I really like the fact that in the parameters file, you can tell the slideshow to be random.

That's expected.

Going above and beyond the call of duty is what SSP tries to do. How's this for helping out your mission?

1. Specify slide order from director, not the xml file.

2. In the slide properties, have a drop-down per image thumbnail, or in the image properties. Default is SLIDE ORDER, then you'd have ALWAYS FIRST, ALWAYS IN THE MIDDLE, ALWAYS LAST, or RANDOM. If it's not already obvious, this will allow users and clients to always welcome someone to their site via a specific slide if they wish, or always have a message in the middle, or always have a specific closing slide. I think this would be helpful for photography sites if they have a great photo to show off before the other photos, and as for my website, I'd like to start off with my logo, and then randomly show my portfolio.

As such, I should be able to pick the order of the slides inside a slide show from the album properties. Slide properties would override album properties. If no slides have been altered from their default state, the album choice would take over.

3. Parameters XML file should be editable from director, not a random text file editor and ftp.

4. Previews of the slide show parameters should be able to be seen from director, not from ftp, to editor, back to ftp, then refresh to see the result. If something like this was built in to the album, changing parameters and seeing a preview of the slideshow would be a big time saver.

5. The wiki help for all the color and layout parameters is great. Go a step further. Why don't you just create a real-time slide show designer and allow us to design our color theme in real-time and then have director update the xml instead of the developer, or even the client? In this day and age, flexibility is paramount... as while also not having people become xml editors. As fun as it is for some, it's very annoying for most.

That's all for now. It seems that Director has good management, I guess, but that's it. Integrating a theme designer (with saving functionality to ftp and templates to apply to other slide shows), preview button before I make it live, and allowing some slides to break the rule of random for personal/marketing reasons, would be a good place to start to maintain your position as a top slide show provider.

P.S. If any of this is currently available, then please talk to someone about your usability and GUI layout. I can't find it.