Showit Sites Update

Today we released Showit Sites 1.1! Simply open up Showit Sites and it will automatically update itself. If you haven't already... download it for free and try it out. This update includes a bunch of new features that you guys have been asking for and we're excited for you guys to start using them in your sites.

CUSTOM FONTS ARE FINALLY HERE!

This has been one of our most highly requested features and we're proud to finally offer the ability to use your own customized fonts in your Showit Sites! To get started making your website even more customized... check out this PDF tutorial on how to make your custom fonts ready for Sites and the web.

¡HABLAMOS ESPAÑOL!

If Spanish is your native language then you might prefer to use Showit Sites that way as well. Inside Sites check out the menu: File -> Language. Rudy Arpia helped us out by translating all of Showit Sites into Spanish using the translation tool. If you're interested in using Sites in your native language send us some feedback from the Help menu to let us know. And check out the translation tool located in the Help menu as well.

WIDGET WONDERLAND!

We've been hard at work under the hood of Sites to implement an easy way to add widgets to your sites... and we're ready to roll! We've already added a couple of widgets to the Showit Library so be sure to check them out in the Flash area.


The Timer widget allows you to auto-advance pages, which we've had a lot of requests for. Drop it on a style group and sit back and watch your pages automatically advance. Perfect for those full page galleries!


The RSS Feed Reader does just what you think it would. Plug in the URL for the RSS feed on your blog and have your website keep up to date and directly link to the latest from your blog.

These are just a few... with more on the way!! Got any other ideas or something you can't live without? Let us know in the comments.

OTHER UPDATES...

On the side... we also decided to update out a couple other things as well:



COLOR PICKER - There are a lot more colors to choose from now... and if you need to get just the right shade from a photo you just added... check out the new dropper tool!

LAYER MENU - Check out the View menu to hide and show the layer menu... perfect for when your working on smaller layers.










SHORTCUTS - We're adding shortcuts all the time. You can learn them by checking out the menu system. Some of them you might find helpful:

Preview - CTRL + P
Publish - CTRL + SHIFT + P

Layer Forward - CTRL + ]
Layer Back - CTRL + [

Hide Layer Menu - CTRL + SHIFT + L

We hope you enjoy all the updates!
-The Showit Sites Team

The Showit Suite - Sweet. :)

If you're a Showit customer we want to hang with you at WPPI.

We will have two suites at the MGM Signature but space is very limited. We will be doing a couple of round table discussions so we can hear from you and if you're interested in being involved in something like this please post below and we will put up a schedule soon.

We will also have a room devoted to website design where you can get individual attention getting your website stoked out just the way you want.

:)
DJ

Showit Sites Update

Tonight we rolled out an update to Showit Sites which will automatically be downloaded and updated the next time you open Showit Sites. Included in this update are a lot of bug fixes under the hood including resolving some of the issues with drag and drop on the Mac. The following are a few of the fun things to check out:

Support for a wider range of Latin characters


Added a "Link to Asset" button to the media window so you can get a direct link to any of your images or files.


Addition of a Full Screen Button to the media library (look in "Components") to allow browsing of a site in full screen mode. Note: if you host your HTML you will need to export and upload your HTML again.


Option for links to open in an "Overlay" window. Check this one out as it is really cool and will allow you the flexibility of opening other HTML pages such as a blog or web page right inside your site without a popup or new window.


Added an option to specify a field as the reply-to email in forms so that when you receive contact form emails, you can click reply in your email program and reply directly to the sender.


In addition, this new version adds support for Adobe Air 1.5 for improved performance and additional fixes for locking user accounts, and we also added a translator app to allow people to begin translating Showit Sites (if you are interested in translating, let us know).

We have a lot more in the works such as custom fonts and additional plugins that needed a little bit more work before they are ready for public release. We hope you enjoy!

LIVE Design Webcast

Check out our live Showit Sites webcast where Nate Sees discussed designing in Showit Sites at 11 AM PST.
Video streaming by Ustream

Showit Books

Today we announce the introduction of Showit Books to our Showit Media Lab. This includes an update to Showit Web version 2.7 which will now allow you to sell 5"x5" fine art books directly from your Showit Web shows. This free update to Showit Web also includes two new songs and templates for each of the three lengths of the songs.



We are offering a great introductory price on the books through December 1st so that those orders can be ready for Christmas.



Check out some of the pictures of the books below:







We've also been doing a lot of work on getting all of our tutorial videos in one place including this tutorial to get you started selling books. We also added a quick start video for Showit Sites to help you get up to speed with the Showit Sites interface. Enjoy!

