Follow Todd on Twitter: @tdominey

SITE OF THE MONTH:

Loren Haynes Photography / Pink Adobe Productions
http://www.lorenhaynes.com
(SlideShowPro for Flash, ThumbGrid, SlideShowPro Director)

Loren Haynes is a multidisciplinary artist with an extensive resume. His web site, created by Rob Gale Studio, is an all-Flash-driven portfolio showcasing his original photography, music videos, and video clips of his television and film appearances. Behind the scenes, SlideShowPro for Flash is used for all photos and videos, while SlideShowPro Director publishes content and provides the means to dynamically update site content whenever necessary. The site design is personal with expressive typography and a color palette of pinks and browns, while the angled interface allows you to browse featured works in a unique, creative way. Check it out.

THE REMAINING TOP 9 (ALL FANTASTIC – DIVE IN!):

Spencer Boerup Photography
(SlideShowPro for Flash, SlideShowPro Director)

Lito Inso
(SlideShowPro for Flash)

John Blaustein Photography
(SlideShowPro for Lightroom)

Pixel Pushing
(SlideShowPro for Flash)

The Croquis
(SlideShowPro for Flash, SlideShowPro Director)

The Beauty of All Things
(SlideShowPro for Flash)

Eric Miller Design
(SlideShowPro for Flash)

Sucre Chine
(SlideShowPro for Flash, ThumbGrid, SlideShowPro Director)

Note: To respect the privacy of our users, only those sites shared directly with us are considered and included. If you’d like us to consider your site for next month, please submit your site by sending an email or posting to the Show and Tell Forum.

To download the SlideShowPro Standalone update, sign into the Account Center. To update SlidePress, sign-in to your WordPress installation and click the “Plugins” menu option. You’ll have the option to upgrade from there.

When updating SlidePress and previewing a slideshow, you will see a warning if your uploaded SWF is older than 1.9.8.3. To remedy, simply download the latest version of SlideShowPro Standalone from the Account Center and replace the SWF in your WordPress installation with the latest version. After that you should be all set.

For a list of what’s new in SlideShowPro, see the Flash component’s version history.

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

An important change in this release is that we’ve split the ActionScript 2 version into two separate components. The component that comes with the regular download is now for Flash 8 and higher only, while another (separate) download of the component is built just for Flash MX 2004.

Why the split? Well, for quite a while we’ve longed to enhance the visual display of text and other elements in the player with (optional) drop-shadows and other effects (like button glow), but have resisted in order to ensure consistent backwards compatibility. Today however, so few people are using Flash MX 2004 (it is 7 years old after all) that it no longer makes sense to sacrifice features for the entire user base of the player.

So with that, if you’re a Flash MX 2004 user you should download the separate version of 1.9.8.3 from your profile page. It includes all the same player updates and enhancements the other components have, with the exception of some new parameters that can’t be supported in that version.

Alright, so what’s new?

Drop shadows
Configurable drop shadow effects have been added to the navigation links background, navigation buttons (including a new “inner” shadow effect), navigation link preview windows, caption text fields, navigation number links, and gallery content (album previews, text fields, screen navigation text labels). The additional shadow options enhance styling and color options and can improve the legibility of text.

Enhanced navigation button options
In addition to being able to render drop shadows inside buttons (for an inset appearance), buttons can now change color when moused-over and display an optional glow effect. You can see the rollover/glow change in the player on the home page.

“Always Auto” display mode
An additional Display Mode setting has been added named “Always Auto”. When used, playback never completely stops while viewing a slideshow. If a user switches content, the content loads, then the transition pause starts back up again. This will help certain slideshow configurations where constant movement (with some user control) is warranted.

Inline error messaging
Chances are you’ll never see it, but if for some reason data can’t be loaded the component now displays an alert message and icon in the content area. This should especially help newer users of the player.

Video sizing improvements
There are a number of video encoders out there, and unfortunately not all of them encode videos using correct metadata, and sometimes no metadata at all. This release helps work around videos with metadata encoding issues by displaying them at their expected size.

Media Player time display
Another one of those little things been meaning to do for a while, but this release modifies how the media player displays time. Before, the media player displayed a single text field that contained total time for video and elapsed time when playing audio. Now, there is a consistent pair of fields for elapsed and total time for both audio and video playback.

There are a number of other tweaks, updates, and fixes in this release, which you can read about in the full version history notes.

The Standalone and Lightroom versions of SlideShowPro will be updated very soon to incorporate these changes. Stay tuned.

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.

SITE OF THE MONTH:

Ben Pieper
http://benpieperphoto.com
(SlideShowPro for Flash, ThumbGrid)

Ben Pieper is a photographer located in Kansas City, Missouri. He got his start in professional photography shooting for Hallmark, and now runs his own photography studio. His web site, powered by SlideShowPro for Flash and ThumbGrid, offers a full-browser presentation of his portfolio, including many wonderful shots of products and food (speaking of food, check out the Motion section for a fun video). As for presentation, the SlideShowPro player’s interface is turned off and scaled 100%. Alongside it on the right is ThumbGrid, presented in a dock-like fashion. Ben also layered barely-there arrows on top of content to travel backwards and forwards. In all, a really great presentation. Congrats to Ben for a job well done!

THE REMAINING TOP 9 (ALL FANTASTIC – DIVE IN!):

http://sbeelman.com/photography/
(SlideShowPro for Flash, SlideShowPro Director)

http://www.johnnysavage.com/
(SlideShowPro for Flash, SlideShowPro Director)

http://www.dirtybastardsmx.com/
(SlideShowPro for Flash)

http://www.marcwilson.co.uk/
(SlideShowPro for Flash, ThumbGrid)

http://sockittomenow.com/
(SlideShowPro for Flash)

http://www.importedlight.com/
(SlideShowPro for Flash, ThumbGrid, SlideShowPro Director)

http://timmelideo.com/
(SlideShowPro Standalone, SlidePress, SlideShowPro Director)

http://www.krystamanthe.com/
(SlideShowPro for Flash, SlideShowPro Director)

http://www.phuket-luxury-villa.com/index.php
(SlideShowPro Standalone)

Note: To respect the privacy of our users, only those sites shared directly with us are considered and included. If you’d like us to consider your site for next month, please submit your site by sending an email or posting to the Show and Tell Forum.