Did Someone Order a Full-Screen Homepage Slideshow?
mbonocore
Registered Users Posts: 2,299 Major grins
Many of you told us that the full-screen homepage slideshow was essential to your website. We’ve got something new we think you’ll love: A full-screen slideshow for your pages and galleries!
How does it work?
We’ve added a brand-new background tab to your site customization, which means you can easily add a single image, a series of single images or a slideshow as the background of your homepage.
Additionally, Power, Portfolio and Business users can add unique backgrounds to other pages on their site: Folders, Galleries and Pages. This background sits behind the other content blocks that you’ve added on the page, exactly the same way that a color, texture, or graphic added from the Theme tab currently does.
How do I get started?
1) Open up your Customization and look for the new “Background” tab in the Customize panel.
2) Choose where your new background will show. By default, your ‘background’ will be inherited from your entire site but you can display something across every page on your entire site, have it live just on your homepage, or make it appear on every single Folder or gallery page.
3) Choose the background type. To add a full-screen slideshow to your homepage, open up the drop down menu to choose the Slideshow option. Be sure the “Homepage” location is selected, too:
Note: Choosing “None” will evert your background to whatever is set in your Theme.
4) Save your new goodies by Publishing your changes. That’s it!
Can I customize those slideshow options?
Of course! You can set:
What else can I do with the new Background tab?
You’re not just limited to slideshows. Choose the “Photo” option to add an edge-to-edge photo to the background. We recommend setting it so that your visitors see a new image each time they visit your site!
To do this, create a gallery of background images, or select photos from several different galleries on your site. Opting to change the photo “every visit” gives your site a fresh new look each time your fan comes back.
Tip: Be sure that your selection of images play well with your text colors!
Is there anything I should watch out for?
These background images sit behind all of the content blocks on the pages to which that you add them. They will lie under your navigation menus, Galleries Blocks, Text Blocks, and so on. To avoid a completely cluttered experience, we recommend that you remove existing content blocks from your page if the slideshow is the focus of that page.
Is it available on MY SmugMug account?
Yes! Once again, all SmugMug users will be able to add background images or slideshows to their homepage. Power, Portfolio and Business accounts (levels that include additional customization options) will also be able to change the background content on any page on their site.
Where can I learn more about the new Background options?
If you still have questions about this feature, our brand new help page is there to help you. So are our Support Heroes!
So sit back, enjoy the (slide)show, and let us know what you think in the comments below. Don’t forget to share what you’re designing, too, as part of our ongoing Show Us Your SmugMug contest.
How does it work?
We’ve added a brand-new background tab to your site customization, which means you can easily add a single image, a series of single images or a slideshow as the background of your homepage.
Additionally, Power, Portfolio and Business users can add unique backgrounds to other pages on their site: Folders, Galleries and Pages. This background sits behind the other content blocks that you’ve added on the page, exactly the same way that a color, texture, or graphic added from the Theme tab currently does.
How do I get started?
1) Open up your Customization and look for the new “Background” tab in the Customize panel.
2) Choose where your new background will show. By default, your ‘background’ will be inherited from your entire site but you can display something across every page on your entire site, have it live just on your homepage, or make it appear on every single Folder or gallery page.
3) Choose the background type. To add a full-screen slideshow to your homepage, open up the drop down menu to choose the Slideshow option. Be sure the “Homepage” location is selected, too:
Note: Choosing “None” will evert your background to whatever is set in your Theme.
4) Save your new goodies by Publishing your changes. That’s it!
Can I customize those slideshow options?
Of course! You can set:
-
your images
playback speed
transition type and speed
a splash image to be used to entertain your viewers while the full slideshow loads
What else can I do with the new Background tab?
You’re not just limited to slideshows. Choose the “Photo” option to add an edge-to-edge photo to the background. We recommend setting it so that your visitors see a new image each time they visit your site!
To do this, create a gallery of background images, or select photos from several different galleries on your site. Opting to change the photo “every visit” gives your site a fresh new look each time your fan comes back.
Tip: Be sure that your selection of images play well with your text colors!
Is there anything I should watch out for?
These background images sit behind all of the content blocks on the pages to which that you add them. They will lie under your navigation menus, Galleries Blocks, Text Blocks, and so on. To avoid a completely cluttered experience, we recommend that you remove existing content blocks from your page if the slideshow is the focus of that page.