-Todd

Did You Know? Invisible Buttons

Did you know that buttons on your site don't have to be visible in order for them to work? You can do all kinds of fun stuff with this in your site... like creating hidden links to hidden pages. But this feature can also be useful for some very straight forward things as well.




Let's say you have a text box with a script font in it. The text box needs to be a sufficient size in order to display the text properly. But when you turn this text into a link to a different page... the entire text box turns into the link and causes problems with other layers on the page.




You can see on the picture below... the text box from above makes the mouse cursor change to alert the user that there is something there to click. But we want to avoid this so far away from the actual text itself.

The solution is an invisible button!

Add a square from the Showit Library's Flash section. Then position and size it to the area where you would actually like to have the text respond as a link.

Once you have the square sized and positioned properly, you will jump up to the Effects tab. You want to change the opacity of the square layer to zero. Then jump over the the Link tab and have the square layer link to the page rather than the text.

Now you can see that the text doesn't change the mouse cursor too far away. You're using an invisible button!

Do you have need for an invisible button? Try it out!

Live Q & A

DJ hosted a live question and answer time and if you missed it you can watch the recorded event below:

The Basics: Forms

Here's a tutorial to help with some basic understanding of how to create a form from scratch. The tutorial covers:

- Adding a form through the Page Layout wizard.
- Adding text layers and enabling a text layer for input.
- Making a text input required for form submission.
- Making the user input appear in the subject of the email.
- Labeling information inside the email.
- Some basic tricks for duplicating, aligning, and resizing layers.

Make sure to post any questions in the comments.

Contact Form Update

We are excited to announce the roll out of a major Showit Sites update this week that includes new features such as contact forms and progress indicators along with a bunch of bug fixes.

The easy way to add a contact form would be to click the new "Add Page Layout" button in the bottom left under the pages list. From there, click on contact forms, a layout and then "Add Page". This will have a predesigned form and you can work from there.

You'll notice the "Advanced" tab for a text field now has a lot more options including a check box for "Enable Input". When this box is checked, a user can then type in that text area on your site. You can make it required and even include text in the text area, include the text in the subject of the email sent to you, and include a label for the text.

Once you enable a text field for input, you then need to add a button that will submit the form. You can use any of your normal layer buttons for this that go to another page in your site, probably you'll want a page that says, "Thanks for contacting us" or something like that. Under the previous options for links we added a check box for "Submit Form". Checking this box means that when a user clicks on the button, it will submit the form and then take them to the page you specified. When a user submits a form, an email will be sent to the email address used to login for that site.


The second big update includes progress indicators which help a user get feedback on the status of a loading site. Website visitors are used to the way HTML progressively loads content so it can sometimes feel slow when a Flash site is loading content in the background before the site responds and displays it. This is why it is important to indicate that content is being loaded and the progress of the loading.


In Showit Sites we provide a "Preload Layer" on each style group that you can put text, images and now Flash preloaders that indicate the exact loading progress. You can find these new Flash components under the "Preloader" tag in the Showit Library. In addition, there are now more options for your initial site load under the site settings including choosing the position of the loader and also the addition of "Flash" as a "Loader Type". You can choose one of the preloaders from the library to be used on the initial load of your site to give your site visitors a better idea of the loading progress. Also, the site information xml is now compressed which turns out to be about 90% smaller than the original xml and dramatically improves the initial site load speed.

In addition, there are also a bunch of great new features including:

- Lock a layer in place
- Stand alone video options for finish by fading, looping or jumping to a page
- Auto save and recovery of the auto save file after an unexpected quit
- Add Page Layout Wizard for easily adding single pages
- Option for background image to fit inside the height or width of a page
- Option to tile a background image
- Home page indicator and right click to set home page in the pages list
- Improved combo boxes and numeric sliders
- Text background and border color
- Single line text
- Import Showit Web by selecting showit.xml or showit.swf
- Save dialog on logout

Finally, for those that have recently experienced issues with uploading, saving, or publishing, we were having some intermittent server issues which have been resolved and dramatically increased the reliability of these server interactions.

We hope you enjoy the update and we appreciate your feedback!

-Todd

Slimline

Based on a lot of feedback from our beloved users, we're happy to introduce Slimline, a brand new style group we just added to Showit Sites. As you'll see, Slimline is very minimal in graphical nature, allowing your photos and content to take center stage.

Log into Showit Sites and tweak it out to make it your own. (If you don't see it in the "Add Style Group" panel, be sure to go to the Help menu and choose "Clear Library Cache".)

We'd love your feedback as we continue to create more designs to help you build a successful web presence.