In my efforts to find an easy, versatile, and professional looking solution for presenting images as a slideshow online, I came across SlideShowPro – an extension for Macromedia’s newer Flash authoring programs, such as Flash MX Professional or Flash 8. And while this solution is not a freebie (the cost of the Flash software plus 20 bucks for the extension), you get a whole lot more than you pay for with this extension.
Here are a couple of examples that feature this extension:
- Columbia University’s Student Newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, is running a series using SSP called Faces of Iraq
The basic logic behind this plugin is that it allows you to create a flash movie that acts as a container for information about your slide show images. However, to improve the speed and versatility of the movie, the flash file is simply a receptacle for a XML document that organizes the albums of photos that live outside the flash movie. In other words, the flash movie (SWF file) is reading a XML file that organizes the images and can be easily updated and changed – so you don’t have to recreate the swf file to add images, albums, etc. Moreover, the extension also allows you to fetch your flickr albums with an OPML file, play music with your slideshow, and insert FLV movie files …
This is perfect for some of the projects I am currently involved in, and I will be playing with this a lot more in the days to come. In fact, I already have an example that works with typo3 – check out this page for a test run with slideshowpro …
Sweet! Nice find. I think that the NY Times uses this for its multimedia image presentations — I remember one from their Hurricane Katrina coverage that looked similar to your test run pages.
Can you post a step-by-step SSP > Flickr install guide? I can’t find one anywhere. As a highly touted feature, I’m surprised that it is this difficult to implement for new users.
Thank you in advance.