To further demonstrate what’s possible with SlideShowPro ThumbGrid, and to give Flash developers some ActionScript to play with, we’ve posted a new iTunes inspired demo. The demo loads album cover art in an interface that resembles the iTunes store, whereby you can navigate backwards and forwards between thumb groups, as well as jump to a particular thumb group using the circular navigation above the thumbs. The circular navigation is dynamically generated to include however many thumb group screens are present, so you can add/remove data at will without rebuilding the navigation.
SlideShowPro ThumbGrid users can download the FLA for this demo on the product download page.
SlideShowPro ThumbGrid 1.1.1 released
SlideShowPro ThumbGrid has been updated to version 1.1.1. This is a small update that changes the behavior of active thumbnails so they can’t be clicked while in an active state (but still rollover/rollout). It also includes a new event (switchThumbGroup) that broadcasts information about the thumb group being switched to. This is different than currentThumbGroup, which fires every time a new thumbnail is made active, for it only fires once when thumb groups switch.
Registered users of SlideShowPro ThumbGrid can login to the account center to download.
SlideShowPro ThumbGrid 1.1 Released
A new 1.1 release for SlideShowPro ThumbGrid is now available for download in the account center.
This release includes two new features / parameters to modify when using ThumbGrid. The first, Active Focus, allows you to turn on/off ThumbGrid’s automatic selection of active thumbnails on the grid (either when a new image is loaded in SlideShowPro for Flash, or when the user stops manipulating the grid view after five seconds have passed). The second is Thumb Zoom Overflow, which allows thumbnails (when rolled-over) to expand outside the component area. You can allow thumbnails to overflow all four sides of the component, the left and right only, or the top and bottom only. The latter two options are especially helpful when ThumbGrid is scaled to the edges of the SWF with empty space only available above/below or on the left/right side of the component.
We’ve also modified the TGThumbEvent event class so that it broadcasts all related data pertaining to the image a thumbnail is associated with. This includes the existing currentThumb event, but also with the (two new) events rolloverThumb and rolloutThumb. These will allow Flash developers the opportunity to display things like image titles, captions, etc, outside of the component area when thumbnails are rolled-over in ThumbGrid.
The release also fixes a couple of small things, which you can read more about in the ThumbGrid version history.
We’ve received a number of emails inquiring about Adobe Lightroom and SlideShowPro ThumbGrid, and whether the two shall meet. Here’s the deal.
Adobe Lightroom (as of this writing) only accepts Flash galleries coded in ActionScript 2 or older. SlideShowPro ThumbGrid is an ActionScript 3 component, so in order for it to work with Lightroom it would need to be re-coded as ActionScript 2 (something we’re not doing), or Lightroom (the application itself) would need to be updated to support ActionScript 3. We obviously can’t speak for Adobe and their roadmap with Lightroom, but we can say that they are aware of the ActionScript issue.
So even if we wanted to offer ThumbGrid in a form that was compatible with Lightroom, we couldn’t. This is something we’ll be keeping an eye on going forward, but until then SlideShowPro ThumbGrid is exclusively a Flash component.
Been a while since we made one (they’re more work than they appear, trust me), but the release of SlideShowPro ThumbGrid warranted a new screencast showing how the component loads data from SlideShowPro for Flash / Director, and how the layout can be adjusted to create a wide variety of thumbnail interface options. Check it out if interested.
Teased earlier today via Twitter (you are following us, right?), we’ve added a new component to our stable of products: SlideShowPro ThumbGrid.
Before we get into what ThumbGrid is, first a little history. Ever since a thumbnail navigation was added to SlideShowPro for Flash we’ve been asked the same questions over and over by those looking to customize the component.
One, how can I hide everything in SlideShowPro for Flash’s navigation except the thumbnails (and use my own buttons)? Two, can the navigation be displayed vertically? Three, can I display more than one row of thumbnails in a single viewing? There were others as well, but they all alluded to the same request — complete flexibility and control over navigation thumbnails.
Total flexibility wasn’t possible within the confines of SlideShowPro for Flash (and we didn’t really need to add even more parameters and code), so we started from scratch, broke out of the box, and built something entirely new.
Think of SlideShowPro ThumbGrid as a “sister” component to SlideShowPro for Flash. You hide SSP’s navigation (if you want to), assign its instance name to ThumbGrid, and publish. The two components communicate with each another, and all of ThumbGrid’s data is loaded from SlideShowPro for Flash (so there’s no duplication of data or additional XML files to code). When paired with our CMS product SlideShowPro Director, you can instantly populate ThumbGrid.
Design wise, you can do everything from build a single horizontal row of thumbnails (like the embedded nav in SlideShowPro for Flash), a single vertical row, or multi-row/column layouts with however many rows / columns you want. The thumbnails render horizontally or vertically, so you can design a wide variety of thumbnail navigations with a single component.
In the spirit of complete flexibility, and because most Flash developers would turn it off anyway, ThumbGrid doesn’t have an embedded navigation. You interface with it using just the mouse, or you can augment the component with your own external buttons that call methods in ThumbGrid. Mix together all the methods/events that both SlideShowPro ThumbGrid and SlideShowPro for Flash offer and you can theoretically build a duplicate version of SlideShowPro for Flash’s navigation, if you really wanted to.
There’s plenty more to read on the product page itself, and you can see a live “Kyoto” example here as well.
We hope you like it, and we can’t wait to see what you do with it!
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