I have been working with the addSlideFn. I love the idea, but I am having some problems implementing it. I have some ideas for improving it, but first here is what I ran into:
I got addSlideFn to work in a somewhat simple case. Then I was having problems though when I tried to set a delay. The newly loaded slides would "interrupt" the ongoing slideshow. I also used a nowrap option, and depending on the timing the slideshow would end before the new slides were added and loaded to the DOM. Since load times over the internet vary, I don't know how robust that is. I tried to decouple the addSlideFn from the slideshow (not using onBefore) so that I cold load all of the new slides before starting the slideshow (using a delay), but I couldn't (addSlideFn not a function..). Also, I tried to just use only one slide in the html, and add all of the others through javascript. I got an error saying I only had one slide in my slideshow. One way to hide all other slides if javascript is disabled or during loading is to make sure overflow:hidden; is set in the parent container. Here is what I think is the ideal way to load a complex, progressively enhanced slideshow (please pitch in other ideas!) - only one silde element in the html - create a setTimeout function that would wait until the DOM and page elements are loaded. Could be just a simple timer or it could check to see if all of the page elements are loaded. Once loaded or timer finishes, slide markup is added to the DOM and the media is loaded - when the slides added to the DOM and loaded, trigger the slideshow I like this solution because: 1. It allows you to present content after the clunky page loading process happens (if you have a heavy page) 2. It could potentially speed up perceived page load because it is loading heavy images in the background after all other page elements are loaded 3. It would be a simple configuration (for us, maybe not Mike or whoever is doing the coding!) 4. It follows progressive enhancement - if no javascript, then only one slide loads 5. Could potentially allow all of the javascript (jQuery, plugin, and configuration) at the bottom of the page, which could also speed up perceived load times. (I have been reading a lot about the speed optimization work Yahoo is doing and using the yslow tool). This might even be possible with the current implementation of cycle but I don't know how to do it. Any ideas? thanks
