Getting my Flash-based site up and running is taking me more time than I'd hoped. Now there's a surprise. Actually, that's not quite fair - within about 3 or 4 days I had written something decent, but I am being a bit ambitious and would like to integrate this site's text-based content into the new Flash site. While Flash will read and display external HTML files, format them with CSS, and read the database powering this blog, its text rendering could be a lot better and scrolling text could also be more elegant. So I've been proceeding at a slower pace, and picking up more Flash skills on the way. There's no rush, and there have been other things to do.

The new site will display images via a SlideShowPro component and in the last month SSP for Lightroom has been launched and is a real snip at $25, or just $10 for those of us who already have the Flash component. It is rather slow on a Windows box, but the developer is investigating the issue and I'm sure it'll be fixed before too long.

To test SSP for Lightroom, I've used it to add a new gallery to the site. Putney Debates is a set of pictures I took back in October when a Sealed Knot regiment helped open a permanent exhibition at the SW London church where the debates took place back in 1647 (read more). I wanted to display the movie within my current site's HTML and, since the SSP documentation was as clear as I'd expected, it was a trivial task, just minutes, to adjust the HTML. So SSP for Lightroom walks away with a golden “Beardy”.