release is still some time away), we’ve posted a screencast which shows off the most prominent feature of Director 1.3, Smart Albums. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Currently in the alpha phase of development is SlideShowPro for Flash 1.9, which will mark the last major 1.x release. 1.9, believe it or not, will be the 75th update to the product in the past four years (not to mention the completely rebuilt ActionScript 3 version which came out a few months ago).
So for 1.9, we decided to tackle a few things that people have been asking about for a while now, including the following:
Full screen imagery
Ever since full screen functionality was added to SlideShowPro we’ve been asked if it was possible to load a different set of imagery while in full screen mode. To accommodate, we added a Content Format parameter that allowed SlideShowPro Director users the option of loading imagery formatted for full screen (with the caveat of extra-large imagery being loaded for the “normal” view). We knew it wasn’t ideal, but it would help until something better could be done.
1.9 will remove Content Format and replace it with a Full Screen Reformat option to load separate images when in full screen mode. Enter full screen, the current image will refresh with its full screen counterpart, and all imagery requested thereafter will be for full screen viewing. Exit full screen, and SlideShowPro will revert to loading your “normal” images. It’s literally the best of both worlds.
SlideShowPro Director will do all of this automatically for perfect images in both states. People who aren’t using Director will be able to load their own full screen imagery by adding a “fspath” attribute to an album in the XML file with the path to where the full screen versions are.
ToolTips
Another feature request that has been around…well, forever…is tooltips. You know, those little boxes that appear on rollover (like when hovering over HTML hyperlinks). SlideShowPro for Flash 1.9 will add these to all the navigation icons, and give you control over their type size, labels, color, delay, etc.
Content Area navigation
1.9 will also allow you to (optionally) browse backwards and forwards by clicking the right / left sides of the Content Area. You will be able to keep the current “one-click” configuration whereby the whole content area is one hyperlink, but this option will give users additional navigational controls.
The Content Area will also (optionally) display tooltips so your users know what will happen before clicking. And like the navigation tooltips, you’ll be able to change the text that appears.
Other stuff
A new preloader style called “Beam” (which shows a percentage text field surrounded by a radial spinner) will be included, a modified navIcons parameter that’ll allow you to swap out just the buttons you want (instead of being forced to replace them all), a new “Concave” gradient style for the navigation, and other improvements here and there.
Preview
We made a couple of demos to show the new functionality, the first of which you can see here. This example includes the new preloader animation and loads imagery formatted for full screen from SlideShowPro Director when loaded. Check out preview one.
The second demo is a quick example we threw together to show how SlideShowPro ThumbGrid can take advantage of the new Content Area controls. Using an event listener to detect the center click, plus a customized label to “Return to ThumbGrid”, the stacked components allow you to move back and forth between a contact sheet of imagery and the photos underneath. Check out preview two.
That’s all for now. If you’d like to provide feedback, please do through our contact page. We’d love to hear from you.
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