Why not just use the new version of the API?

We’d love to, but there are new restrictions associated with V1.1 of the API, including: the requirement to regularly re-connect your Twitter account to your SlideDecks, and strict formatting of tweets, giving us less flexibility to style your tweets’ appearance within your SlideDeck Lenses.

Both of these restrictions make Twitter pretty impractical for us to work with as a Content Source for SlideDeck, since they’d require you to manually babysit your Twitter sliders, and you’d have far less control over how they are visually presented on your site.

What alternatives do I have?

If you desperately need to embed your tweets into your website, the official Twitter widget is a decent option. We’re also currently searching for other viable plugins that will dovetail with SlideDeck, and will let you know as soon as we find any good candidates.

Will you ever bring Twitter support back to SlideDeck?

Well, it all depends - tell us in the comments how much you’d like us to explore re-integrating with Twitter in SlideDeck!

We’ve wrestled, debated, whiteboarded and coded a bunch of your most-requested new features for SlideDeck, but the one thing we all immediately agreed on is that you guys shouldn’t have to wait for us to create one big update in order to get your hands on them. So we decided to do something a little different – this summer, we’re releasing the new features each month! We’re calling it the “Summer of SlideDeck” – mainly because it sounds cool, and not at all because we love belting out that similarly-titled Bryan Adams song in the shower…

Each update is free for valid license holders – all you guys need to do is update to the latest version of the plugin via your WordPress admin. If your license is close to expiring, or has already expired, you can renew now for 25 – 50% off!

In this month’s update, we’ve given SlideDeck a massive speed boost & a new CSS editor – learn more about them below!

Now loading up to 8x faster!

Believe it or not, this example SlideDeck contains 50 images & videos – try it! (Thanks to Playmo & FPS Russia)

One of the most popular requests we’ve gotten from you guys is to make SlideDeck faster, and with good reason – what’s the use of putting 15 videos on the page, if it slows your users’ experience to a crawl? With the latest update, the slide content is only loaded on-demand (aka “lazy loaded”), meaning you can now build dozens of images and videos into your slider, without any impact on the page loading speed!

Implementing Lazy Loading

Here’s the best part – for the vast majority of you, all you need to do to put the pedal to the metal with your SlideDecks’ loading speed is update! This new feature will instantly be applied to all your existing SlideDecks!

If you’ve been pushing the envelope and creating your own Lenses, there are a couple of extra steps necessary, but fret not – we’re compiling a handy guide to implement lazy loading in custom Lenses. In the meantime, post a ticket in the support forum for help with updating your Lenses.

FAQs

1. I downloaded a premium lens (Classic, Fashion, Half-Moon, Polarad, Titles, Leather) and it does not show any images!
   The problem here is likely that you’re on an older version of SlideDeck and are trying to use a lens that is lazy-loading compatible. The fix is simply to upgrade to the latest version.
2. Lazy Loading doesn’t work/doesn’t make a difference!
   This is due to a premium lens that was not upgraded to a lazy-loading compatible version - just log in to your DT account to grab the latest version! Alternatively, you might be using a custom lens that was not adjusted to take advantage of Lazy Loading yet. Fret not! Let us know via the support forum, and we’ll help you out.

Make it yours with the new CSS editor

Sometimes you just need to make a tiny adjustment to really get SlideDeck fitting in seamlessly with your theme, but that often means having to add a bunch of code either to your header, or even worse, to a specific page template. This is no longer necessary thanks to the new CSS Editor, available to Professional & Developer tier users! With this update, you can now enter CSS styles directly within the editing screen, and they’ll be applied to that particular SlideDeck. Better yet, you can still see the effect of your styles in the live preview area. Hassle-free styling is now within your reach – you’re welcome!

Next Month: Facebook + NextGen Gallery + more awesome

In addition to all this good stuff, we’ve been working on implementing support for two new Content Sources – Facebook Pages and NextGen Gallery! Keep ‘em peeled for more announcements on those. In the meantime, remember, you’ll need a valid license to get access to these awesome new features! If your license expires soon, or has already expired, renew now to make sure you don’t miss them!

