SlideShowPro News

08.30.10  |  Sites of the month: August 2010

Every day, people from around the world submit web sites to us that use our products, and from those submissions we hand pick the ten most interesting, beautiful, and/or creative works and feature them here as our “Sites of the Month”. As a way of saying ‘thank you’ for making us look so good, each honoree is entitled to a free SlideShowPro t-shirt. If that’s you, contact us to request one.

SITES OF THE MONTH: AUGUST 2010

• Stanley ChangSlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid, Director
• Adam LernerSlideShowPro Player
• Fredrik ÖdmanSlideShowPro Director API, Custom Flash
• Mike Hill DesignSlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid, Director
• Erik ZapponSlideShowPro Director API, Custom Flash
• Julien AguetSlideShowPro Player
• Richard BernardinSlideShowPro Player, Director, ThumbGrid
• Erika AshauerSlidePress, SlideShowPro Standalone
• Demond MeekSlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid, Director
• Wanamaker PhotographySSlidePress, SlideShowPro Standalone

SHARE YOUR OWN EXAMPLE

Build something of your own with our products recently? Share it with us! Your submission will be considered for next month’s roundup.

08.23.10  |  SlideShowPro 1.5 beta updated, nearing stable release

We’ve packaged up another update to the SlideShowPro Director 1.5 beta, labeled Build 5452. This update fixes a handful of bugs and also includes some refinements to how content is published using Director. See a full list of changes in the beta forum.

With this release, Director 1.5 is feature complete and hopefully bug-free. Barring any show-stoppers in this last beta phase, we expect to release 1.5 as stable to self-hosted customers in the next few weeks and hosting subscribers soon after that. So if you are a beta tester, please update to the latest build (via the in-app updater or the account center) and let us know if you find any issues. Thanks!

08.04.10  |  Love Director and SlideShowPro Mobile? We need testimonials!

If you’re currently beta testing SlideShowPro Mobile and Director 1.5 and have integrated Director’s new publishing into your site, we’d love to hear from you! For marketing and promotional purposes (both us and you), we’re looking for testimonials we can publish. We’ll of course reciprocate the favor by linking back to your site, so you’ll receive some great return traffic.

Want to submit a testimonial? Here’s how:

1) Send an email to: support AT slideshowpro.net
2) Write about how you’ve used Director and the mobile player, plus a URL to your site.
3) Include your first and last name (or business name) for attribution.
4) Attach a medium-sized photo of yourself (around 250px will be fine).

We’ll pick testimonials from the results and publish them here on the site when Director 1.5 goes live. We appreciate the feedback!

07.30.10  |  Director 1.5 beta updated, SlideShowPro Mobile now supports Android

The beta train for SlideShowPro Director 1.5 keeps rolling along. This new build (Build 5394) contains several fixes but most notably is the first beta to include support for Android phones (Android OS 2.0+ required).

One of the more difficult aspects of developing for Android is fragmentation. Unlike iOS, which is used only on Apple devices, Android is used on multiple devices and is often modified to some extent by the manufacturer or the carrier (or both). Because of that, we could really use your help in testing our mobile player if you are running an Android phone (OS 2.0+). You can either try the beta on your own install, or just load up our mobile demo directly. We’d appreciate any and all feedback, and be sure to include what device/OS version you are using. Thanks!

Please note that this is still beta software and should not be used on production websites. We cannot guarantee if it will work or when bugs will be fixed.

07.21.10  |  New beta of SlideShowPro Director 1.5 / SlideShowPro Mobile available

Over the last week, we’ve had more than 100 early adopters kicking the tires on the SlideShowPro Director 1.5 beta (which also includes SlideShowPro Mobile). Thanks to their testing and feedback, we’ve been able to resolve several issues with the release of the second beta for 1.5, Build 5354. The new beta is available via the in-app upgrade process or the account center.

For more info on the beta, check out the dedicated wiki section for 1.5. We greatly value your feedback, so be sure to drop us a note in the beta form if you encounter any issues or just have a suggestion. Again, thanks for testing!

Please note that this is still beta software and should not be used on production websites. We cannot guarantee if it will work or when bugs will be fixed.

06.11.10  |  Lightroom to Director Plugin updated for Lightroom 3

The Lightroom to Director Plugin, which allows you to upload images directly from Lightroom to your Director install, has been updated to 1.0.5. This version resolves an issue with the recently released Lightroom 3, where uploads would fail because of a deprecated method call. Upgrading to 1.0.5 should fix that issue. You can download the latest version of the plugin from the account center.

If you have not had a chance to upgrade to Lightroom 3, it is available for purchase from Adobe.

