Cool Fireworks CS3 Slideshow Command
In case you haven’t noticed, Fireworks CS3 comes with a very cool Slideshow command feature. You may wonder why do we need another slideshow feature. There are slideshow/photo album in Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Lightroom, etc….. However, this one is very interesting. No only does it let you create a Flash slideshow, it also includes a template for the Spry/AJAX slideshow. The photo gallery that is at the Spry examples can be done right inside Fireworks CS3. And even better is the fact that you can open the album in Fireworks again later in case you need to add/delete more photos. Super-cool!And of course, the slideshow is designed with css so that it can be re-styled easily.
Brian Chau 
Hi Brian,
I’m just working my way through some of the new features in Fireworks CS3. The slideshow was next on my list. Coincidentally, I just posted on creating a Fireworks Flex Component (http://geekglue.blogspot.com/2007/06/fireworks-cs3-creating-flex-symbols.html)
Awesome, glad you like it guys. Did you know you can easily add your own player to the list as well? I’ve been meaning to write a small tutorial on how to do it, but its fairly easy to push out a new slideshow player. 🙂
Cheers!
Thanks Brian – have been looking for this one since you demo’d in Brisbane recently – couldn’t remember which app to use!
How do you embed the Spry/Ajax slideshow in your index webpage? I am lost, its been two years to put my hands on webdesign.
Adam, the Create SlideShow command generates the html page with the AJAX code. Being an html page, you can use that as a template to add or modify the page as required, preferrably with Dreamweaver CS3.
Hey, Since being an old school designer i was looking into frames and i figured it out with iframes. you can check it out at http://adamos.us/test/pictures.html
I recalled the knowledge really quick 🙂
Hey, I just created my first slideshows in Fireworks CS3. However, I can’t get them to work in Dreamweaver CS3 or upload into my site correctly. The tutorials I’ve seen all end with creating the slideshow in Fireworks, but none tell how to send the slideshow to Dreamweaver or upload into your site. To be honest I’m really new at this and I would like to know which file(s) to put into my webpage and how I could accomplish this. Thanks
P.S. If someone knows of a tutorial that shows how to send the slideshow from Fireworks to Dreamweaver that would be great.
Naaman, you would need to define a site within Dreamweaver CS3 that points to the folder of the slideshow that Fireworks CS3 has created. From then on you can edit the page in Dreamweaver. The Help in Dreamweaver explains how to define a site.
Does anybody knows how to had multiple slideshows in one album and how to save them so you loose the thumbnail at the top
Thank you for your help Brian. I appreciate it. I did what you said, but only the player works. None of the pictures I put in the slideshow show up. Did I do something wrong?
I would check the site folder if that includes everything that has been output by the Fireworks. In particular, there should be a folder that has the photos and a sub-folder called “thumbs” that has more photos.
BTW, which template did you choose in Fireworks.
I am having the same problem — am new to this and am having no luck getting a slide show to work. Can create slideshows in Adobe Light Box or Elements 5, but can not figure out how to load a slideshow into a web page. HELP
brian, can i set the default values of the slideshow command – e.g. the pic sizes, thumb sizes and player choice as Spry etc.
i have created a slideshow for a photo contest hosted on our blog and it works great, but it is annoying to change the settings everytime i open it to the way i want. also is there a way to include two captions in the slideshow GUI. for e.g. Dreamweaver allowed two fields caption and caption1, which then i used to create a link back to the contestant’s website. you can see what I have done here by following this link: http://jugalbandi.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/click02/index.html
Thanks,
Jai
Jai, you can set the pic sizes, thumb sizes at the export options menu. You can select the player choice at the albumbook properties menu.
As for adding extra captions, I am not sure if that can be done. If yes, it probably would have to be handcoded using DW.
Please get a mac version!!!! Does anyone know where I can get a nice, professional looking slideshow I can put into dreamweaver???
Thanks!
I’m trying to use the create slide show command and when I try and create the album it comes up, but none of the images do. Actually the image name shows, but the the preview says file not found. Then when I try to export the show their is nothing. Can you help?
Tel Aviv, I have found this video tutorial on how to create the fireworks slide show. Hope this can help.
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0172
Hi there. I made a sweet looking slideshow, and it runs great. Only problem is I want to place it in a Dreamweaver template-based page. I have it working perfectly on my computer, but when I post it, with the exact files, folders, and paths from document-based site, the slideshow movie does not show up at all. The swf of slideshow works fine online, it just doesn’t connect with the webpage once it’s on the server. Do you have any suggestions where the trouble is? Thank you for any help, I’m going nuts trying to solve this here….
here’s the link to slideshow:
http://members.cox.net/uci_fsae/black_gallery/img_gallery.html
here’s what it does when placed within webpage:
http://members.cox.net/uci_fsae/gallery/gallery.html
jgorski, the slideshow itself is an html page so you need to be careful to copy and paste the right code and have the links setup properly too. A simple way to incorporate an html page within another html page (or DW template) is to use iFrame. Then there is nothing to copy but to refer the source of the iFrame to the slideshow html page.
Yes, thanks– I’ll try that!
on the .xml file there is a “path” attribute, change that to the absolute link to the folder where your images are contained
e.g.
http://www.mywebsite.com/images/firstAlbum/
emm. thank you ))
Can anyone tell me if it’s possible to have two or more slideshow created with FW installed in one website DW? I loaded the first one fine, but having trouble loading the second one. I think it has a conflict with the same slideshow.xml file. And when I try to change the name to slideshow(2) or something, it doesn’t work. The second one keeps showing up as the first slide show. So I tried to create a separate folder to keep all the files together and neither one works. It seems all the stuff has to be under the root folder or something. HELP!!!!!
I’m having the exact same problem as John. I have 2 slideshows that work fine until I put them in my website. No matter what I try, it wants to use the same slides for both.
Followup to my note: I have the slideshows in different folders.
Fran,
I’ve been trying everything to get this working. Okay, today I deleted all the files and started fresh to figure this out. I installed the first slideshow only. I placed everything under the root folder and it works fine. I’ve tried to changed the name of the slideshow.xml and it doesn’t work. When I changed the .smf file name it automatically updates the index.html, and it works fine. Why when I change the .xml name it doesn’t automatically update everything so it’ll work? When I place all these in a separate folder, it doesn’t work. So my option is when I change the .xml name, where do I go to manually to change so that the .smf file reads it? It just shows up as a frame with no picture content.
John,
It seems I’ve tried everything that you have. Both slidesshows are in their own folder structure, they both work correctly in Fireworks and by just launching the swf from windows. But once I embed the 2nd slideshow in my web page, it looks to the first slideshow’s xml for the image list.
I can only guess that once it’s embedded, dreamweaver may be overriding the path to the xml. I’ve also tried renaming both xml and swf, with no luck.
I’ve googled this problem a thousand different ways. I was greatly relieved to finally find your post. I found one other post on this topic from a John (you?) in an Adobe forum.
I’ve thought of trying this in Flash, but the learning curve is longer than I’d like for something this simple. Hopefully someone will respond.
John,
It wasn’t an Adobe forum. Here is the other post I found http://www.fireworksguruforum.com/index.php?s=a3a5213c68f19be3ff9752152a443b6e&showtopic=15278
John,
I have a workaround, but I hope it’s not the real solution. This will work if the page on which you want to insert the slide show is in the same folder with the .swf and .xml.
Obviously, this means that you can’t have 2 slideshows on a page, but, that doesn’t seem like a good design technique anyway.
Give it a try.
The reason I never thought of your?