I spent part of yesterday and today figuring out how to use the image gallery tool I just bought: SlideShowPro and SlideShowPro Director. It’s not 100% of everything I want, but it’s pretty good, and very configurable. More to the point, it saves me from having to either relearn Flash/Actionscript or hire a Flash developer to make a video player; and at $60 for the two programs, that’s a real steal.
I spent this morning tinkering around with templates and appearance, and have got a mockup here. (Don’t expect it to be up indefinitely; once I’m done messing around with it I’m going to take it down, so if the link doesn’t load, that’s why.) I’m still playing with it, but I’m fairly happy with the proportions, placement, color, etc.
That said, I haven’t decided yet whether to use it for everything. Definitely for the chocolate feet story, probably for the travel photos, but I think probably not for the crafts pages – for those I will make HTML galleries not unlike the ones I originally made. Haven’t decided yet. So much to play with, so little time!
At any rate, I have the framework in place, and later on I can hire someone to fill in the galleries for me.
I have received the bead patterns from BeAdInfinitum, along with a kit for the Lotus Beaded Bead, and will be tackling that one today or tomorrow.
But meanwhile, I promised Mike we’d go on a bike ride today, so off to that!