Have you tried out the new features yet? Are you excited for next month’s release? Let us know in the comments!

• Go to http://dtelepathy.com/login, and log into your account
• Click on the SlideDeck.js Developers’ Kit tile

• Download the latest version of the kit (1.4.3)
• Now, to update your version of the SlideDeck Javascript library, simply upload the latest version of the file “slidedeck.jquery.js” to wherever you placed the previous version on your server, and overwrite your current copy of the file

Note: SlideDeck 1 PRO users should have received an email with update information and direct download links.  If you are a SlideDeck 2 WordPress license owner, just update to the latest version.

That’s it, you’re done! Firefox 20 and SlideDeck.js should now be happy together like peas and carrots. If you’re still having trouble, definitely post a ticket in our support forum, and we’ll be happy to help you out!

SlideDeck Lite works great with Profile because you can use it to show off your work, pull in your latest Tweets, Flickr photos, blog posts and more. Plus you get the easy-to-use interface and powerful features right out of the box, activated and ready to rock the moment you install your theme.

In addition to SlideDeck Lite awesomeness, Profile is fully responsive, retina optimized, packed with helpful shortcodes, includes several page templates, portfolio options, social media icons and much more. The theme is fully compatible with WordPress 3.5, WooCommerce, and Gravity Forms.

We’re super-excited to work with the guys at Organic Themes. We believe design makes a difference, and it’s great to partner with people who are on the same page. If you’re looking for a great looking theme for your personal site, give Profile a try. You can save 20% on your purchase when you use the coupon code SD20PROMO at checkout. If you’re in the market for hosting, you can pick up the theme for free with a new hosting account. See their site for details. And be sure to share a link with us if you spin one up with one of our SlideDecks!

Always making it better

Our goal with SlideDeck 2.2 is twofold:

1. Make it easier to use and more powerful than ever
2. Make it a lean and mean fighting machine

Over the past year we’ve collected usage data, feedback from your support tickets, your suggestions via our blog and surveys, and our own wish list to shape SlideDeck 2.2. So without further ado, here’s the proposed feature list!

Major Updates

• Lens builder/customization UI - Easily build and manage your own lenses. No more CSS wrangling to make your SlideDeck look just the way you want.
• Minimal themes - Stripped down themes that work better with flat designs.
• Lazy loading - Load as many slides as you want. SlideDeck loads them just in time.
• Speed optimization - SlideDeck 2.2 is going to be blindingly fast and light on its toes.
• Facebook pages, SoundCloud and Dropbox integration - More sources from popular Web services.
• Visual options for iFrame & RESS parameters - Activate two of SlideDeck 2’s most powerful features – iFrame embedding and Responsive mode – without having to manually edit the shortcode.
• Physics-based touch navigation - On a touchscreen, you can smoothly swipe and drag through your slides – the faster you swipe, the quicker they slide!

Additional Enhancements

• Documentation - Complete documentation for developers and end users (which we’ve already started!).
• Custom settings for inputs (e.g. # of seconds between slide transitions) – Fine tune your SlideDeck’s behavior with your own specific settings.
• Infinite looping (vs. sliding back to #1) – No more sliding back through slides during a loop!
• Left/center/right alignment options - Control the horizontal position of SlideDeck without special CSS and DIVs.
• Multiple accounts from a single source (e.g. 2 YouTube channels) – Have two YouTube channels, Instagram or Twitter accounts? No worries.
• Batch editing for custom content SlideDecks - Want to change the font of titles on all slides? Now it’s easy peasy.
• WPML support/integration - Translate your SlideDeck content with WPML support.
• More Google fonts - More webfont options from Google.

Of course, these are candidate features and some may not make the final cut, but we’re working hard to get them all in for the 2.2 release. There will be some feature differentiation across product tiers, and not all tiers will receive all of these features. Stay tuned for the official launch date and more details here on our blog.

We’re excited! We think 2.2 will set a new standard for sliders and we hope you’ll agree. Remember, you’ll need to have an active license to get 2.2, as well as future updates and support. Read more about renewals here.

