Mniml Slideshow

Mnimal Slideshow is a widget for the Chumby electronic device. It is powered by the Flickr photo API (accounts are free). Simply add the Mnimal Slideshow to a channel on your Chumby and configure it to view the photos of your choosing.

Minimal Slideshow is optimized to work on the Chumby. Mniml Slideshow knows that Chumby widgets usually only get 15-30 seconds of screen time before being switched out. It keeps track of which was the last photo it displayed so the next time it starts up, it will be a new photo.

Explanation of Customization Options

Target ID

Mnimal Slideshow is currently only capable of browsing public photos. However, you can configure it to show a series of photos based on Flickr username, a Flickr users email address, or the id of a public photo set.

Photoset ID

If you view a set of folders, you can find the photoset ID as part of the URL.

For example:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/someone/sets/733663/

Framing

Tight Crop

Tight crop maximizes screen real estate. You will see no black bars on the sides or top of any of your photos, no matter the shape of your photo. However, in order to stretch the photo to fill the entire screen, some parts of the photo will get cut off. Consider using this option in conjunction with the "Panning" motion option to animate a view of the entire picture.

Scale to Fit

This option guarantees that your entire photo is viewable within the slideshows screen. If your photos do not match the same aspect ratio of the slideshows size, you will wind up with portions of the screen completely blank.

Loose Crop

This framing style splits the difference between the "Tight Crop" and "Scale to Fit" options. It will crop the image less than a "Tight Crop" and the associated black space will be less than what appears in "Scale to Fit".

Transitions

Cut

A quick cut to the next photo. This is the most basic transition possible.

Blackout

Fade the current photo out to black, fade the next photo in from black.

Fade

A simple crossfade to the next photo.

Motion

Panning

If a photo has been cropped to fit the frame, the panning motion option will do an animated pan of the entire photo to let you see all of the photos elements. It does not pan every photo, only those photos who stretch beyond the frame of the chumby.

Zoom Out

Zoom out adds an animated introduction to each photo where the camera starts zoomed in on the center of the photo and then zooms out to the standard framing. Any photo which is not being panned will receive the zoom effect.

Possible Future Updates

This a checklist of features we'd like to add at some point and a hint at when/if we'll get to them.

Randomize start picture - soon
Randomize playback order - soon
Save index of last viewed photo to the server so that index is maintained across power down states.
Touch screen forward/back buttons - low priority
On screen information display (photo name, description) - low priority
Authentication for private photos -low priority

FAQ

If this slideshow is so minimal, how come there's extraneous options like animated transitions?
Our goal with Mniml Slideshow was not to provide a completely stripped down experience. If there was a design philosophy, it be this: Prevent users from making bad choices, but keep the fun stuff. In practice this meant we would test feature combinations to make sure the results weren't "cheesey" before making them a part of the product. For instance, initially you could configure the slideshow to randomize the animated transitions. After viewing the results, we deemed the results of this ugly. You can now only choose one animated style for transitions. Between limiting options and ensuring that the slideshow code itself would intelligently apply/not apply options (like panning and zooming), we beleive we improve the user experience. We also worked hard to avoid taking this philosophy so far that we stripped out the fun that comes from customization.

I chose "pan" but none of my photos are doing animated pans in the slideshow, what's the deal?
The animated pan only occurs to photos that are cropped to fit the screen. If you have "Scale to Fit" as the framing option or if all of your photos are standard 4x3 aspect ratio, you will never see the pan.

Why does this document refer to "us" and "we" when there's only one developer?
Good question. We like to create the illusion that there's a crack team of developer gnomes located in an underground bunker coding Mniml Slideshow 24 hours a day. It's less impressive to know that Mniml Slideshow is the handiwork of some nerdy, white guy working in his underwear for an hour or so before he sleeps every night.

About the Author

Noel Billig is the enterprising captain of a colony of crack developer gnomes. He and the gnomes reside in a massive underground complex secreted away beneath the bucolic landscape of Brooklyn, NY.