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Adding a slideshow produced with SlideShowPro for Flash onto a Freeway page

Many Freeway users ask us how to use a slideshow created using SlideShowPro for Flash onto a Freeway page. You can see a screencast on how to create the slideshow itself at http://slideshowpro.net/ by clicking on SlideShowPro for Flash in the Introductory Videos panel.

As you watch the screencast, you will soon see that you need a "bare bones" text editor to create an XML file. The Slideshow Pro people suggest using Dreamweaver, but there is a far cheaper alternative, which is to use the excellent (and free) Text Wrangler, which you can get from http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ (we also recommend that any text files you want to import into Freeway are processed using this same method).

Launch Text Wrangler and create a new file for your XML file. So you can test the slideshow locally (on your own computer by previewing in a browser), you will need to follow the XML code for "relative" links for whic SlideShowPro suggests the following as a basis for creating your XML file (which you will need to alter manually according to your file and folder names):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  
<gallery>  
   <album lgpath="path/to/my/">  
      <img src="image.jpg" />  
   </album>  
</gallery>

Edit the XML file according to the instructions on the screencast, taking into account any files and folders named differently to their own hierarchy.

You can test to see if the XML file has worked correctly (before even trying to use it with Freeway) by seeing if your slideshow works by launching a web browser from the .html file which Slideshow Pro generates in your slideshow folder - if it doesn't work when you launch the html file, then it can't possibly work within Freeway.

The usual reason why the slideshow won't work after following the instructions on the Slideshow Pro web site is because the folder structure has not been reflected *exactly* in the XML file.

Once you've got the slideshow working fine in the html file, then you can get things ready for using it in Freeway.

The folder that was generated will contain a folder of large images, an XML file and two Flash files - one which is a .fla file and one which is a .swf file. You don't actually need to use the .fla file (or the html file you originally generated), but you may as well leave them in the folder so you have all the files together. The .fla is the file which can be edited in Flash (the .swf file is non-editable - so if you want to edit things, you use the .fla file and regenerate the new .swf file).

To make it work on your Freeway page, drag and drop the .swf file onto your page. Next, because Freeway can't possibly know which files are "referenced" by the .swf file, you'll need to copy the slideshow folder into your Freeway Site Folder so you can see the slideshow working correctly when you preview the page in a browser. The Site Folder is the folder used by Freeway to publish the html files into - you can check which folder this is by going to File>Document Setup and seeing which folder is being used.

Once the slideshow folder is in the Site Folder, the .swf file will look for (and find) the XML file which tells the .swf file which files to play and in which order.

Again, because Freeway doesn't know which "referenced" files are required for the slideshow to work, you'll need to manually upload the slideshow folder so that it's in the same location as the page on which you're using the .swf file. To do this you'll need to use a standalone FTP application such as Cyberduck http://cyberduck.ch or Transmit http://www.panic.com/transmit.

Any problems, have a look at the SlideShowPro for Flash user guide at http://wiki.slideshowpro.net/SSPfl/UG-UserGuide. If you have any other specific issues with SlideShowPro, please get in touch with their software support at http://slideshowpro.net/contact/

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