What do you guys think of the upcoming features? Are there any that you’re particularly pumped for? Let us know in the comments!

Of course, we have a few ideas of our own, and we have some exciting announcements about planned new features and functionality coming in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more on that front.

So what will SlideDeck look like in 2013? Help us define the future. Take a minute to fill out this one-field form with your comment or suggestion. We (Jason and Morgan) will review every one with our engineers (Dave, John and Jamie) and prioritize, scope and build out the ones that will make SlideDeck better.

(Requires a login – if you don’t have access to SlideDeck 2 support, just leave a comment!)

Just to sweeten the pot a bit, we’ll give away three free copies of our premium lens packs to three lucky commenters. Just a little something to say thanks for the effort.

By the way, have you heard about DT Labs? It’s a place for you to help us determine the future design standards of the Web, and there’s even a sneak preview at what SlideDeck’s future could look like in there. Enter the Lab, and become a Design Scientist!

Why SiteGround hosting you ask? Because they’re good people, and working with friendly people is one of our top priorities. Plus they offer solid hosting for WordPress (among others) and have some unique features that are wins for any site owner:

• Unique server security that keeps hacks isolated to affected accounts
• Automatic updates to the latest WordPress versions
• In-house created WordPress caching plugin (3 caching layers!)
• Cloudflare CDN integration
• Security monitoring and rapid upgrades
• Across the board hardware updates
• Multiple hosting packages that start as low as $3.95/month

We also love that they’ve outlined their most popular features in infographics. Much more enjoyable than lots of technical documents, PDFs and bulleted feature lists.

Morgan setup a new blog over on SiteGround after checking them out. You might want to keep them in mind the next time you’re looking for hosting, too.

Stay tuned for more news from SlideDeck. We’re just getting started.

SiteGround’s Unique WordPress Caching

We’re open to your suggestions – you could:

• Send an email to your subscribers
• Tweet links to your followers
• Post a review on your blog
• Record a screencast tutorial
• Do something completely wild that we’d never even thought of (we like these ideas…)

Just fill out our quick form to let us know what you’ll do to promote SlideDeck 2. Then follow through on your promotion commitments, and you’ll get your increased commissions!

Not an affiliate yet? What’s stopping you? It’s free, takes 5 minutes to set up and you can earn commissions on every copy of SlideDeck your visitors buy. Join our affiliate program here.

Today, we’ve released 3 brand new Lenses for our Personal, Professional and Developer users, named Titles, Polarad and Leather. Each has been finely-curated by our design and development teams for specific scenarios that were raised by our users, ranging from showcasing your Instagram images to fitting in seamlessly with clean, minimalist WordPress themes.  We’ll delve into specific tricks and tips for each new Lens in upcoming posts, but for right now, check out the examples and screenshots below, or simply update your installation, and look for the new icons in the Lenses tab of the SlideDeck editing screen!

If you’re a SlideDeck 2 Lite user, you can also get in on the Lenses fun, as we’ve made the Fashion, Half-Moon and Classic Lenses available to you for purchase inside the admin area too! Hit up our (newly redesigned) Examples page to see them and don’t be afraid to hop into our free live demo to create some sliders of your own!

Meet the New Lenses

“Titles”

Inspiration by Fubiz.net

With a clean, minimalist look, Titles goes with everything – just like your favorite jeans. It’s best used with large, colorful imagery to provide a stimulating backdrop for each slide, and contrast with the bold title band.

Best used for: Featured post headers, minimalist themes, image & video content sources
Supports: Dynamic Content SlideDecks
Awesome feature you should know about: You can manually control the size of the thumbnails, and scale them up and down!

Try this Lens in our free live demo! »

“Polarad”

Images from Trey Ratcliff

Polarad is a supremely flexible Lens that brings back the halcyon days of your favorite instant camera. The nostalgia of aged polaroids, the fun of sharing photos and all of SlideDeck’s photo sources, this one has tons of applications all over your site. Show your photos one-by-one, side-by-side in multiple variants, or even stack ‘em up!

