I’d had a hard time finding a current plugin for WordPress that would give my client an easy to manage slideshow with pan/zoom (Ken Burns) effects. I tried all that were listed with varying degrees of success. The slideshow needed a WordPress plugin so it would be dead simple for my client to edit and add more slides.
Happily, I found a Flash alternative that’s integrated into NextGen Gallery, one of my long-time favorite plugins. Monoslideshow is not free, it comes out to about $37 right now in US funds, but the NextGen Monoslideshow plugin is free and takes about 1 minute to setup. You only need to FTP the .swf file from the downloaded program to your /wp-content/uploads/folder and it’s ready to use.
The Ken Burns effects available are Random, Pan, Zoom and 3D. Random looks great for my client’s needs.
Once Monoslideshow is set up, all you need to do is create a gallery in NextGen like normal, but when you paste the shortcode change it to look like this:
[monoslideshow id=1]
With a $37 investment and a total of 18 minutes I was able to complete this task and it looks great – here’s the finished slideshow, tested in FF, Chrome, Safari/Win, Opera and IE 7-9.
