'Net Features : slideshow

Supersize Image-Based Websites

Michael Garrity — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:00:00 GMT

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so imagine how much you could convey on your website with an attractive, full-screen background slideshow.

Well, you no longer just have to imagine it, thanks to the Supersized jQuery plugin that does just that.

This advanced full-screen background plugin allows designers to display a photo or set of photos as a slideshow that takes up the full width and height of a Web page. And although this may not be ideal for all websites, it can be incredibly beneficial for creative professionals that want to display their work, like photography sites, designer portfolios or event sites.

Supersized integrates with Flickr, so users can incorporate images from their Flickr accounts into their websites. Among the features available on default “Shutter” theme for Supersized are a progress bar, a slide in/out thumbnail tray, a fluid thumbnail bar based on Thumb Reel and an option for mouse-responsive thumbnail scrubs. It also supports multiple transition effects, including carousel, fade and slide right.

Sam Dunn of One Mighty Roar created Supersized as a Build Internet project.

Create a Reel Presentation

Allison Howen — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:15:00 GMT

Creating a slideshow presentation is simple, but now accessing that presentation online and getting feedback for that presentation is simple too.

Reel, an online presentation tool created by Zurb, helps you cast your ideas, poll your friends and receive feedback.

The app allows users to create presentations that are similar to Powerpoint. However, the presentations are saved to a URL, which gives users with an Internet connection an easy way to access their projects on-the-go.

Additionally, users will receive feedback on their presentations because the audience has the ability to click a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” icon on every slide. Then, the user receives a summary page based on the impressions on each slide.

To create a Reel presentation, a user can upload images, files and documents, add names and descriptions to each slide, share their presentation with friends and collect feedback.

Check out this brief sample presentation as an example.

WordPress Wednesday - SlideDeck

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:30:00 GMT

If there is one topic that excites the Website Magazine audience every time it's WordPress Plugins.

There are a lot of incredibly useful plugins but with so many freely available (the WP plugin directory currently shows over 11,000), finding the "right" plugin to solve a problem or satisfy a need can be challenging. We're here to help.

Website Magazine is launching a new series in "WordPress Wednesday", where each week a new plugin (providing immense value, of course) will be featured.

Today's featured plugin is SlideDeck.

SlideDeck, created by Digital Telepathy, is a slider/slideshow plugin carrying a lot of potential for WordPress site operators. The plugin can be used to showcase dynamic feeds, media galleries, site topic tours (featured content) and product demos.

Take a look at some screenshots below or see it in action here:

SlideDeck for WordPress comes in two versions - SD Lite and SD Pro. The lite version (free) features autoplay (which animates the SlideDeck when visitors arrive on your website), some packaged skins and full CSS customization. SlideDeck has been downloaded nearly 30,000 times from the WP plugin directory and has an average rating of four stars from 21 reviewers. Pretty good.

More serious WordPress masters may want to consider Upgrading to SD Pro as it provides a whole lot more in terms of versatility including vertical slides, access to the API (for slide progression, slide control logic and call back) and a whole host of other interesting features such as RSS Feed Smart SlideDecks, which enable you to use an RSS feed as a source for the slideshow.

I recently had the opportunity to test out SD Pro and would most certainly reccommend it as it provides the ability to add a more modern design element quickly - it took me a total of about ten minutes to set up and customize the plugin on a testing site.