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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.

We’ve also released a new beta of the popular DirectorPHP API kit. We’ve made some internal changes that should show noticeable speed increases compared to the current stable 1.2.1 build. We’d love for you API users to test it out and let us know how it works for you. Before you do, please read this primer for more information, including some important upgrade instructions.

These changes have already been deployed to all SlideShowPro.com accounts. For self-hosted installs, the update is available now via in-app upgrade or, if you are manually updating, the account center.

Recently, a Flash Player update began causing problems in some versions of Internet Explorer — in some cases causing the page to hang for several seconds. The problem traced back to how SlideShowPro communicates with the Director JavaScript embed library. We’ve fixed that in this build, but in the course of doing so found something more. Even with the fix, there is a certain performance cost associated with the the SWF to JS communication. And considering a very small number of our users actually use that functionality, we’ve decided to disable it by default in Director’s embed code. The net effect for most of you will be that you should notice your slideshows loading a bit faster after updating to this build. For those of you who do use that functionality, you will need to make a small change to your embed code. You will need to add the useExternalInterface parameter to the flashvars section of your embed code, setting it to true:

useExternalInterface: true

If you are confused as to whether or not you need to make this change, take a look at this wiki document. If you have never made use of the functionality described there, you do not need to make the above change. In other words, if you are using the stock embed code copied from inside Director, you do not need to change anything.

The update is now available via the in-app update and the account center. All SlideShowPro.com accounts have already been updated.

If you use the plugin and haven’t done so already, click here to rate it! We’d appreciate the support.

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.

Universal video embedding allows you to quickly copy and paste embed code from Director to your HTML document. The embed code — which will look very familiar if you have been using Director’s built-in slideshow publishing — creates a poster image using your assigned video preview with a play button drawn on top. Once the poster is clicked, the embed library attempts to play the video using the HTML5 video element. If the browser doesn’t support the new video element or the video codec that is being used, it automatically falls back to the SlideShowPro player for video playback. The result is a system for embedding videos that works consistently and transparently on mobile and desktop systems.

Consult the wiki for more on using the new video embedding system. Director 1.5.3 is available now via the in-app update system or the account center. If you are a SlideShowPro.com customer, you already have the update and are ready to go.