Is it available on MY SmugMug account?
Yes! Once again, all SmugMug users will be able to add background images or slideshows to their homepage. Power, Portfolio and Business accounts (levels that include additional customization options) will also be able to change the background content on any page on their site.
Where can I learn more about the new Background options?
If you still have questions about this feature, our brand new help page is there to help you. So are our Support Heroes!
So sit back, enjoy the (slide)show, and let us know what you think in the comments below. Don’t forget to share what you’re designing, too, as part of our ongoing Show Us Your SmugMug contest.
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Comments
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
Can't wait to play with it! THANKS!:D
There shouldn't be scroll bars if the picture is sized to fit the screen.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=241183&highlight=scroll+bars
Cheers,
If you are having other problems, bumping the thread for that problem would be a better approach than commenting in an unrelated thread.
Thanks.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
The point I'm making is the full screen slideshow fills my screen but I get both a horizontal and vertical unneeded scroll bar from it. How is that not related?
I get no scroll bars on your website in FF.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I have to use code to hide them.
Cheers,
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Not every image will work well as a full screen background. I'd recommend choosing images carefully.
Dave
That was brilliant.
Bravo! So why do you continue to complain about it then? You have a solution for your very highly customized site
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
If there was the possibility that any of my photographs would look bad as a full screen image then I wouldn't upload them in the first place
I chose to go with a single image in the end anyway.
Great suggestion! I will pass it along
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Photo Blog
Cheers,
The only "problem" i do have with that new feature is that the background image loads much slower then when using the workaround described here. The picture builds up slowly from top to bottom of the screen. Using the "old method" the picture takes half a second to load and then appears on screen. Yes, not a real problem for most of us, i just like the old method better that's why i switched back to the "old method".
Maybe the new code can be optimized by prefetch the background picture, using smaller sizes or doing some other changes.
Anyway, nice to see that there is some work done on the new SM to improve it
FWIW, I'm using Chrome and the images from my hack and from SmugMug's new feature both load in from top to bottom, I can't tell a difference in performance (well, maybe a tiny one since the SmugMug feature requires the page JavaScript to finish loading before the download of the background image can begin).
Are you sure that you're not just comparing the performance of cached images you've already seen from my background hack, against brand new image links created by SmugMug's new feature that may have never been seen by your browser before? Try clearing your cache and compare the methods again.
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
i'm using firefox26 and i tried the same on unsupported opera, on both your hack loads the photos at once while with the new feature they load from top to bottom... i also tested konqueror (also unsupported, i know) and here they load at once. For both methods i used photos from the same gallery.
This seem to be a browser related issue even when using a supported browser (FF).
I switched back to your hack. It's ok for me, i don't need the extra features from the new background slideshow.
If you go to my site and click on the logo "phaserbeam" this should "reload" the page and you should get a new background on every click. Do you see the "top-to-bottom"-effect here? As said, i'm currently back on your hack. When using opera, firefox or konqueror the background images appears when fully loaded.
It looks like the image loads in at once on some browsers because SmugMug generates Progressive JPEG images.
Progressive JPEGs start out by loading a super blurry version from top to bottom (almost instantly), then load in successively sharper versions from top-to-bottom until the full resolution is achieved. But in browsers that don't support displaying these while they're loading, you instead just see an empty screen until it is completely loaded, then it pops in at full resolution, which it sounds like is the behaviour you want.
I know that for Opera, progressive images can only be displayed during loading (i.e. display top-to-bottom) if they're in
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
yes, progressive JPEGs might be some reason... but... do we talk about the same? Here is a screenshot. You can see the photo is not completly loaded and unsharp. The unsharpd would be ok, but while loading you can see only parts of it. When using FF and your hack i do not have seen that on my site before. If this is chrome-related... ok, i don't recommend using chrome to visit my site then
Chrome's support of progressive JPEG is more advanced which allows the image to appear on the page seconds earlier than on some other browsers (as the blurry version), which is normally quite desirable. I guess for the page background though, it's more distracting than useful.
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
Thanks for clarification. Looks like Chrome is always affected and Firefox only with the new SM-Feature. So i will stay with your hack which seem to work best for firefox.
I'll give it a try again sometime next year...
Right now your hack works as it should. I don't need to change anything here right now...