SlideShowPro News

03.11.10  |  SlideShowPro at SXSW

We don’t have a booth, aren’t throwing any fancy parties, and aren’t giving any presentations, but hey! We’ll be present nonetheless. Or more specifically, Todd Dominey (that’s me) will be.
Hoping to meet a number of our customers and anyone else who’s interested in what we do. If you’re attending SXSW and see a tall fellow with a SlideShowPro badge, that’s me. Please feel free to say hello!

Follow Todd on Twitter: @tdominey

02.05.10  |  Director 1.4.1 updated to build 4241

We’ve released a maintenance update for SlideShowPro Director, build 4241. Notable fixes include FFmpeg support for Windows servers and a fix for users of Flash 8, who were unable to test movies inside Flash with previous builds of 1.4.1.

This build also includes the latest work from our translation project. If your language is still not supported, translating it is easy and can be done entirely from your browser. For more, check out the translation project site.

A full changelog can be found on the wiki. The update is available now via the in-app upgrade or the account center.

01.27.10  |  Cross domain policy file maker

Over the years, the SlideShowPro player has introduced many users to the Flash Player’s cross domain security wall. This firewall pops up whenever a SWF embedded at one domain attempts to load data (XML, RSS, etc) from a separate domain. Without a proper crossdomain.xml file at the separate domain, the Flash Player quietly shuts down the request (and thus prevents a slideshow from appearing).

To avoid common formatting errors when creating these crossdomain.xml files, we’ve built a handy Cross Domain Policy File Maker app. Simply type in the domains you need, download the file, then upload it to the root of the domain where data is served from.

This app is bare-bones by design, and doesn’t cover the complete range of options found in the cross domain policy file specification. Only the very slimmest percentage of people ever need something more than what this app provides, so we purposely kept it basic and user friendly. We hope it makes formatting these documents easier and error-free.

Check it out here.

12.23.09  |  Holiday break

Our offices will be closed Dec 24th-27th for the Christmas holiday. Rest assured we’ll be keeping an eye on this site as well as all Director hosting accounts, so if anything goes wrong someone will be available to jump in and resolve the matter. Happy holidays, and we’ll talk to you again next week!

11.26.09  |  Happy Thanksgiving

We’re joining our fellow Americans in the great, gluttonous tradition known as Thanksgiving today. That means we are enduring family get togethers in the name of copious amounts of turkey, dressing and other fixings. If you are also celebrating today, we wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving.

We’ll be keeping an eye on things in case of emergencies, but will be mostly offline through the weekend. Happy Thanksgiving and we’ll see you Monday.

11.23.09  |  Director 1.4.1 released, features watermarking

We’re happy to announce SlideShowPro Director 1.4.1 is now available for download. Director 1.4.1 includes new support for built-in watermarking, allowing you to upload an image (transparent PNGs work best) to use as a watermark, then Director composites that image on your original content when it creates the optimized copy for your slideshows. You can define as many different watermarks as you like, and change what watermark is applied on a per-album basis. You can also control the positioning of the watermark and its opacity when composited with the image.

Director 1.4.1 also includes several bugfixes and four new bundled translations (German, Russian, Italian and French). For a full list of the changes, see the Director Version History page on the wiki.

If you are running Director 1.4.0, then you can upgrade using the in-app upgrade process. If you are running an older version, Director 1.4.1 is available in the account center.

If you use the Director hosting service, we’ll be deploying 1.4.1 to your account at the beginning of next week, once we know that all the bugs are worked out. Stay tuned to the Status Blog for more info.

11.09.09  |  New hire: Christopher Reding

Today we’re pleased to announce that Christopher Reding — a name some of you may recognize from the support forums — is now assisting us (in a more official capacity) with product support and development. Christopher has considerable experience using both SlideShowPro for Flash and SlideShowPro Director, so expect to see more of him in the forums and in email support correspondence from us. Welcome Christopher!

10.26.09  |  Lightroom to Director Plugin updated to 1.0.4

A new version of the Lightroom to Director Plugin, which allows you to upload imagery from your Lightroom library directly to your Director install, has been released. This updated fixes an issue related to Director 1.4, where the albums list would sometimes appear blank when trying to export. Upgrading to the new version of the plugin should fix that issue. The update can be downloaded from the Director product page.

