SITES OF THE MONTH: AUGUST 2010

• Stanley ChangSlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid, Director
• Adam LernerSlideShowPro Player
• Fredrik ÖdmanSlideShowPro Director API, Custom Flash
• Mike Hill DesignSlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid, Director
• Erik ZapponSlideShowPro Director API, Custom Flash
• Julien AguetSlideShowPro Player
• Richard BernardinSlideShowPro Player, Director, ThumbGrid
• Erika AshauerSlidePress, SlideShowPro Standalone
• Demond MeekSlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid, Director
• Wanamaker PhotographySSlidePress, SlideShowPro Standalone

SHARE YOUR OWN EXAMPLE

Build something of your own with our products recently? Share it with us! Your submission will be considered for next month’s roundup.

After a month and a half of extensive beta testing and feedback, we’re thrilled to announce that Director 1.5 is now final and ready to go! Nearly a thousand people tested the beta, and we received a massive amount of constructive feedback along the way. We greatly appreciate the support from everyone who participated.

Director 1.5 is a major (and free!) update to the content management system that not only provides integrated slideshow publishing (using the SlideShowPro Player) but also offers an entirely new HTML5 photo and video player for iPhones, iPads and Android devices. The HTML5 player runs in the web browser, so there’s no applications or plugins for the user to install. It runs in their web browser, is accessed through your own web site, and allows the same content from your Flash slideshow to be browsed with touch controls (including swipe!) using the largest amount of screen real estate possible. Director 1.5 gives publishers the ability to deploy rich, dynamic media content that is universally accessible across virtually every possible device that may access your web site.

If you are a SlideShowPro Director user that didn’t participate in the beta, you can catch up on what’s new in our updated wiki.

If you have a self-installation of SlideShowPro Director, you may upgrade using the application’s built-in updater. Simply sign-in to Director on your server and click the upgrade notice at the top. If your installation of Director is older (and doesn’t support auto upgrading), please see these upgrade instructions.

If you have a SlideShowPro Director hosting subscription, we plan on updating everyone’s installation this weekend (so disruptions, if any, are kept to a minimum). Subscribers should stay tuned to the hosting status blog for more information on the upgrade.

With this release, Director 1.5 is feature complete and hopefully bug-free. Barring any show-stoppers in this last beta phase, we expect to release 1.5 as stable to self-hosted customers in the next few weeks and hosting subscribers soon after that. So if you are a beta tester, please update to the latest build (via the in-app updater or the account center) and let us know if you find any issues. Thanks!

The player now includes a “Loop” playback option. It allows you to turn on/off boundary detection at the beginning and end of an album. By turning it on, you can navigate from the first asset back to the last, and vice versa. This works with the navigation bar, content area navigation, and public methods called via ActionScript.

Also new are additional caption appearance options: “Fixed on Rollover” and “Fixed on Rollover (if Available)”. These are the same as “Fixed” except they only show-up on mouse-over.

This release also incorporates changes to the default appearance of captions. The “header” background is now transparent by default, and we’ve added additional parameters to control the padding and color of header text. This gives the captions an updated appearance, and offers designers more control.

There are a number of other tweaks/improvements to the player you can read about at the wiki.

For those of you using SlideShowPro for Lightroom, an update that incorporates 1985 (plus other updates) is coming soon.

Want to submit a testimonial? Here’s how:

1) Send an email to: support AT slideshowpro.net
2) Write about how you’ve used Director and the mobile player, plus a URL to your site.
3) Include your first and last name (or business name) for attribution.
4) Attach a medium-sized photo of yourself (around 250px will be fine).

We’ll pick testimonials from the results and publish them here on the site when Director 1.5 goes live. We appreciate the feedback!

SITES OF THE MONTH: JULY 2010

• Michael GrevesSlideShowPro player, Director
• Petr AntonovSlideShowPro player
• SingenuSlideShowPro player
• Shannon JensenSlideShowPro player, Director, ThumbGrid
• Nelson D’airesSSlideShowPro player, Director
• Fabio SteijnSlideShowPro player, Director, ThumbGrid
• Zera PhotoSlideShowPro player, Director, ThumbGrid
• Wonder KnackSlideShowPro player
• Swiss InteractiveSlideShowPro for Flash, ThumbGrid, Director
• Huntingdon CollegeSlideShowPro player, ThumbGrid, Director

SHARE YOUR OWN EXAMPLE

Build something of your own with our products recently? Share it with us! Your submission will be considered for next month’s roundup.

One of the more difficult aspects of developing for Android is fragmentation. Unlike iOS, which is used only on Apple devices, Android is used on multiple devices and is often modified to some extent by the manufacturer or the carrier (or both). Because of that, we could really use your help in testing our mobile player if you are running an Android phone (OS 2.0+). You can either try the beta on your own install, or just load up our mobile demo directly. We’d appreciate any and all feedback, and be sure to include what device/OS version you are using. Thanks!

Please note that this is still beta software and should not be used on production websites. We cannot guarantee if it will work or when bugs will be fixed.

For more info on the beta, check out the dedicated wiki section for 1.5. We greatly value your feedback, so be sure to drop us a note in the beta form if you encounter any issues or just have a suggestion. Again, thanks for testing!

Please note that this is still beta software and should not be used on production websites. We cannot guarantee if it will work or when bugs will be fixed.

Because this is technically beta software, we encourage only those who are comfortable upgrading their installations to non-final software install the upgrade. If that’s okay with you, head over to the 1.5 upgrade notes to learn how to upgrade.

Also at the wiki is documentation on the new integrated slideshow publishing, as well as instructions on how to update an existing slideshow to support the mobile player.

As noted earlier, this is technically a beta release, so we ask that you only publish new slideshows or provide the mobile player fallback to existing slideshows on low traffic or non-live sites, just to be safe.

An important note regarding player compatibility: At this time, we only recommend that users of SlideShowPro for Flash or SlideShowPro Standalone attempt to modify their player embed code to support the mobile fallback player. We are working on updates for SlideShowPro for Lightroom and SlidePress that will allow those products to work much more seamlessly with the Director embed code.

We’re offering this beta because we very much want to receive feedback on the work done thus far, and to see if there are any oversights, bugs, or general issues we can assist with. Please contact us if you have feedback.

Our goal is to burn through this beta and get to a final release as quickly as possible. We greatly appreciate everyone’s input and time. Have fun!