The gallery interface is where all your albums are stored. Like an HTML table, the gallery contains a series of rows and columns and fills the cells with albums. It is opened and closed through the gallery icon at the far left of the navigation bar.
By default, the gallery is created with two columns and four rows. The size of each album cell, in addition to the number of rows and columns the gallery can display, are directly related to the overall width and height of SlideShowPro for Flash. If you increase the size of the instance, the gallery will increase the size of each album cell and maintain the number of assigned rows and columns. If you decrease the size of the instance, the gallery will decrease the size of each album cell until the number of assigned rows and columns can no longer be supported; at which point the number of rows and columns will automatically decrease to give each album cell more space.
To change the gallery layout, modify GALLERY/Rows and GALLERY/Columns. If you enter a number that's too high for the instance to support, it will be ignored and the maximum possible value will be used. To alter the amount of negative space around and between albums, modify GALLERY/Padding.
When ordering your albums in the gallery, SlideShowPro for Flash always starts with the first row and column, and (by default) moves from left-to-right filling cells until reaching the end of a row. It then moves to the first column / second row and continues. To change, modify GALLERY/Order.
To modify the background color of the gallery, modify GALLERY/Background Color. You can also change the transparency of the background by modifying GALLERY/Background Alpha (0-100 in AS2, 0-1 in AS3).
By default, the gallery is hidden underneath the navigation and pops open when the gallery button in the navigation is toggled. To remove the gallery, and thus remove the gallery button from the navigation, set GALLERY/Appearance to "Hidden." If you would like to start your slideshow with the gallery interface open, set PLAYBACK/Startup to "Open Gallery". To hide the navigation bar at the top when the gallery is open, choose "Visible without Navigation".
If SlideShowPro cannot fit all of your albums in one gallery screen, your albums will spillover to two or more screens which can be accessed through the gallery navigation. By default the navigation element is always visible, regardless of how many screens exist. If however you plan on only including one screen of content, you may remove the navigation through GALLERY/Navigation Appearance.
When a screen is available, the previous and next screen buttons enable and change background color from GALLERY/Navigation Inactive Color to GALLERY/Navigation Active Color. The background color changes again (to GALLERY/Navigation Rollover Color) when an enabled button is moused-over.
Here are the parameters that control the style of the gallery navigation:
By default, each album displays a textual title and description. This data is read from the title and description attributes assigned to each album node in the XML file. Album previews are thumbnail images you can (optionally) add and display in a variety of ways.
The following parameters control the color and size of default album content:
Every album background can be assigned the same color, as well as transparency to partially reveal the gallery color underneath. Albums also provide visual feedback to rollovers through ALBUMS/Rollover Color, which temporarily changes the background color of the applicable element.
Albums can also display a preview image to give viewers a visual sneak-peak into the content an album contains. There are four styles to choose from using the ALBUMS/Preview Style parameter: "Inline Left," "Inline Right", "Banner" and "Fill."
The default preview style is "Inline Left," which is demonstrated above. With the "Inline..." styles, you assign the width / height of the previews through ALBUMS/Preview Size, and your assigned images will proportionally scale to fit these dimensions (if different). You can also crop to fit your images to these dimensions, or not scale the images at all using ALBUMS/Preview Scale.
Inline previews are wrapped with an outer background element for decorative purposes. The color/line thickness can be assigned through ALBUMS/Preview Stroke Color / Weight. If you'd rather not show the background, set ALBUMS/Preview Stroke Weight to zero.
The "Banner" preview style is very similar to both "Inline" options, with the exception of width and scaling. When created, SlideShowPro for Flash uses the height assigned in ALBUMS/Preview Size, but ignores the assigned width. Instead, SlideShowPro for Flash calculates how much horizontal space is available and assigns the preview width automatically.
As for scaling, both "Proportional" and "Crop to Fit" options do the same thing; images (if not the same size) is scaled to fill the preview, then cropped in the center. If you'd rather not apply any scaling, set ALBUMS/Preview Scale to "None" and the images will be loaded "as-is."
The "Fill" style removes the album title, description and preview background and uses the entire surface area of each album to display a preview. "Fill" thus ignores any assigned value in ALBUMS/Preview Size, and instead calculates the available width and height automatically.
As for scaling, both "Proportional" and "Crop to Fit" options do the same thing; images (if not the same size) is scaled to fill the preview, then cropped in the center. If you'd rather not apply any scaling, set ALBUMS/Preview Scale to "None" and the images will be loaded "as-is."
For information on how to create album previews for your gallery, see Creating album preview images.