CMC Forums

mikemack wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 6:15 pm BTW - I need this all by next Friday for the graduation and birthdays. No problem, right?

I was thinking next week for a beta. Not joking.

I already have the Movie Screensaver procedure that I can copy, so a lot of the code is already in place. That also gives you a general idea of how this first version of the slideshow will appear and behave.

And the initial beta will have most "configurable items" hard-coded for now. It takes a lot of time to update the settings menus and add configurable parameters, so I will hard-code most settings for now, and give you some way to control other settings that you need. That's why I need answers to all those questions.

One more question I missed earlier: When showing photos from a directory, does the slideshow need to also show photos in any subdirectories too?

Sorry, the screen I was on had the last questions obscured from view.

Controls should be available to advance, go back and pause. In WMC the direction pad was used for forward and back and the pause button I believe halted it.

Order would be alphabetical by default but random would be a nice option to include.

Photos are JPG.

mikemack wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 8:05 pm the pause button I believe halted it.

But if you're listening to music, the pause button should control the music, right?

I'm thinking OK/Enter would be a better choice, and leave media controls reserved for music control.

WMC had the option to build a slideshow from scratch. It ran you through a wizard that had you title the slideshow and then gave you the ability to select photo files from your library to add to the slideshow.

WMC also provided the option when browsing the photo library you could go into a folder with photos and select to show all photos in that folder as a slideshow. I never tried it with sub-folders or sub-directories but off the top of my head I can't think of a case for it but there is probably someone who would want that. Maybe a Trips photos folder has multiple folders in it with all trips for a year and someone wants to show a slideshow of all the trips in a year?

Pauven wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 8:10 pm

mikemack wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 8:05 pm the pause button I believe halted it.

But if you're listening to music, the pause button should control the music, right?

I'm thinking OK/Enter would be a better choice, and leave media controls reserved for music control.

You are right - we would not want to halt the music. The OK/Enter button would be the best choice then.

Will you be able to recreate the photos library tile wall from WMC like the album covers tile wall in the music library? Everyone that saw that feature loved it. It had a nice action where it would focus in on a single picture and then back out and continue the floating photos tile wall.

mikemack wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 8:16 pm Will you be able to recreate the photos library tile wall from WMC like the album covers tile wall in the music library? Everyone that saw that feature loved it. It had a nice action where it would focus in on a single picture and then back out and continue the floating photos tile wall.

I loved it too - definitely one of my favorite features of WMC. At some point in the future, I might be able to recreate this animation. But for now, I can't commit to that feature or even a timeline for attempting to recreate it. But since it is on my wishlist and so popular, rest assured I do plan to try creating it someday. It will be a lot of work (months!!!), hopefully I'm successful.


Anyway, thought I would give a quick progress update. I have the core functionality of the photo viewer working. It will scan a directory for all JPG's and PNG's. It will optionally scan subdirectories too. It will either play alphabetical, or random. When playing random it will only show each photo once. There is a looping option, which works with both alphabetical and random, and in random it will only show each photo once before beginning the next loop. You can control the speed of the slideshow. The photos show while music is playing. And the photos are scaled to your display using the "Fit" option, which means make it as large as possible without cropping, and show black bars on sides or top & bottom if necessary.

Next I plan to add a temporary control panel for the settings, something I can create in a few hours instead of the days it will take me to add them to the real settings menu. It will let you set the folder, subdirectory scanning, and random, looping, and speed parameters.

I also need to add a few basic navigation controls and disable the music screensaver while it is running.

I might have an Alpha version for testing tomorrow.

It's taken me longer than anticipated, but I'm wrapping up the new Slideshow feature for Beta release today.

I originally thought the functionality would be more basic, but as I got into it I found the bare minimum to make a functional slideshow was more extensive. Here's a screenshot of the settings panel, showing the settings you can tweak for each Slideshow:


Keep in mind that this does NOT have the really cool WMC style slideshow animation. That will come later.

Looking good. Thanks for the update. Cant wait to give it a spin.

mikemack, I've added you to the Prerelease testers group. CMC v3.5 Beta 1 is here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=352