SlideShowPro News

10.30.07 | iPhoto 7 compatible plugin now available

As promised, the free SlideShowPro Export for iPhoto plugin has been updated to work with iPhoto '08 (aka iPhoto 7, and part of the new iLife '08 suite of apps). Visit the extras section to download (you must be logged in to your account, and will be notified accordingly if need be).

Because of all the changes Apple made to iPhoto, it was impossible to continue offering a single plugin for all versions of iPhoto. With that, there are now two versions available: 1.0.4, which is the same plugin as before, and 1.0.5, which only works with iPhoto '08.

The 1.0.5 version is pretty much exactly the same as 1.0.4, but with one notable difference. By popular demand, we've added a little more control over how image caption fields are populated. In previous versions, the caption field for every image in an album automatically filled with the filename and modification date of the image. This was fine for most, but it was a pain for those who wanted to manually enter their own. So in 1.0.5, the caption fields are empty by default, and if you want to auto-fill them there's a button to click that'll do it for you. It also includes a "Clear" button to get rid of them all, in case you change your mind.

At any rate, apologies for the long delay, but numerous factors preventing it from happening as quickly as we'd like. The good news is that it's finished, and now available for all SlideShowPro users.

10.29.07 | Oliver Peoples / Gramercy Park Hotel

A double shot of SlideShowPro examples sent in by their creator, Michael Davis. The first is Oliver Peoples, an eyewear company. SlideShowPro is being used on their home page to present an interesting mix of black and white photographs grouped together in pairs and sequenced to tell a mysterious story. The second is the famous (or is it infamous?) Gramercy Park Hotel, which is well known in design circles for its unorthodox, ground breaking interior design and art direction. SlideShowPro is used on multiple pages, with a nice serif typeface used for its numerical navigation, and a "floating" look that removes the component's outer border and sets the navigation background to the same color as the page for a look that's clean and stylish.

10.26.07 | Director and Leopard

We're just as excited as anyone about receiving our copies of Leopard, Apple's latest iteration of Mac OS X. However, there does seem to be a glitch in Leopard with regard to uploading content into Director. We haven't seen this firsthand, but several users who've already received their copies of Leopard have wrote in to report the issue.

So, if it is absolutely necessary that you be able to upload to a Director installation from your Mac, you might want to hold off on upgrading to Leopard until we can isolate and fix the issue. We'll be grabbing our copies of Leopard later on today, and getting Director into line will be a top priority. More to come...

Update (10/27/2007): We've since confirmed this problem ourselves, and learned that the issue is with the Flash Player in Leopard (10.5), and affects any web site out there (of which there are plenty) using Flash as an upload gateway. Adobe is apparently aware of the issue and working on an update.

10.25.07 | Pogo Pictures

Pogo Pictures, who are literally a few miles from SlideShowPro HQ in Atlanta, are using SlideShowPro...well...everywhere on their web site. It displays photos on their home page, videos on the "Directors" pages (with an external thumbnail loader), recent images on the News page, and background images (with an external navigation overlay) in their Space and Locations sections. Each instance is managed and updated by the Pogo staff using SlideShowPro Director on the back-end.

A great example of the flexibility SlideShowPro and Director offer by tapping into nearly every facet of what's possible with both applications.

10.24.07 | Coming soon: SlideShowPro for Adobe Lightroom

A frequent request from many, I'm pleased to announce that in the coming weeks we'll be offering a plugin for Adobe Lightroom, the Windows / OS X photo management and editing software developed for professional photographers.

The SlideShowPro plugin fits right into Lightroom's "Web module" workspace, which is where you can export/upload HTML/Flash photo galleries using your Lightroom content. You simply decide what size you want your slideshow to be, how you want it to be styled, and Lightroom publishes all the XML data, HTML, and imagery for you. It all works beautifully, and will (hopefully) be of interest to new customers (especially those without Flash or web development experience) as well as existing users of the Flash component.

With that, there will be two versions of the plugin — a "complete" version that ships with everything a new customer (without Flash or SlideShowPro) needs, and an "incomplete" version designed for existing users of SlideShowPro. For the "incomplete" version, you simply publish a SWF containing the component and add it to the SlideShowPro for Lightroom's plugin folder. Your "incomplete" version will then be "complete," and ready to go.

Both versions will be purchasable, with "incomplete" obviously costing less than "complete," but we haven't figured out exact pricing yet. Expect more information on that, including screenshots, in the near future!

10.23.07 | New demo posted: SlideShowPro with Lightbox2

A few people in the forums asked recently how to use SlideShowPro with the Lightbox2 javascript library so that slideshow content can be clicked and opened inside Lightbox. So I sat down and knocked out a demo that shows how to setup your HTML file so that data can be passed from SlideShowPro to JavaScript to popup Lightbox. You can use this to pop open the same image loaded in SlideShowPro, or a completely different image. You can also assign a different image caption for use in Lightbox.

Here's a preview. To download the source files, visit the SlideShowPro download page in the Account Center (requires login).

10.20.07 | Matt Marcinkowski Photography

The portfolio for Matt Marcinkowski Photography is using SlideShowPro and SlideShowPro Director to present his collection of original work. Featuring one of the more interesting customizations of SlideShowPro I've seen, the component is scaled wide, and all slideshow content is aligned Center Right (through Content Align). The gallery, play/pause, and full screen buttons were removed (through Navigation Buttons Appearance) to leave nothing but thumbnails and navigation link icons. The background of all component elements were made transparent, and the designer positioned graphical shapes underneath (like the ovals underneath the navigation icons and the horizontal gradient behind the slideshow imagery) for extra style. Finally, an external navigation was added for selecting albums from outside the embedded gallery interface.