04.21.10  |  SlideShowPro Director 1.4.3: Introducing GPS support

In the latest build of SlideShowPro Director, we’ve extended the existing IPTC/EXIF support to include the parsing of GPS information, which is embedded in the standard EXIF GPS tag by some cameras as well as a host of geocoding applications. If an image has GPS metadata, a new button will show up in the edit pane:

Clicking that button will open a Google map with the location the photo was taken:

The new metadata is also available in content metadata defaults (as [exif:latitude] and [exif:longitude]), so you can use the data to populate titles or captions. You can also tap into the data to create link templates, allowing you to create links to your favorite mapping application (we’ve included a link template that will open Google maps, for example). Finally, this data is also available via the API, and we can’t wait to see what some of our API developers come up with. Hack away!

The new GPS functionality, along with several other fixes, is now available in Director 1.4.3 (Build 4967). We’ve already deployed the changes to the hosting platform, so all slideshowpro.com users should now have this functionality as well. Best of all, you don’t need to re-upload any images, as Director will grab the GPS info from your existing images as well as any new images you upload.

(Thanks to SlideShowPro user Hendrik Gude for his suggestion for this feature, as well as providing us with some sample imagery to test with.)

04.07.10  |  Director 1.4.2 released

We’ve just released SlideShowPro Director 1.4.2 (Build 4784). It contains several bugfixes, including fixes for XML caching, character encoding in IPTC/EXIF data, and better UTF-8 support for new installs. Most notably, this release contains a rework of two major UI elements: the index page for albums and galleries and Director’s application modals.

For a full list of changes, consult the version history at wiki.slideshowpro.net. The update is available via the account center or the in-app upgrade process. For Director hosting customers at slideshowpro.com, we’ll be rolling out these changes this afternoon, so stay tuned to the status blog for updates.

04.06.10  |  Aperture Export for SlideShowPro

Developer Dean Krueger (of Red 6 software) has developed his own, third-party plugin for Apple’s Aperture photo management application that exports images, thumbnails, and XML markup for use with the SlideShowPro player. Named “Aperture Export for SlideShowPro“, the plugin has functionality and a user interface similar to the export plugin we developed for Apple’s iPhoto, but is a completely custom creation built especially for Aperture. If you’re an Aperture and SlideShowPro player user, check it out!

04.05.10  |  Flash and the future

There’s been a lot of noise in online media this year concerning the future of Flash, much of it instigated by the promise of HTML5 as well as Apple’s apparent lack of interest in supporting it on their mobile devices. Thanks in part to Apple, and to other mobile / web-enabled devices currently shipping without Flash Player plugins, Adobe’s historic claim of Flash being “ubiquitous” is starting to erode.

As a result, plenty of tech writers and bloggers have been claiming that “Flash is dead” and there’s now a holy war for the future of the web between HTML, Flash, Adobe and Apple (and you must pick a side). Neither assertion is true.

Let’s get a couple of important points out of the way. First, the Flash Player isn’t going anywhere. It is (currently, and will continue to be) installed on well over 90% of desktop computers, and (with the imminent release of Flash Player 10.1) will soon be available on a huge number of mobile devices, netbooks and tablets. Adobe is not only going to great effort to make the plugin better, but also working with many third party companies to ensure their users have a mobile web browsing experience that fully replicates the desktop.

Second, Flash and HTML should be viewed as complimentary technologies, not competing. The SlideShowPro player utilizes Flash because it allows us to provide a consistent, dynamic photo and video player with loads of point-and-click effects and customizations that can be easily customized, embedded and viewed on any web site using any browser. That was the goal when SlideShowPro started, and continues to be today. Flash was, and still is, the best tool for that type of application.

That said, and this may come as a surprise, but we’re very excited over the prospect of alternatives to Flash and the ever increasing power of what’s natively possible in the web browser (without plugins). Why? Because we’re passionate about web design and development, in all forms, with a particular interest in providing photographers and designers the means to create, publish and share engaging online content. The way people access the web may change, but our goal does not.

Our product lineup of the SlideShowPro player, SlidePress, ThumbGrid, and the content management system SlideShowPro Director, have provided users with a powerful publishing toolkit. They have contributed to some amazing online work, including everything from full blown web sites to simple photo galleries. Going forward, we want you to know that we intend to grow our business and expand our product lineup to provide alternate publishing solutions that aren’t reliant on Adobe, Flash, or any third party / proprietary technology for that matter. We’ve actually been quietly working towards that goal for a while now, and should soon have more tangible information to share with you.

As for our current product lineup, don’t fret. Development of our Flash-based offerings will fervently continue (for example, a new 2.0 version of ThumbGrid is coming out in the next few weeks), and you can expect to see additional Flash-based tools from us down the road.

See you in the near future.