Once you start editing a slide show, you will be navigated to the slide show editor page, which allows you to edit the slides that will make up the slide show.
At the top of the page is the slide filmstrip, which displays the slides in the order that they will be displayed in. You can drag the slides to the position you want and drop them, which pushes the slide into the location.
The Add Slide button is actually a drop down button to select a type of slide to create. The following types are supported:
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Image – The background of the slide will be an image picked from a media library.
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Flash Movie – The background of the slide will be a flash flv movie. Syrinx CS will provide the proper flash SWF to play the movie while the slide is visible.
Once you’ve selected the type of slide to create, the slide details area on the left side can be used to provide the needed information.
The important field to set is the image property using the “set” button which will show the media library popup to pick the image to use for the background. If using the flash type, pick the flash FLV from the file system. All the other fields are optional.
The slide details fields are:
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Title – The title for the slide. Certain slide show styles will display this in some way while the slide is visible.
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Summary – The summary for the slide. As with the title, certain style of slide shows will display this while the slide is visible. One typical usage for the title and summary is to have them slide in over the background image/flash video from top and bottom and be a transparent block to read them.
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Navigate – If provided, the slide becomes an anchor which when the user clicks on it will navigate to this url.
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Only Show Slide Once – If checked, this slide will only be showed one time for the given browser session. This can be good for slides that show involved notices or flash videos that have a presentation that should not be shown to the user over and over again. As the slide show loops through the slides over and over, this succeeding loops through the slides will not include this slide again.
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Slide Transition – The way in which the slide will be hidden and the next slide shown. This will override the default value specified for the slide show in the slide show manager page. The options include fade and slide.
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Transition Time – The time the slide transition will take to complete. The best time to use will be highly dependent on the contents of the slide. Certain image slides look best when a very long transition time (2 to 3 seconds) is used, while other images look best when the transition happens very quickly (200 ms).
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Slide display Time – The time in which the slide will be display before transitioning to the next slide. This will override the default value set at the slide show level.
Slide Layers
A slide can also have one or more layers that display above the slide while it is showing. These layers can container html, including images. The layers can also be animated so that they move and do other transitions during the time the slide is displayed.
Use the Layer Details tab to show the fields to edit the selected layer.
Use the Add Layer button to create a new layer. When the first layer is created, the layer timeline display will show below the slide display area.
Each layer is shown in the timeline as a double edged slider. The left most slider tab is the start time that the animation will start. The right most slider tab is the end time the animation will complete. These times are relative to the overall time the slide is visible. If the slide will be shown for 8 seconds, then the timeline is from 0 to 8 seconds.
Each layer in the timeline has a detailed editing form which can be shown by toggling the arrow button just to the left of the slider.
Layers are always visible unless positioned outside of the visible slide area. When you click on the left slider handle for the start time, the layer is position to its start location in the slide display area. You can drag the layer to the position you really want it to start at using the green grabber handle of the layer.
When you click on the right slider handle for the end time, the layer is moved to the location the slide will animate to. After selecting the right slider handle, drag the layer in the slide display area to the location you want it to move to, which can also be off the edge of the slide area.
Only one layer is displayed in the slide display area at a time. To select the current layer, select the layer in the layer timeline display.
Editing layer contents
The layer is contained within its defined size. You can see this size by its dashed outline. You can drag the bottom right side of the layer edge to resize it as needed.
Click within the layer area to get the edit cursor to appear. Sometimes it is necessary to click in the top left more section of the layer when there is no content in it yet.
Once the layer has focus, you can type content, or use the layer toolbar to style content or insert objects like images. The layer toolbar is very limited at this time.
Warning: It is important to edit a slide separately from edits to its layers. Don’t move a slide and edit its fields and also edit its layers before saving the slide. There are a few bugs related to complex editing scenarios like this. Future updates to Syrinx CS should resolve these issues.