In all, a creative and engaging implementation that shows how far you can get by customizing SlideShowPro's parameters.

10.18.07 | Director 1.1.4 now available

Well, the factory is running at full tilt lately and another bug-fix release for Director just rolled off the line. The main issue resolved in this release was a problem with how portrait images were being scaled down and optimized for your slideshows. This bug also manifested itself by not honoring the focal point setting for the affected images. Both issues are now resolved, as well as a few others. For full details, check the version history.

SlideShowPro 1.6.3 Released

A little pesky display issue with the media player popped up after 1.6.2 went out the door yesterday, so I quickly patched the problem and pushed out a new release. If you're not using video, or if you are (but always include the media player interface), there's no real need to update. But if you're using 1.6.2, and are hiding the media player when using video, it's recommended.

10.17.07 | SlideShowPro 1.6.2 Released

A few more glitchy things popped up from version 1.6.0, so version 1.6.2 of the component is now available for download. To read what's changed / fixed in this release, check out the version history.

10.15.07 | SlideShowPro 1.6.1 Released

A new point-release for SlideShowPro is now available for download. This version fixes a few little things that popped up during the course of people using 1.6.0 over the past couple of weeks, including a couple of footer positioning errors, the dissapearance of the media player (when playing back audio) when entering / exiting full screen mode, and a Firefox video playback problem.

Also, due to several comments from end-users, I've revised the "Hidden When Gallery Open" option for the Navigation Appearance parameter so that the navigation is invisible when the gallery slides up, but is then visible again on the way back down. This way you don't see the navigation bar animating upward with the gallery.

I've also added a new method to handle xml file swapping after the component has initialized: setData(). Using this, you can assign new XML File Path / XML File Type to SlideShowPro through an external button and SlideShowPro will reload with that new data. This brings back functionality that existed in earlier SlideShowPro versions where assigning a new XML File Path would reload the component with that data (but in a more formal, method based way).

Anyway, if you'd like to read more about the changes, the version history has been updated. To download, click the "User Login" link at the top-right of this page to grab it from the Account Center.

10.10.07 | Director 1.1.2: Client-side caching is back

With all the advantages of Director's new image publishing system, there is one downside that has always bothered us. Since the images are being returned dynamically, browser side caching is being ignored, meaning that no matter how many times you watch a slideshow, the server still sends the image over the wire, even if it already exists in your browser's cache. Many of you have noticed that the preloaders in your slideshows are always visible, and this is why. Not only is this bad for user experience, it also can cause quite a spike in bandwidth on your server, which we experienced here at slideshowpro.net.

So after reading up on the HTTP spec, we've rolled out Director 1.1.2 which bridges the gap to your (or your user's) browser and smartly detects if the image exists in the browser's cache. If it does, Director instructs the browser to use it and virtually no data has to travel from the server to the browser, saving a lot of bandwidth.

Also new in 1.1.2, two new translations: Italian and French. Director is now available in six languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Thanks translators!

For a full changelog for 1.1.2, visit the version history. To download, hop on over to the Director product page.

10.04.07 | New (and free) Photoshop scripts

In addition to the updated versions of SlideShowPro and SlideShowPro Director, we're also releasing a new pair of export scripts for Photoshop CS2 / CS3. What do they do? Well, they either take a bunch of images already open in Photoshop, or an external folder full of images, and spit out slideshow / thumbnail imagery plus an XML file. And if your images have metadata embedded in them, the metadata will be used when populating image captions.

After export, all you have to do is link to the XML file it created from SlideShowPro and you're done. It's a similar concept to our iPhoto plugin, in that it's designed for quick, one-time batch export of content to quickly build a slideshow, but these scripts are cross-platform, and work with either Photoshop CS2 or CS3.

Visit the new Extras to download a copy!

10.03.07 | SlideShowPro 1.6 and SlideShowPro Director 1.1 now available

Title says it all! SlideShowPro 1.6 and SlideShowPro Director 1.1 are now available for purchase / download. As noted before, these updates are free for all current users of both applications, and can be downloaded through your profile here at the site. Click on the "User login" link at the top of this page to enter the new Account Center.

Couple of important notes concerning these releases:

One, if you're upgrading to either product, be sure to read the update notes included with both. A lot has changed in both of these releases, so it's important that you take the necessary precautions to avoid problems.

Two, we've decided with these new releases to revise our product pricing. This will only affect new users, for both products are free updates for all existing users. That said, we're sure there are some people out there who were holding out on obtaining Director 1.1 (or additional installation keys) until the final version was available, so to be fair we're offering a special Director coupon code that'll allow existing users to purchase Director for the old price. To obtain the coupon code (which is available for the next two weeks), login to your profile, and if you purchased SlideShowPro before today you'll see the code at the top.

Thanks go out to all our beta testers and language translators who helped us make these releases even better.

10.01.07 | We're done

I'm pleased to announce that after numerous weeks of private / public beta testing, SlideShowPro 1.6 and SlideShowPro Director 1.1 are "final" and ready to roll. In tandem with the updates will be a new design for slideshowpro.net, updated screencast videos (which will now be available as a podcast), completely new documentation (all user guides rewritten), a new Photoshop CS2/CS3 script (will write more about this later), as well as updated demonstration files using the latest version of SlideShowPro.

We'll be sending out an email blast when everything is complete, which we're guesstimating to be either sometime tomorrow or Wednesday. We just have a few little things to take care of before then.

Thanks to all the beta testers who helped kick the tires!