How Do I Get a SlideShowPro into Freeway Page

Freeway
1

On recommendation on another thread here, I have purchased SlideShowPro to work with Adobe Lightroom

I have made a test page in freeway and I have now made a sample gallery with the SlideShow Pro

I understood that like you just drag and drop the SWF file onto the Freeway Page.

I have tried all thre .swf files that are in the Galleries folder
expressInstall.swf
loader.swf
pop.swf
slideshowpro.swf

But I have tried all the .swf files and it doesn’t work, I was therefore wandering if someone could give me some advice.

DanJ are you there seeing you recommended SlideShowPro?

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2

Forgot to say that I did upload the whole folder of the Gallery to the web server

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3

The SWF file that needs to be inputted into Freeway is the “loader.swf” file and you’ll then need to use the “upload stuff” or “extra resources” action to upload “param.xml” “slideshowpro.swf”,“images.xml” to the HTML location of your site.

You’d then have to manually upload the album folders since you can only do files in the action.

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4

Thanks, But I need some more advice please

OK I have up loaded the compleate Folder created by SlideShowPro

How do I inputted into Freeway the “loader.swf” File? Drag n Drop?

Then Save and Upload option.

On your “upload stuff” or “extra resources” action to upload “param.xml” “slideshowpro.swf”,”images.xml” to the HTML location of your site.

I have done that by uploading the whole Gallery folder with Fetch FTP?

Or have I got that all wrong?

If I need to use the “upload stuff” or “extra resources” as an action, where do I find that?

Any chance of a step by step guide?

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5

Sure.

You’d want to draw out an HTML item onto your page. Depending on if you’re using just drag and drop HTML item’s or building like a box model…define a blank HTML item into your design.

Then select that HTML item so it has the small boxes around the corners but not a blinking cursor. Then you’ll want to goto “File > Import” and select your “loader.swf” file. Then you’ll want to goto “Item > Fit Box To Content” and it should fit the HTML dimensions to the size of your slideshow.

For clarity purposes I use the “Upload Extra Resources” (http://actionsforge.com/actions/view/45-upload-extra-resources) and then in the HTML section (you might have to scroll down) and then from the drop-down’s select the following files “slideshowpro.swf”,“images.xml”,“param.xml” and then you’ll have to manually upload the “album#” folders using an FTP application.

If you use a slideshow on a page in a subfolder it may present an issue and you’d have to go into the images.xml file and adjust the folder locations to find the images. You may also run into this situation if you have “separate resources folder” set in your document setup.

The best way to figuring out what’s wrong is using Safari. If you goto “Window” and choose “Activity” you can get a complete listing of what files are being loaded and where they are being loaded from. If something is “not found” look as to where it’s loading it from.

If you like a screen-cast on it I can see about it early next week as I have a full plate before the weekend starts here.

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6

Dan

Thanks for the help, I will try and have a go at what you are talking about.

But your reply raises a couple of more questions if you don’t mind.

Q1) I take it that I need to upload the whole SlideShoPro Gallery Folder created by Lightroom using FTP Fetch?

Q2) Should I upload that folder before uploading the Webpage in Freeway that should show the said gallery?

Q3) If I am importing the file “loader.swf” into a HTML bog on the page and using “Upload Extra Resources” to upload the files "slideshowpro.swf”,”images.xml” & ”param.xml”. Should I remove these from the folder conatining the galleries that I have FTP’ed to the Server?

Q4) When you talk about subfolders causing a problem, Should I than move all the folders and files out of the exported folder created by Lightroom?

Q5) I have hit another stumbling block that is related. I am trying to combine exported slideshows and I understand that I will need to edit the HTML/XML Text. I think that I understand what the instruction on SSP are saying (I won’t hold my breath just yet). But it states that I need a Text Editor. There is a footnote that states:

================================
Note: this walkthrough requires a little bit of web development experience and a text editor like Dreamweaver, TextWrangler, Notepad, etc. Do not attempt to modify your HTML / XML with a word processing / rich text editor like Microsoft Word or TextEdit on OS X.

The comment “this walkthrough requires a little bit of web development experience” could mean that I fail rather quickly, but willing to dive in.

But the part “Do not attempt to modify your HTML / XML with a word processing / rich text editor like Microsoft Word or TextEdit on OS X.”

