Zest We Can!

As I walked down the memory lane while writing about my first two homes in the U.S., I needed a way to show photos in a slide show. I actually first thought of Google Gadgets, but searching with keywords like slideshow and Picasa actually did not provide anything that satisfy my need. Luckily, a new feature in Picasa is the ability to embed a slide show into a blog, which is exactly what I did with the blog entry about my second home. Still, I wanted something a little fancier, and re-visited BannerZest.

You may recall I once gave Flash the full version a try and found it too hard to learn. BannerZest allows me to create Flash slide shows, albeit limited by whatever the developer thinks useful, but it is still very good. The only problem is that since I first used BannerZest there was an upgrade of Flash Player, which naturally BannerZest relies on. Even after I updated Flash Player, I still got an error message saying my version 8.x of Flash Player is too old. The BannerZest help page suggested looking up the Flash Player version in Safari, under Help / Installed Plug-Ins, then move the old version of the plug-in into a Disabled folder. Did that, but still got the error. Just by chance, I re-visited the Installed Plug-Ins page again and noticed that I had two entries for Shockwave / Flash Player, with different file names. I then moved the name corresponding to the 8.x version and sure enough BannerZest no longer whines about older Flash version. Look for some cool slide show coming up in the next few days as we wax nostalgia some more.