Wide World Of Web Design

The SlideshowPro Advantage …
There are gallery options galore to choose from when putting images up on the web, and choosing the right one goes far beyond just what looks the coolest, so here I’m going to look at the Latest (PicLens) and what I still consider to be the Greatest (Slideshow Pro).

Piclens is an Extension for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari that transforms your browser into a full-screen slideshow experience with an interactive “3D Wall” that lets you drag, click, and zoom your way around a wall of pictures. There’s no doubt it looks pretty cool, and you can see how it works HERE, however there are a couple of limitations.

The most obvious one is that it limits the viewing audience to those who are actually willing to download and install an extension on their browser, which unfortunately even today eliminates a pretty large viewing audience. Thusly, when a person who doesn’t have the extension clicks on the image, well, the results are not exactly a decent trade-off. In reality, it’s geared toward People Of The Internet (It’s now hip to be a nerd) who typically use Firefox as their internet browser, and can’t wait to go on Facebook, or Flikr, and yadda yadda yadda … Also, as of this post there were still a couple of bugs when used on Internet Explorer (like those of us using Firefox really care!). Anyway, it’s neat but impractical, something you can use for Fun more or less.

As far as all the Image Gallery programs or systems that are out there, there’s far too many to name here, but I’ve used several javascript ones such as Lightbox JS V2.0 by Lokesh Dhakar which is popular, and TripTracker, and while these are slick and customizable, they can be rather labor intensive because of all the handcoding required, so not too practical if you have lots of images (there’s that practical crap again!). A favorite of mine is Zen Photo which I wrote an article on a while ago, and as great as that one is, it can lack some of the flair you get with Javascript or Flash based programs.

That’s where Slideshow Pro from Todd Dominey comes to the rescue.
Since discovering this little gem a couple years ago I’ve used it for several clients, much to their delight, and even though it does require Adobe Flash as well as a “license per domain” it is still one of the best deals I’ve come across. What really makes this program a slam dunk though is it’s counter-part SlideShowPro Director (requires MySQL database) which makes it dead simple to upload and manage your galleries online, making it Cool AND Practical. And because Slideshow Pro is a component used in Flash, the slideshow itself is highly customizable as you can imagine, so once you purchase a copy and get a user account you’ll have to log on to the User Forums (another great feature) so you can view some great examples and be inspired.

Check out this Video Demonstration and see for yourself why this is simply one of the best ways to display images on a website. And your clients will love you for it!