SlideShowPro Player SWF can load content from four sources: our content management system SlideShowPro Director, a Media RSS feed, content created by you (with your own XML file), or a WordPress media library (via SlidePress). See the see the SlidePress instructions for information on the latter. Everyone else, follow along.
These instructions assume you have Standalone successfully embedded in a web page. If you haven't done that yet, see the embedding instructions before moving forward.
If you're a Director user, you should have it already installed on your own server or setup through us as part of a subscription. You should also have some content uploaded to an album.
Sign-in to your installation of SlideShowPro Director. On the right-side of the Snapshot screen you should see "Recently updated galleries" and "Recently updated albums". Click the "Copy" button next to the album or gallery you want to load.
Now edit the HTML document embedding the Standalone SWF. In the Javascript code in the <head> area, edit the flashvars variable, like so:
var flashvars = {
loadParams: "false",
xmlFilePath: "http://you.slideshowpro.com/images.php?gallery=1",
xmlFileType: "Director",
initialURL: escape(document.location)
}
Load your HTML document and you should see your Director content loading.
Note that in the above code we're assigning parameters to SlideShowPro Player SWF via flashvars as opposed to using an external XML file. We explain how to assign parameters using both methods in the **parameters** section.
Lots of photo sharing sites (e.g, Flickr) publish Media RSS feeds of content that can be loaded in SlideShowPro Player SWF. To load one, copy the path to the RSS feed you want and assign it as the xmlFilePath, then assign "Media RSS" as the value of xmlFileType. Like so:
var flashvars = {
loadParams: "false",
xmlFilePath: "http://site.com/media.rss",
xmlFileType: "Media RSS",
initialURL: escape(document.location)
}
If you're going to create your own slideshow content -- either by hand or using our Photoshop export script -- you have a little more leg work to do. Here's how.
First, open the Examples folder in the Standalone ZIP you downloaded from our site. Each example is loading the same static content from an images.xml file. Standalone automatically requests this file if nothing else is assigned (see above).
The best way to get a handle on the SlideShowPro player's XML formatting is to read the document. It demonstrates the options for loading static slideshow content.
SlideShowPro Player SWF comes with a free Photoshop script that can export a single album of slideshow content from a folder of images. To download, sign-in to the Account Center, then click on "SlideShowPro Player SWF" in the Downloads box. The Photoshop script will be listed there.
After exporting slideshow content with the script, upload the folder of content Photoshop created to your web server. Then assign an absolute path to the "images.xml" file contained inside to Standalone through flashvars, like so:
var flashvars = {
loadParams: "false",
xmlFilePath: "http://you.com/slideshow/images.xml",
xmlFileType: "Default",
initialURL: escape(document.location)
}
Next, edit "images.xml" on your web server so the paths in the album element are absolute. For example:
<album title="Vacation photos" description="Photos from my summer vacation" lgpath="http://you.com/slideshow/gallery/album/large/" tnpath="http://you.com/slideshow/gallery/album/thumb/" tnsmpath="http://you.com/slideshow/gallery/album/thumbsm/" fspath="http://you.com/slideshow/gallery/album/fs/" tn="">
Load the HTML document and your Photoshop content should now appear.
So at this point you should have a slideshow embedded in a web page loading content. We touched on editing slideshow parameters in this walkthrough, but there are plenty more parameters at your disposal. Head over to Parameters for an overview.