Section 16.4. Creating a Flash Slideshow

16.4. Creating a Flash Slideshow

A slideshow is an interactive feature that steps through a sequence of static images. Dreamweaver comes with a handy, prebuilt, customizable slideshow in Flash format that's just waiting for you to place on your page and use.

To do so, choose an insertion point on your page, and switch to the Flash Elements objects from the Insert panel's menu, as Figure 16-11 shows. Then click the Image Viewer object shown in Figure 16-12.

TECHTALK

A slideshow is an interactive feature that steps through a sequence of static images.

Figure 16-11. Selecting the Flash Elements objects set from the Insert panel's menu

Figure 16-12. The Image Viewer object's icon

The Save Flash Element dialog box appears. Navigate to your images or img folder, and type a name for the slideshow in the File Name field. Click Save, and Dreamweaver adds a large, gray Flash placeholder on the page.

Go to the panel groups, and find the Flash Element panel, as shown in Figure 16-13. Expand this panel. You might also want to collapse the other panels to give you plenty of room to work, because the Flash Element panel is where you customize the slideshow. Click any of the values to edit them. Table 16-1 lists its properties and their meanings.

Figure 16-13. Customize your slideshow from the Flash Element panel

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With Flash buttons and Flash text, you had to save the Flash movie in the same location as the current page. With a Flash slideshow, it doesn't matter so much. Save it in the most convenient place, which is probably with your images.

Table 16-1. Flash element properties

Property	Controls
bgColor	The background color of the slideshow
captionColor	The color of the image captions in the slideshow
captionFont	The typeface of the image captions in the slideshow
captionSize	The type size of the image captions in the slideshow
frameColor	The color of the slideshow's frame or border
frameShow	Whether the frame appears around the slideshow
frameThickness	The weight of the slideshow's frame
imageCaptions	The text captions for the images in the slideshow sequence
imageLinks	The links for the images in the slideshow sequence
imageLinkTarget	The target for all the links (see Chapter 15)
imageURLs	The images in the slideshow
showControls	Whether a DVD-style control panel appears above the slideshow
slideAutoPlay	Whether the slideshow begins playing automatically when the page loads
slideDelay	The number of seconds between slides
slideLoop	Whether the slideshow repeats with the first image following the final image
title	The title or label of the slideshow
titleColor	The color of the title text
titleFont	The typeface of the title text
titleSize	The type size of the title text
transitionsType	The style of transition between images in the slideshow

16.4.1. Adding Images to the Slideshow

To add images to the slideshow, click the value next to the imageURLs field in the Flash Element panel, and then click the Edit Array Values button to the right. The Edit Array dialog box appears, as Figure 16-14 shows.

Figure 16-14. Add images to the slideshow from the Edit Array dialog box

Select one of the default images, and a folder icon appears. Click this folder, and navigate to the image file that you want to include. You can add as many images as you like by clicking the plus button. Be sure to remove any images that you don't need by selecting them and then clicking the minus button.

When you're done, click OK.

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It's handy to save the images of your slideshow with the same general filename plus the number in sequence, as in slide01, slide02, slide03, and so on. This helps you to keep them in the proper order when you add them to the slideshow.

16.4.2. Adding Links to the Images

Each image in the slideshow can have its own link. To add the links, click in the imageLinks value field of the Flash Element panel, and then click the folder icon to open the Edit Array dialog box.

Select a link to change its value. Choose a location on your current site by clicking the folder icon and navigating to the desired page, or type the URL of an external web site. If you opt for typing, make sure that the URL appears between single quotes: 'http://www.mysite.com/' is correct; http://www.mysite.com is not.

The order of the links corresponds to the order of your images, so make sure you're keeping track of which slide is which.

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If you don't want links for any of your images, delete all the values. If you want only certain images to have links, leave a pair of single quotes ('') in place of an actual URL for those images that shouldn't link to anything.

16.4.3. Adding Captions to the Images

Likewise, each image in the slideshow can have its own caption. Click in the imageCaptions value field of the Flash Element panel, and click the folder icon to open the Edit Array dialog box. Type the captions in the same order as your images.

16.4.4. Testing the Slideshow

When you're done setting properties, click the Play button in the Property Inspector to test your slideshow, and you will see a slideshow object as in Figure 16-15. Go back to the Flash Element panel and tweak the properties if you like, and position the slideshow on the page according to the same rules for images and other types of Flash.

Figure 16-15. Preview your slideshow in the document window

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The default slideshow dimensions are rather abundant. Feel free to scale down the movie by selecting it and dragging its handles, just like you do for images, although you don't have to resample afterwards.

For the slideshow, the minimum serviceable width (when you include the control panel) is about 200 pixels.