Free Flash Image Gallery with Thumbnails

I needed to post some pictures as a gallery for a wedding consultant, and for a home builder in the same week. I thought about popup windows using a javascript winpop, but with so many popup blockers, that's becoming less of an option.

I tried using a hover tooltip with a message and larger image (like on istockphoto.com) but the script I used didn't work on windows IE.

I thought about using Photoshop's automated web gallery thing, but it's really difficult to integrate the code that is generated by Photoshop into my existing design.

Sure, I can manually build each large image into its own page, but that is tedious and not well suited for adding images in the future.

So, I found SimpleViewer. Simpleviewer is a flash/.xml/.js system that works really well.

I found it really easy to modify and implement into my existing design. The guys at AirtightInteractive have done a great job answering questions right on their website. SimpleViewer is very modifiable. You can change the background color, add an image to the background, add captions, etc. Good stuff.

Here's an example of their viewer demo.

Here's their list of features:

* Intelligent image pre-loading.
* Intuitive image navigation
* Lightweight (17k).
* Customizable interface - Set text color, frame color and width, navigation position.
* Resizable interface - Interface scales to fit browser window.
* Cross platform - Windows/Macintosh/Linux (requires Flash 7 or higher).
* Flash 7 detection. Users without Flash 7 are messaged to upgrade Flash.
* International font support.
* Keyboard Navigation (Cursor keys, Home, End, Page Up/Down)
* Mousewheel navigation
* Optionally right-click to open image in a new window.
* Free!

Here's their FAQ and instructions on how to customize SimpleViewer.

They've even built AutoGeneration versions including Flikr, Wordpress, Server Side Script, Photoshop, Picassa, iPhoto, and others.

This is a great app. Fairly easy to use (you'll need to know some very basic html, but not flash) and free.

Also, check out their other demos...these guys are good.

Hope this helps.

What do you think?
1. What do you use to build galleries?
2. Have you used SimpleViewer?
3. Can you post a link to your gallery (even if it's not SimpleViewer) so we can check it out?