Any suggestions as to what I could use, I thought that Apple TextEdit would have been all I would have needed.

NOTE: I have the following Software installed on mycomputer: (Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Apple Pages, Appleworks, Freeway 5 Pro website building design software from Softpress, Mail, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft World, Excel, Power Point)

Q6) If none of that software will works is there any freeware software you could suggest, because I have just had to purchase Lightroom to use your product and don’t want to fork out another £ 400 for Dreamweaver?

Thanks for your help

Regards

Jamie

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7

On Question 6 - I have put “use your product” which it isn’t.

It’s getting latelol

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8

I’ll tackle this in more detail later this evening, but question 6 you can use a FREE program called “TextWrangler.” It’s like BBEdit in today’s American economy. It’s found here:

http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/

Q1 - Yes you will need to upload the album folders only. All other files you’ll selectively attach using the “Resources” action we’ve been discussing.

Q2 - It doesn’t matter when you upload it as long as there isn’t a folder with the same name in Freeway in your site panel. Everytime Freeway publishes and uploads it’ll overwrite existing data but it won’t wipe the whole server clean…just what it knows is already Freeway related in there. So the short version, it doesn’t matter as long as they make it on there in the end.

Q3, Q4 - By uploading the album folders only you won’t have to remove or move any files. Here’s what I’d do. I’d create a folder on your server labelled “ssp” and then I’d drop in all the album folders that Lightroom outputs. Then open your images.xml file in TextWrangler and change the address locations to those files. So it’d look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--Published with SlideShowPro for Lightroom 1.1-->
<gallery galleryTitle="Title" galleryDescription="Description">
    <album lgPath="album1/images/" tnPath="album1/thumb/" title="" description="" tn="" audio="" audioCaption="">
        <img src="image1.jpg" title="" caption="" pause=""></img>
    </album>
</gallery>

would turn into:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--Published with SlideShowPro for Lightroom 1.1-->
<gallery galleryTitle="Title" galleryDescription="Description">
    <album lgPath="ssp/album1/images/" tnPath="ssp/album1/thumb/" title="" description="" tn="" audio="" audioCaption="">
        <img src="image1.jpg" title="" caption="" pause=""></img>
    </album>
</gallery>

Q5 - By using TextWrangler you should be able to understand the XML file and how to combine them. You’d essentially just copy from the opening < gallery > to < /gallery >.

As a side-note I haven’t used SSP for Lightroom for quite a while so if your file output names or structure are different I could easily update it and try it out for you.

Hopefully this works out for you and don’t hesitate to ask anything else. If a visual screen-cast is needed I can work on it over the weekend.

Good luck.

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9

Hi Dan

Thanks ever so much for all your help.

You have done a really good job explaining it all, and a thick-O’ like me has managed to get through everything you have stated.

There is good news and bad news.

The Good News; is that I have managed to merge the albums and upload them, plus follow all your instruction to getting the gallery up and working on a testpage. See Here:

http://www.warwickshire7s.co.uk/testpage.html

The Bad News; is that having got so far, there is a problem.

The problem is that when you look at the above link to the gallery which is sitting on my test page, It now has a heavy black background in the Heading area which should not be there. It should match the grey background on the webpage.

In Lightroom it was grey ‘CCCCCC’, when exported to a folder it was grey, when I up loaded it to the web server it is still grey. It should look like this:

http://www.warwickshire7s.co.uk/galleries/index.html

But when I have embedded it into the freeway page the Header Background turns Black. It is the same if I use iFrames and point the frame to the Galleries/index.html file which is grey as you can see from the above link.

Any ideas as to why this is happening?

I there something that has been left out of the process by any chance?

I have gmailed you my contact details, should you need me to send you any of the scripts

Regards

Jamie

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10

I should have mentioned that in the Exported Lightroom 2 + SSP gallery folder there is also the following files still remaining that we have not touched

expressInstall.swf
pop.html
pop.swf
FOLDER: resources -CONTAINING FILES: logo.png
FOLDER: js -CONTAINING FILES: swffit.js & swfobject.js

When you look at the galleries/index.html page (Link above) that shows the gallery with a grey header, these files are up loaded in that gallery folder (The whole folder was uploaded)

But not in the method you have suggested. (albums uploaded and put in a ssp/folder that the test page uses)

The iFrames trial I did points to the folder with all files in and still has the back background issue.

