I stumbled across a little thing called SlideShow Pro yesterday. I had been looking into some options for a portfolio web site, and also for the photo gallery on this site.
SlideShow Pro is a very cool Flash “Component”. You plug it into your Flash MX application, drop it into a movie, update some paramaters, and Boom! — instant slide show.

I was able to recreate my own photo gallery in about 45 minutes, start to finish. While I’d like to be able to modify more of the final product, the options that are available are pretty impressive. All for the low, low cost of $20 American.

The base for this code comes from a designer/flash developer who, among other things, has done the hole-by-hole previews for the PGA Championship web site. He initially released a slimmed down version of the code to the pulic, and more recently added the functionalit that earned it the “Pro” suffix.

The end result is a single .SWF file that you place into an HTML page. That SWF file calls to an XML file, which defines the gallery titles and descriptions, as well as the individual photos. It’s also possible to configure it to pull in data directly from a Flickr account.

I actually used some of the same techniques on a portfolio site for a photographer a while back. This takes it to another level, though.