Okay, thanks to Texas State University’s open source technology policy I’m able to share this with you guys.
It’s a XML based slideshow/news reader type thingy.
Basically here’s what goes on, it loads the XML, parses it counts how many “slides” there are and displays a random one, spitting it’s 4 data nodes into the correct spots (“headline”, “body text”, “link url” and “photo”).
When the user clicks next it it goes to the next slide in order, and back to the first if it’s on the last.
There are some extra frames for the photo container left from animating in and out. Originally I wanted to preload each image before an animation fired, but had to scrap it. Eventually I’d like to get that working.
** here’s a preview of what it looks like :**
http://www.gigantenicaragua.com/slideshow/risingstar.html
** Here’s the source: **
http://www.gigantenicaragua.com/slideshow/Slideshow.zip
Originally the photos slid in, but they would need to be preloaded to avoid them loading in “mid-slide”, seen here:
http://www.gigantenicaragua.com/slideshow/risingstar_slide.html
Senocular has a great tutorial on preloading the next image, but I have yet to integrate it:
http://www.senocular.com/flash/source.php?id=0.132
Any ideas on how to integrate that functionality would be welcome! In fact, any ideas on how to make the application better are welcome.
A few last notes, this was built to work in the Magnolia CMS, users generate content on the fly! It will work anywhere though, there were a few workarounds for Magnolia though.
In the XML loader MC, you can set it to load from a variable set in the HTML parameters. Just uncomment and you’re all set.
That’s about it, I’ll be on here to answer questions if you guys have any.
