Like the SlideShowPro Player, ThumbGrid is at its best when loading images from our content management system SlideShowPro Director. All images and data are created for you automatically; giving you more time to play with ThumbGrid's style and size. That said, ThumbGrid and the SlideShowPro Player can be used together without SlideShowPro Director behind the scenes -- there are just a few particulars you should be aware of when doing so.
ThumbGrid is populated using the XML data loaded by the SlideShowPro Player (see Content for an overview). This applies to XML files created by you or Media RSS feeds.
Content displayed on ThumbGrid's Album screen are the same thumbnails loaded by the SlideShowPro Player's navigation. To modify your SlideShowPro Player data to include thumbnails for use in ThumbGrid, see the loading thumbnails instructions.
Content displayed on ThumbGrid's Gallery screen are the same thumbnails used for albums in the SlideShowPro Player's albums|gallery. To modify you SlideShowPro Player data to include album previews for use in ThumbGrid, see the loading album previews instructions.
In the case of Media RSS feeds, the SlideShowPro Player will parse the assigned feed and attempt to find images in the feed that can be used as thumbnails and album previews. When available, those images will automatically load in ThumbGrid. Note that every web site publishes Media RSS files their own unique way, so images may or may not always be available for use in the SlideShowPro Player (and thus by extension ThumbGrid).
Now that you know where images come from, what size do you create them at? You can see ThumbGrid's target dimensions in the component's live preview on the Stage. By default it displays the Album screen, which is where album content displays. Inside each cell you'll see the width and height of the image space. Those are your target dimensions.
To see the Gallery screen, temporarily set ThumbGrid's Layout/Startup Screen parameter (click here to see it) to "Gallery". ThumbGrid will now display a preview of the gallery screen with its own target image dimensions.
With both content screens, formatting your images for the exact dimensions displayed in ThumbGrid's live preview will prevent forced content scaling (and possible pixelation/degradation) when loaded.
