This release adds (by popular demand) a full screen toggle to the Media Player interface. The toggle appears whenever video is loaded and when Navigation Appearance (navAppearance) is set to “Hidden”. This should come in very handy for those using the SlideShowPro Player to display videos.

Updated components and plugins may be downloaded through the Account Center.

Fluid scale enhancements

One of the popular ways Flash developers use the SlideShowPro Player component is dynamically modifying the component’s dimensions to match the browser window. Also known as “fluid scaling”, the practice involves embedding a SWF at 100% width/height in the HTML document, then using ActionScript to dynamically resize/position elements inside. You can see a number of sites using this method on our examples page.

Historically however, loading content from SlideShowPro Director in a fluid layout has always been a bit tricky, for Director publishes formatted images on-demand at the (fixed) size of the slideshow. To get around that in fluid layouts, developers have usually turned off Director Large Publishing so their original images are displayed instead. While this practice works fine, it’s not optimal, for images can sometimes be much larger (in dimension and file size) than necessary; leading to player latency and wasted bandwidth.

So we decided to do something about it by adding a new “Full Screen” option to Director Large Publishing. When selected, images that match the maximum screen resolution of a viewer’s display are requested for the “normal” slideshow. So when used in a fluid layout, the images are always large enough (regardless of how the user scales their browser window) and load faster than retrieving originals. These same photos are then also used when the SlideShowPro Player enters full screen mode, thus saving disk space and bandwidth.

Fluid scale in Lightroom

With improved fluid image support added to the SlideShowPro Player, we then wondered what we could do with the Lightroom extension to take advantage of the new functionality. The result? New in v1.9.8.7 are slideshow export options for “Fixed” (the usual) and “Fluid”. When “Fluid” is selected, the exported slideshow fills the browser window and re-sizes/aligns if a user changes their browser window’s dimensions. You can also control the amount of space between the slideshow and the browser frame.

» View fluid scale demo

» Read fluid scale instructions

Additional updates

In addition to the fluid scale enhancements a couple of other items were added:

Media ‘type’ attribute:

Because some people use the SlideShowPro Player in environments where images and/or videos are requested with URL strings that don’t include file suffixes, we’ve added support for a new type attribute for img elements in XML markup. For example, if src pointed to a video without a file suffix, you may now add type="video" to the img element. The SlideShowPro Player will then skip file type detection and render the asset as a video.

Video preview support for Single Content:

For those who use the SlideShowPro Player to show a single video (through the “Single Content” XML File Type) we’ve added a new videoPreviewURL parameter. This allows you to assign a URL for a poster graphic to be loaded and displayed before the video (when the player’s videoAutoStart parameter is set to “Off”). This parameter isn’t displayed in the component Properties panel, but is modifiable with either ActionScript or (with the SlideShowPro Player SWF product) as a FlashVar through the player’s embed code. We’ve included a new example in the SlideShowPro Player SWF download that shows how to assign a video and poster graphic in the HTML document without using XML.

Download

All updates can be downloaded now through the Account Center.

SlideShowPro Director

An update to SlideShowPro Director (and SlideShowPro.com) that incorporates SlideShowPro Player 1.9.8.7 is coming soon. We’ll keep you posted.

To better support SlideShowPro Director 1.5′s new HTML5 mobile player for Apple iOS and Android devices, we’re updating today both SlideShowPro for Lightroom (1.9.8.5) and SlidePress (1.4.2). With these updates, slideshows created with either product (that load content from SlideShowPro Director) will publish embed code that is compatible with SlideShowPro Director’s mobile player. And by “compatible” we mean that if someone using a supported mobile device (without Flash) browses your site, and it contains a Flash slideshow published by either product, they will be able to access the mobile fallback player.

As part of these changes, if you currently load SlideShowPro Director in either product, you must first update your installation of SlideShowPro Director to 1.5. Reason being, we had to completely change how the Flash player is embedded in the export templates in order to support the mobile player, so updating to Director 1.5 first will avoid any potential problems.

More SlideShowPro for Lightroom updates
Along with the Director mobile player support in SlideShowPro for Lightroom, we’ve also updated some other things in the plugin, including…

1) New SWF architecture
SlideShowPro for Lightroom now exports a single SWF for your slideshows instead of two (bye bye “loader.swf”). This makes it easier to migrate exported content to a separate HTML document (not published by Lightroom).

2) Slideshow sizing
From now on, the slideshow width/height you assign is the actual size of your entire presentation. So if you include extra items outside the SlideShowPro Player (eg, the Header and Wet Floor effect) those items will be included in the overall height. Before, the assigned width/height was only used for the SlideShowPro Player, which caused headaches when people tried to embed the exported slideshow in separate HTML documents where a fixed SWF size was required.

3) Templates
SlideShowPro for Lightroom now contains the same player templates we created for SlideShowPro Director and SlidePress. This includes styles like “Ice”, “Techno”, “Glass”, “Salt” and others. This gives users some quick style options to choose from should they not feel like designing their own.

4) Version numbering
You may not have noticed, but the version number is 1.9.8.5, not 1.5 as published in our newsletter. Reason being, we’re making the version numbering of all SlideShowPro Player products (SlideShowPro for Flash, Lightroom, Standalone) so that it’s easier to document product updates.

Download / install
Owners of SlideShowPro for Lightroom can download this update through their Account Center profile page. SlidePress users can update their installations automatically by signing in to their WordPress installation.

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

Note: Lightroom 3 is currently available only as a public beta. Unless you are comfortable installing and using beta software, we don’t recommend downloading Lightroom 3 just to use this version of SlideShowPro for Lightroom. We recommend waiting for the final release of Lightroom 3 (which should be in the not-so-distant future) to avoid issues. If however you already have the public beta, or like living on the edge, have at it.

Registered users of SlideShowPro for Lightroom can download the plugin update from the account center.

This download is free for all users of SlideShowPro for Lightroom and can be downloaded through the Account Center.