I have tried the extra resourced option to drag as many other files to the test page without any luck.

Regards

Jamie

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11

I did get your e-mail and as I had mentioned before I haven’t used Lightroom in a while for my SSP needs. With that said I did load up the v1.36 of SSP Lightroom and outputted a sample project and a bunch of files appeared which were much more than I had mentioned earlier. Again, probably due to not using it to it’s most recent version.

What I did was went ahead and created a new Freeway document, imported the loader.swf and then attached the “param.xml, images.xml, slideshowpro.swf, and expressinstall.swf” to the HTML location. I then dropped the “album1” folder onto my server. To be honest I’m not sure what the expressinstall.swf file is but it looks like it’s used in the code output. Perhaps to do installs for people who don’t have a proper flash plugin, no clue.

Either my Freeway is being goofy or it’s my Flash plugin but when I loaded in the loader.swf file and then “Fit Box to Content” it actually made it smaller than the actual slideshow-size. So i had to figure out what my actual dimensions were in Lightroom and then do that. But I also noticed that I get the background outside the container item even though I don’t have one set in Freeway itself and left the default color in Lightroom.

To alleviate that problem I tried applying a Flash parameter.

If you click on your SSP flash item in Freeway and goto “Item > Extended” and then in the name field put “WMODE” (without the quotes) and then in the value area put “transparent” (without the quotes) and see if that fixes it. It got rid of the color in the HTML item and brought the color out that was under it which was white and I’ve just tried changing the color to a Cyan and it shows cyan through.

Try this route and post here again and if it doesn’t work we’ll try and see another way to figure it out. Good luck.

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12

Dan

You are a genius that has worked a treat.

Out of interest, what is Extended, WMODE and The transparent all about? Just so that I can problem solve in the future.

Not sure if I can return the help you have given me on this from a web point of view. But If you ever want any photographic advice. I owe you one.

Thanks once again

Jamie

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13

Dam I can’t edit my posting

Forgot to mention the background has now gone from Black to white… Any clues on how to get it to grey, the choosen colour

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14

http://www.warwickshire7s.co.uk/testpage.html

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15

I should also have said that the colour tone I am after is ‘CCCCCC’ for the area that was once black and is now white. Would changing the transparent option to a colour choice some how work?

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16

Now I dont know if this will work or not but it is worth a go.

Attach the Flash Extras action to the box that contains your loader.swf and in the inspector for the action choose:

Edit Movie: Yes

Change Background Colour to other and stick in your CCCCCC

Try this before you take off the extended attributes which makes the background transparent (WMODE) - if it doesnt work with WMODE there then try it without.

David

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17

Thanks Dave

First bit didn’t work until I remove the transparent part from the ‘Extended Attributes’ and then I removed the ‘Extended Attributes’ & WMODE all together and it still works.

So now we have got it working (Thanks to Dan & Dave) can ether of you explain the theory or what it was all about that caused the problem and why this fixed it?

Regards

Jamie

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18

what it was all about that caused the problem

Nope!

and why this fixed it?

I am assuming that the FW action overwrote the original flash settings

David

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19

Well usually in the Flash based component version of SSP you can adjust the SSP item to have a transparent background on publish. I think the problem lies in either you having additional “design-elements” outside of the show that affected it’s output. If you were to just design the slideshow and then in your Freeway page add the top “text-based” items you might have had an easier time with it.

As far as the WMODE here’s where I learned about it:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14201

It follows setting it into Dreamweaver, but the ending part of the second video gives you the idea I knew would probably work out. Or if the Flash Extra’s action works too which I assume just adds various “params” or parameters to your Flash SWF file.

All in all the important thing is that it works and I’m glad we got there and figured it out.

Nice photograph’s, by the way.

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20

Thanks for that.

Sorting out these slide shows on the car club website has been very important to me, because it has been a learning curve in how to use Freeway to rebuilding my own business websites next.

I previously built the business website in iWeb and it is not very searchable IMHO. So I needed something with greater flexibility for the design as well.

Glad you like the pictures, they are just snaps really.

Now that I have almost finished the Car club site, I plan on rebuilding my photography websites

If you like photography take a look at the work websites

Commercial Website: http://www.jamiejonesphoto.com/Site/HomePage.html

Press Website: http://www.jamiejonesphoto.com/Site/Welcome.html

Once again thanks for your help

Jamie

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