10.24.09  |  New to SlideShowPro Director hosting: Language support

Thanks to our ongoing translation project, and the hard work of many volunteer translators, we are glad to announce that the Director hosting service is now available in three additional languages: Spanish, Dutch (in both Standard and Belgium variants) and Serbian. To change the language in Director, go to your profile screen by clicking your username in the top right hand corner of any screen in Director. Once there, scroll to the bottom of the page (under the Preferences heading) and change your language to whatever you like.

More translations are on the way. If your language isn’t supported yet and you would like to join our translation efforts, visit the SlideShowPro Director Translation Project. Any language that is more than 75% translated will be included automatically for all slideshowpro.com accounts and all self-hosted Director install as well.

10.20.09  |  Director 1.4 released

After an extended beta cycle, we’re happy to announce that SlideShowPro DIrector 1.4 is available for public release. You can download the upgrade right now via the account center, or, if you are already running one of the 1.4 beta releases, you can upgrade from within Director thanks to the new auto-update functionality.

What’s new in 1.4? Here’s a rundown of the major additions/changes. For a full list of changes, see the version history on the wiki.

Smarter XML caching
Usually, when a change is made in Director, any cached XML that is affected by that change is deleted completely. That means the next time a slideshow is loaded, the entire XML file has to be regenerated, which can take time depending on the size of your gallery. In 1.4, we keep what is called “fragment caches”, which means that the XML file is cached in manageable chunks. So, when a change is made in Director, only the affected chunk is removed from the cache, and only that chunk has to be regenerated next time. Bottom line: XML regeneration will be much faster in 1.4, particularly for large galleries.

Auto-updating
If you’ve ever had to manage several Director installs, you know the pain that can be associated with keeping them all up to date. That’s why Director 1.4 features a built in auto-update system. While you will still need to upgrade all your installs to 1.4 the old way, once they are running 1.4 all further updates will be handled in Director itself, all you have to do is click a button.

Simplified install
In addition to making application updates easier, we’ve also made the initial installation process simpler. Installation will now consist of a single file you upload to your server. You then load the file in your web browser, enter your server information, and presto‚ all the requisite files for SlideShowPro Director will be downloaded from our server to yours with all the correct file permissions and settings you need to get going. This system will ensure fewer installation errors and make the installation process easier for non-web developers.

Updated translations
Thanks to the new community translation project and the tireless work of our volunteer translators, the Dutch, Spanish and German translations have been bundled with the Director 1.4 package. We’ll be adding other languages as work progresses on those translations. To get involved, visit the translation project.

Generated video previews and thumbnails
In the previous point update to SlideShowPro Director, we enhanced videos by giving users the ability to assign separate images for video previews and thumbnails. Director 1.4 will take this functionality a step further by generating images from your uploaded videos. Simply upload a video, and SlideShowPro Director will automatically assign a still image. To use a different image from a video, pop-open the edit window to choose a different frame. For users who prefer creating their own video previews and thumbnails, nothing has changed. You can still assign your own images should you not want to use an image generated by Director.

Note: This functionality will require a server with the ffmpeg library installed. Director 1.4 will automatically find the library for you (if available). If you’re unsure whether your server currently supports ffmpeg, you may want to contact your web host.

Smart galleries
In Director 1.3, we introduced smart albums, which allowed you to group content from other albums based on tags, date and other information. In Director 1.4, we’ve extended Director’s built-in intelligence to allow for smart galleries. They work much like smart albums do, as you can add tags to albums and use those tags to form smart galleries. You can also use the date the album was created or last modified as a rule to further filter the included albums.

Rebuilt manage albums interface
Last but certainly not least, we have reworked a portion of Director that has needed some updating for quite some time. The manage albums screen, which is used to select which albums are included/excluded from a custom gallery, worked fine as long as you didn’t have too many albums. If you had a larger install, however, the screen slowed down and in some cases was not usable. We’ve now separated out the functionality, showing only the albums currently in the gallery by default. To add albums, you simply click the “Add albums” button, and any available albums are shown in a popup dialogue. The listing is paginated and can also be searched, so it should work well whether you have 5 albums or 500.