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.
A new maintenance release is now available for Director, version 1.2.12. This release primarily resolves issues with EXIF/IPTC data encoding, along with various other fixes (check the version history for a full report). As always, you can download the latest Director release from the account center.
Holiday gift for SlideShowPro Director Hosting subscribers
If you subscribe to our SlideShowPro Director Hosting service, a special year-end gift just arrived in your email inbox:
As a way of saying “thank you” for being an early adopter of SlideShowPro Director Hosting, we’ve retroactively added a free month of service to all existing subscriptions. Which, for those who love to crunch numbers, equates to almost 75 years of free time. If only life itself were that easy.
But while we’ve got the Santa suit on, we have a special offer. Between now and January 1, 2009, any new or existing subscribers to SlideShowPro Director Hosting will receive an extra month of service by signing up for a new account or by renewing a subscription before the end of this year. If you still have plenty of time left on your subscription, you can still renew with the special offer and the extra months will be added to your total time.
Happy Holidays!
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.
Top 10 user examples for December/November 2008
Every month loads of SlideShowPro users share their creations with us. From those submissions we pluck out the ten most creative, beautiful, interesting, or unique examples and post them here as well as in our monthly e-mail newsletter.
In no particular order, here are our top user examples for November and December 2007:
http://www.chrisrichey.com
http://www.nonjamckenzie.com
http://www.doggettstudios.com
http://www.interactcreative.com
http://www.fleka.me
http://calverphoto.com
http://www.bbandcompany.com
http://www.t-photographic.com
http://www.johnbrennanphotographer.com
http://www.trophyworldtour.com
http://nathanaelporembka.com
http://www.viahorizon.com
http://theyshootmusic.at/posts
http://www.anseladams.com/ansel_art/AA_slideshow.html
http://www.sakulsky.com
http://charlesmamarot.fr.nf
http://www.andreabuso.com
http://www.ronaldntan.com
http://www.wantusiak.com/?page_id=9
http://www.stefanradtke.com
http://www.geoffreycoleman.com
http://www.catart.it/index.php?n=news
http://www.vesic.com
http://www.petermeretsky.com
http://www.enyanet.com
Note: To respect the privacy of our users, only those sites shared directly with us are considered or included. If you’d like us to consider your site for next month, please submit your site through our contact page or post to the Show & Tell community forum.
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!
SlideShowPro for Flash 1.8.9.7 released
New point release that tweaks a few edge-case issues in the AS2, AS3 and Standalone versions of the component. See what’s been updated in the version history.
In case you’re not in the United States, tomorrow is a national holiday where Americans consume copious amounts of turkey, bread, green beans, and more than one bottle of red wine. It’s the gluttonous, disgusting spectacle we call Thanksgiving, and while we’d like to be here working on new stuff and answering emails, we’ll be offline tomorrow, Friday, and the weekend for that matter. We’ll try to jump in and assist with emergencies when the turkey buzz wears off and the in-laws are napping, but for the most part our plug will be pulled. We’ll of course keep an ear out for any downtime with this site and Director Hosting, but we don’t anticipate there being any problems. With that, Happy Thanksgiving to all, and we’ll see you again on Monday.
SlideShowPro for Flash 1.8.9.6 released
SlideShowPro for Flash has been updated to version 1.8.9.6. Check out what’s been updated in the version history.
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