Feature Preview: Slide Properties Themes

Another enhancement to the area of Slide Properties in the next version of SongShow Plus are themes. Presently, a slide show has one set of default Slide Properties (aka Display Properties). All slides automatically inherit those properties unless they are overridden within the slide itself. This means that if you are building a presentation that makes use of two different background images, you can only set one of them as the default. For all slides that use the second background, you have set that background individually for each slide that uses it.

This is no longer the case. A slide show can now have multiple themes, and each slide can be set to use one of those themes. So using the example above, you can set theme 1 to use background 1 and theme 2 to use background 2. Then, you simply select which theme to use for each slide. Slides set to theme 1 will get background 1 and slides set to theme 2 will get background 2. 

Themes don't just apply to backgrounds either. They also apply to text color, style, layout, margins, shadow, transitions, etc.

This new feature also helps with two other functions, merging slide shows and using the builders. Presently, when you merge a slide show, the source slide show looses its default slide properties. All of the slides inherit the existing default slide properties of the current slide show. With themes, the slide properties from the merged slide show will be added as an additional theme, then all of its slides will be set to that theme. In this way, you can merge two slide shows and have them both retain their essential looks.

In a similar way, running a builder like the Photo Slides builder on an existing slide show is somewhat problematic because the builder can't inject new background and transition settings. But now with themes support, the builder's background settings are simply added as a new theme and the new slides from the builder use that theme. Your slide show can now be a product of multiple builders.

This new feature will make the job of formatting good looking slide shows even easier.

(BE279)

Comments: