Classic Player

Interactive player customization facilities

1. Color scheme of Classic skin can be optimized by changing hue, saturation and lightness.
2. Classic skin has 4 tabs: "Thumbnails", "Outlines", "Notes" and "Presenter". Please, note that "Presenter" tab appears in Classic skin if only you put some information about presenter, e.g. photo or company logo. To add presenter info, click "Presenters" button on the iSpring toolbar.
3. Sound volume control.
4. "Switch to the next slide" option.
5. Rewinding animation in the range of one slide.

Advanced player customization via .XML file

1. Disabling "Thumbnails", "Outlines" or "Notes" tabs.
2. Changing the order of the tabs.
3. Changing/Translating the names of the player tabs.
4. Reducing the output Flash file size by deleting the "Thumbnail" resourse file from "data" directory. Please, use this feature if only you wish to completely delete "Thumbnails" tab from your Classic skin.

ATTENTION! The features listed above can be customized only by making changes in skin configuration file (.XML file). Before you make any changes in the configuration file, please, note that iSpring gives you NO GUARANTEE that you will receive the desired result if you make any changes other than the ones described in this documentation. iSpring professionals highly recommend you to follow the instructions listed below.

Advanced player customization instructions:

1. Before you make any changes in the skin configuration file, create a back up copy of the original file.
2. After you make any changes in the skin configuration file, save and close the file. To see the changes made you need to restart your PowerPoint.
3. Don't make too many changes at once. Make your corrections step by step, save file every time you make a change and check the proper work of the settings applied.
4. Skin configuration file should be opened with a text editor that meets the following requirements:
   • It should be a plain text editor like Notepad that doesn't allow text layout changing. For example, you CAN NOT use Microsoft Word, OpenOfficeWriter, WordPad, etc.
   • A text editor should support texts in the UTF-8 format.
   • It's recommended to use a text editor with syntax highlight facilities for XML text.

PLEASE NOTE:

1. If the changes you've made to the skin configuration file are incorrect, the Classic player skin or entire iSpring software may not operate properly. In this case either restore the configuration file from the back up copy or reinstall iSpring on your computer.
2. After installation the newer version of iSpring software skin configuration files will be replaced with the new ones and all of the changes you've made will be lost. To keep your settings, please, save the customized skin configuration file and place it to the iSpring installation directory instead of the existing one. Even in this case iSpring do not give you any guarantee that your file will be compatible with the newer versions.

After reading all of the caution and notes there is only one question in your head now: "How do I customize the Player features?" The PROCEDURE is described below. Let's start!

Open skin_setting.xml file using Notepad that is placed in iSpring installation directory which is by default "C:\Program Files\iSpring Pro 3\players\classic".

Configuring the skin_setting.xml file you will be able to customize the following appearance settings of the Classic player skin.

Disable "Thumbnails", "Outlines" or "Notes" tabs

To disable any of the "Thumbnails", "Outlines" or "Notes" tabs, you need to change 1 to 0 in the corresponding line. The sample below shows how to disable the "Outlines" tab.

<tabs>
    <!-- you can change tab order - the first non-zero tab is shown by default -->
    <thumbnails>1</thumbnails>
    <outline>0</outline>
    <notes>1</notes>
    <!-- presenter tab is added when any presenter information is specified -->
</tabs>   

Don't forget to save your changes (File -->Save), restart PowerPoint and check the updated player appearance.

Change the order of the tabs

All you need to do is to put tabs in the desired order in the skin_setting.xml file. For example, the standard order of the tabs is "Thumbnails", "Outlines", "Notes". The sample below shows how to change it to "Outlines", "Thumbnails", "Notes", so skin_settings.xml file text should look like the following:

<tabs>
    <!-- you can change tab order - the first non-zero tab is shown by default -->
    <outline>1</outline>
    <thumbnails>1</thumbnails>
    <notes>1</notes>
    <!-- presenter tab is added when any presenter information is specified -->
</tabs>  

Change/Translate the names of the Player tabs

1. Go to skin_settings.xml file and change the names of the tabs like it is shown below. In the following sample the "Notes" tab will be changed to "Comments":

    <outline>Outline</outline>
    <thumbnails>Thumbnails</thumbnails>
    <presenter>Presenter</presenter>
    <notes>Comments</notes>
    <slide>Slide: {SLIDE} / {TOTAL}</slide>
    <time>{TIME} / {TOTAL}</time>
    

WARNING! Please, do not change the text in "{ }" brackets.

2. Open publish_settings.xml file the same way you open skin_settings.xml and change the names of the tabs here as well:

    <!-- read comments on label properties in skin_settings.xml -->
    <staticCharset characters="Outline" />
    <staticCharset characters="Thumbnails" />
    <staticCharset characters="Presenter" />
    <staticCharset characters="Comments" />
    <staticCharset characters="Slide: /" />   

3. Restart your PowerPoint and enjoy your new tabs!

Generated Flash file size can be reduced by deleting "Thumbnail" resourse file from "data" directory

1. Open skin_settings.xml file and change 1 to 0 in the following line:

    <tabs>
      <!-- you can change tab order: the first non-zero tab is shown by default -->
      <thumbnails>0</thumbnails>
      <outline>1</outline>
      <notes>1</notes>
      <!-- presenter tab is added when any presenter information is specified -->
    </tabs>   

2. Open publish_settings.xml file and change 1 to 0 as well like it is shown below:

    <thumbnails enabled="0">
    <size width="120" height="90"/>
    </thumbnails>   

To see what files are placed in the "data" directory after conversion, publish your presentation in the "Separate Flash files" mode.

Before you disable "Thumbnails" it looked like that:

After you disable "Thumbnails" in skin_settings.xml and publish_settings.xml files "data" folder should look as follows: