SlideShowPro for Flash / Lightroom / ThumbGrid updates
Today we’re releasing point updates for SlideShowPro for Flash, SlideShowPro for Lightroom, and SlideShowPro ThumbGrid.
SlideShowPro for Flash is now at version 1.9.2 and includes bug fixes to both the AS2 and AS3 extensions. This release also includes an updated “Standalone” version that now features the source FLA and class files used to create the SWF. This way if you want to add or modify something with the standalone version and you also own Flash, you can use these files to publish your own “standalone” SWF for your projects. You can read the full version history here.
SlideShowPro for Lightroom has been updated to 1.4.1 to update the web gallery to the latest version of SlideShowPro (noted above).
SlideShowPro ThumbGrid version 1.2.2 fixes an instantiation issue when nesting the component as a child of a parent Movie Clip, and also includes a new setup() method. What does it do? Well, it’s for those times when you’d like to instantiate ThumbGrid after SlideShowPro for Flash has already fired its galleryData event. This way you can create an instance of ThumbGrid “on demand”, and populate it with data from the current album that’s loaded in SlideShowPro for Flash. We’ve added a downloadable FLA to the SlideShowPro ThumbGrid demo page to demonstrate how it works.
As always, all these updates a free for all registered users of the products. Login to your profile through the account center link at the top right of the page to download.
After a few weeks of beta testing (thank you beta testers!), Director 1.3 has reached the release candidate stage. At this point, we are feature-locked and barring any unforeseen bugs this will be the version that goes final in the coming days. The new release candidate is available for download in the account center.
So, if you have been testing, please give this version a try and let us know if something doesn’t behave as expected. We encourage you to leave any feedback, good or bad, in our beta forum.
This is a quick end-of-week release to fix a few small issues with the 1.9 release of SlideShowPro for Flash. Mainly maintenance stuff to work around some specific use cases we were made aware of. To see what’s in it, check out the updated version history. SlideShowPro for Flash users can download it through the account center.
A few weeks ago as part of a “coming soon” preview for SlideShowPro for Flash 1.9 we posted a ThumbGrid related demo where the components were stacked on top of each other, and you could navigate between each interface through mouse clicks. It turned out to be a rather popular, with lots of people asking “how’d you do that?” So we’ve put together a more current demo using the latest versions of both components. If you are a SlideShowPro ThumbGrid user and would like to see the FLA used to create this, you may download it here.
Here’s a preview of the “Layer” demo in action.
SlideShowPro for Lightroom 1.4 released
Hot on the heels of SlideShowPro for Flash 1.9 comes the 1.4 version of SlideShowPro for Lightroom. This release includes all of the new features, updates, and fixes from the 1.9 version, plus a couple of new features that are specific to the Lightroom version.
First, as announced earlier, we’re now offering our two “Pearl” and “Quartz” button packs for free due to the sheer number of people who wanted a way to use the packs in Lightroom. We could have offered a “special edition” or whatever of SlideShowPro for Lightroom to include these, but we felt it was simpler and better this way. So in 1.4 there’s a “Buttons Style” option in the Navigation panel that gives you five button options to work with.
Second, we’ve found over time that the “wet floor” effect that SlideShowPro for Lightroom can render causes stability issues within Lightroom on a few machine configurations. To get around this, 1.4 includes a new “Render in Live Preview” checkbox to uncheck rendering within Lightroom, but to keep it on in the published slideshow.
A few parameter names changed in 1.9, so the default templates that come with SlideShowPro for Lightroom have been updated as well.
To read more about the new features including tool tips, content area interactivity and more, we recommend looking at the SlideShowPro for Lightroom User Guide at our wiki.
This update is free for all users of SlideShowPro for Lightroom, and can be downloaded through the account center.
This is a quick maintenance release to help bypass security errors that can occur when requesting images from a remote domain. This update is only really necessary for those who were having issues with this specific issue, so there’s no need to update unless you are using ThumbGrid in this manner. Registered users of SlideShowPro ThumbGrid can download the update through the account center.
After two months of development, the 1.9 version of SlideShowPro for Flash is now available for download. In case you haven’t been following our news lately, there are a number of new features in this release that make it one of the more significant updates to the product since it was first introduced. Here are a few of the highlights.
Both ActionScript 2 and 3 versions updated
It’s not easy coding everything twice, but all of the new features and updates for the 1.9 version are included in both components. So if you haven’t moved on to ActionScript 3 yet, you can still use the ActionScript 2 version in your existing projects.
Full screen reformatting
SlideShowPro has had a full screen option for nearly as long as the Flash Player itself, but it handled full screen pretty much the same way as every other Flash app out there by reusing the same content. This worked fine for some users, but in situations where the degree of change from in-HTML to full screen was extreme, image quality could be rather crappy.