Best used for: Sidebar/footer/in-post image galleries, image content sources
Supports: Dynamic Content SlideDecks
Awesome feature you should know about: Polarad is the first Lens we’ve ever created that can show multiple image slides at once!

Try this Lens in our free live demo! »

“Leather”

Images from Pinterest user carrieshan

Leather contains gorgeous textures and a unique top-positioned navigation by default. It’s a flexible theme that can fit in with almost any ‘crafty’ or vintage-style site, and works with images, videos, or even mixed-content sources like RSS feeds.

Best used for: Sidebar/footer/in-post image galleries, vintage-style themes, image & video content sources
Supports: Dynamic Content and Custom Content SlideDecks
Awesome feature you should know about: Leather lets you configure the amount of skeuomorphic touches you show in your slider!

Try this Lens in our free live demo! »

FAQs

Now, I’m sure you’ve got questions, so we’ve taken the liberty of addressing a few of them right here:

I purchased a Lens – now how do I install it?
Easy! Once you’ve downloaded the .ZIP file of your Lens(es), just visit the “Lenses” screen in the plugin admin area, and click on the “Upload Lens” button in the top right. From there, you can upload the .ZIP file to your WordPress installation, and voilá! Your new Lens will be available for selection while you’re creating and editing your SlideDecks.

Do I need to purchase Premium Lenses for each website I use SlideDeck on?
Nope, it’s just a one-time purchase! You can use Premium Lenses with as many websites as you have SlideDeck Licenses for.

Does purchasing a Lens give me access to support and free updates?
No, support and certain free updates are only available to Personal, Professional and Developer tier SlideDeck users. If you need support, you should look into upgrading, though, it’s totally worth it!

Got more questions about Lenses? Check out our full FAQ section.

Remember, to get your hands on these Premium Lenses, simply update your SlideDeck 2 installation, and look for the new Lenses icons!

So, it’s with a huge amount of excitement that we’re giving you a first look at our upcoming Premium Lenses for both Lite and paid SlideDeck users! Very soon, you’ll be able to purchase & install additional lenses right from inside your WordPress admin area, for as little as $9 a pop!

What new Lenses are coming?

The following three brand new Lenses will be available to all Personal, Professional and Developer tier SlideDeck users:

“Titles”

• Inspired by the custom slider Lens created for the digital-telepathy blog
• Clean, minimalist design fits with almost any site
• Beautiful, customizable thumbnail navigation
• Dynamic-content only

“Polarad”

• The first multi-panel SlideDeck Lens, that can show multiple image slides simultaneously – perfect for Instagram or Pinterest feeds
• Awesome ‘card-stack’ variant
• Introduces a new font - “Permanent Marker“
• Dynamic-content only

“Leather”

• Gorgeous, customizable leather and paper textures for that classic vintage look
• Introduces a new font – “Damion”
• Supports both Custom and Dynamic Content

What about Lite users?

Don’t worry, we’re not restricting the Lens love just to our paid users! With our next plugin update, Lite users will be able to purchase three Lenses previously only included with the paid versions of SlideDeck – Classic, Fashion and Half-Moon. Try them out for yourself right now in our free live demo.

How will Premium Lenses work?

Now, we’re sure you have questions about this new world of Lenses, so we’ve taken the liberty of throwing together a quick FAQ:

How will I buy Premium Lenses?
Both paid and Lite users will be able to purchase Lenses from several points inside the admin area, including the Lenses screen, and the Lens selector in the SlideDeck editing screen.

Will this be a subscription thing?
Nope, for right now all Lens purchases will be a one-time fee.

Can I get support with the Lenses?
SlideDeck Personal, Professional and Developer users can continue to get access to support and updates as usual. Lite users will be able to get the latest versions of their Lenses from their digital-telepathy account (if you haven’t already, you should sign up - it’s free and awesome), but will not have access to our support team. Basically, nothing changes from a support point of view.

When will they be here?

Patience, young Skywalker(s) – we’ll be officially launching Premium Lenses very soon, and you’ll get access to them with the next plugin update we release.

In the meantime, what kinds of sliders would you love to see made available as SlideDeck Lenses? Post your suggestions and examples in the comments!