Like navigation thumbnail links and link previews (see previous chapter), album previews are separate images assigned through the XML file. This walkthrough will show you how to setup albums to load album previews, as well as instructions for modifying your XML file.
First, display the gallery in SlideShowPro's live preview by setting PLAYBACK/Startup to "Open at Startup." This makes the gallery visible so we can see what we're modifying in the next step.
Next, choose which style of preview you'd like to display (options shown in the Gallery and albums chapter) through ALBUMS/Preview Style. The preview container will update to show your changes; including a dimension readout (see right).
If you choose one of the "Inline" options, modify the width/height of the preview to your liking with ALBUMS/Preview Size (first number is width, second is height). If you choose "Banner," the width is automatically calculated for you, but you can modify the height in Preview Size. Finally, if you select "Fill," both the width and height are calculated automatically (and Preview Size is ignored).
ALBUMS/Preview Scale dictates how your images are handled if they are not the same size as the preview container. The default setting is "Proportional," which means that your images will be proportionally scaled to the preview container's dimensions.
In the case of both "Inline" styles, a "Proportional" scale will scale the image to the largest dimension possible without cropping. In the case of both "Banner" and "Fill" styles, "Proportional" scaling is the same as "Crop to Fit" scaling, in that the image is proportionally scaled until it fills the container, then cropped in the center.
If you would like to apply no scaling or image size detection at all, set Preview Scale to "None." Your images will be loaded "as is."
You may either use an existing photo (and let SlideShowPro for Flash scale it for you) or you may use an image editor (like Photoshop) and scale and/or crop an image to match the dimensions shown in the live preview.
When your album preview image is ready, save a web-optimized copy of it to your album's folder. For the purposes of this walkthrough, we'll save "albumThumb.jpg" to the root of our first album.
Open the XML document SlideShowPro for Flash is loading, and add a tn attribute to the album you created the preview for, and assign a relative link to the image. Your XML should now look similar to this:
<album title="Nature" description="Images of trees, lakes and flowers" lgpath="gallery/album1/lg/" tnpath="gallery/album1/tn/" tn="gallery/album1/albumThumb.jpg">
Publish a movie (File>Publish Preview>Flash) and your album preview should now appear!