So now SlideShowPro for Flash treats full screen as a unique state by (optionally) requesting an alternate set of images that are formatted for viewing full screen. Users of SlideShowPro Director have it especially easy, for this content is published for you on-demand automatically.
Tool tips
Stretching back as far as memory allows, people have been asking for tool tips. What are they? They’re those little boxes that magically appear in web browsers when you mouse over HTML links that contain title data. Flash has no way of producing these on its own, so we incorporated our own. They appear over all the navigation buttons, as well as the new Content Area (see below). And like everything else in SSP, you can change their visual style, text labels, as well as delay / timeout.
Content Area interactivity
In previous versions of SlideShowPro, clicking on slideshow content could only do one thing — launch a hyperlink. The 1.9 version changes this with enhanced functionality by offering a three “zone” interface whereby the far left/right zones of the Content Area allow you to browse forward and backward, while the middle “action” zone allows you to launch hyperlinks (just like before) but with additional options including toggling playback, firing an event, or toggling full screen mode. These options are also available in the traditional one “zone” interface, just like before.
As part of the Content Area interactivity changes, the aforementioned tool tip functionality has been incorporated into it as well. See below for an illustration of how it works.
New “Beam” preloader
We wanted a new preloader that could communicate two things. One, the content request, and two the amount of bytes loaded. This gives users more informative feedback so they have a better idea of what’s happening with the component, especially in the new full screen mode where larger image requests can take longer than normal. We thought the end result was good enough to make it the new default preloader, so we hope you like it.
Rollover navigation
In previous versions of SlideShowPro you could either show the navigation, or not show it. Version 1.9 changes that with a new “Visible on Rollover” option that only displays the navigation when the mouse pointer enters the component space. It then waits a few seconds, and if the user is no longer interacting with the component it disappears. This gives users a more minimal option for showing the navigation that doesn’t intrude on the amount of Content Area space available for their content.
More control over captions
By popular demand, you can now show either the caption title, caption text, or both. Also new is a completely revised caption title setup whereby you can “build” the titles you want using static and dynamic text (populated through tags). For example, if an album title were “Italy 2009″ you could display “Favorite Photos from Italy 2009″ by entering “Favorite Photos from {albumTitle}”. See the captionHeaderText wiki doc for a complete list of tags you can use.
Revised Component Inspector panel
Flash’s Component Inspector panel is far from perfect, but for now its the means through which component modifications are made. In an attempt to make the panel easier to peruse and use, parameters are no longer in alphabetical order but rather grouped together under headers. We’ve also moved the most often used parameters to the top of the panel to make them easier to find and edit.
Selective navigation button replacement
Whether you want to swap out a single button or all the buttons in SlideShowPro’s interface, the 1.9 version allows you to do just that. Before you were forced into replacing them all, but this update makes it much easier and more user friendly.
Button packs – now free!
Speaking of navigation buttons, for a while now we’ve been selling both a “Quartz” and “Pearl” button pack to give SlideShowPro users additional button options for the navigation. When they were first introduced we only offered the Flash component, so everybody could use them. Then came along SlideShowPro for Lightroom and the “Standalone” version of SlideShowPro, neither of which was capable of using the buttons. We could have offered “special edition” versions of the latter, but we believe it’s better to have fewer options when purchasing software than more. So in that spirit, we’ve incorporated the button packs — for free — into the Standalone version so they can be easily switched on through its parameter file (more information on the latter here). The button pack FLAs are there for component users as well.
And yes, this also means that SlideShowPro for Lightroom users can expect to see an option to instantly swap out SlideShowPro’s buttons by changing a single parameter. We plan on releasing that updated version of SlideShowPro for Lightroom, which will include the new 1.9 version of SlideShowPro, sometime this week.
Photoshop script updated
As part of the 1.9 update we’ve updated the free “Export for Photoshop” script that creates imagery and xml data for your slideshows so that it publishes a third set of images for use in full screen. The scripts are now part of the SlideShowPro for Flash download package, so look for them in the “Extras” folder if interested.
Where to from here
If interested in reading all the nitty gritty detail that went into this release, see the updated version history. This update is, as usual, free for anyone who’s purchased a 1.x version of SlideShowPro for Flash, and is available now in the Account Center.
A special thank you to those who took the time to beta test this release before offering it publicly. A lot of valuable feedback went into making this release better than originally conceived, and we appreciate the support.
We’ve just made a new beta of Director 1.3 available in the account center. This release addresses several bugs reported by our testers as well as a complete audit of all database interaction in Director, which should result in a decent performance boost.
For more on this release, check the archives for our “5 days of Director” series, which highlights some of the new features in 1.3.
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