Last week we introduced a slideshow mode to challenges. It probably does not need an extensive explanation; it’s a standard slideshow with a set of features you can typically find in a slideshow. It’s still has a beta badge, and for a good reason. Within few hours we found (and fixed) several bugs of various degrees of embarrassment.
You may have noticed that challenges have always supported the Cooliris slideshow. It’s admittedly definitely cooler than our slideshow, but it has several disadvantages: you need a browser plugin, it cannot be as integrated with your application (challenges in this case) and finally it may have some distracting elements (such as links to buy stuff).
We definitely plan to enhance the slideshow in near future; voting and more image information, perhaps some UI improvements (such as full screen grid etc.).
As a side product of the slideshow, we introduced a 4000x4000 pixel limit on challenge images. We found that the Flash player does not play well with large bitmaps. Rather than working around it and resizing the large images to a size which Flash likes, we opted for the limit. The reasoning behind this is that: (1) this will affect only very small percentage of images (0.3% so far), (2) images of this case cannot be displayed on today’s screen (and screen in reasonable distance future) in full size anyway, and (3) we rather leave resizing on users themselves.
You can check some cool slideshows here:
Enjoy!
how to
Posted by: laxmi | Jul 10, 2009 4:37:38 AM
If 4000 pixels wide is the limit, it could be limiting for some wide panoramas? A 10:1 panorama would only be 400 pixels high.
Posted by: Erik from Sweden | Aug 10, 2009 5:26:13 PM
To me the slideshow is still a source of frustration. I think it does the best job of displaying the challenge images (if they are left in the original submission size), but often when I vote using the slideshow interface, my votes are NOT recorded even though it says they are when I'm voting (and fills in the stars). It does work on occasion, but most of the time it simply records the vote for the 1st viewed photo and then stops recording the votes. It's very annoying to spend 30 minutes voting on 50 or so photos only to later discover that only one vote was recorded.
I would also like to see an option for a gray background (as opposed to black). For some photos, it offers more enhancement IMO.
BTW, I'm using Firefox version 3.5.2 with Windows XP Pro.
Posted by: ed@ridersite | Aug 12, 2009 3:15:08 PM
For me I think the slide show will going to be a very big help specially to the newbies... Most of the newbies are not proactively familiar with the site, so by using any tools to navigate the site will be a very helpful for them to know what was this site all about...
Posted by: hdvideoreviews | Sep 14, 2009 9:05:12 AM
Hi,
This is very nice article.I get to know some good information about slideshow management in challenges.Thanks for this update.
Posted by: handy zubehör | Oct 7, 2009 11:21:36 AM