Some minor changes went live yesterday on SlideSix. Here's a quick look at what's new.

First and foremost, the home page has been redesigned (again). A lot of people commented that the last home page was too dark. I quickly came to the same realization, and also decided to put presentation thumbnails back on the landing page. The new page is lighter and presents a mix of 'marketing' and user content. The icons add a splash of color and quickly give new users an idea of what SlideSix is about. The main focus though, is the tab navigator which now contains 'Featured' presentations. Here we (I) will spotlight interesting and creative presentations. The third tab ('How It Works') contains a demo presentation, and I've finally added some multimedia to it so that it serves as an example of what can be done. Here's the new look:

The next minor, but overdue, enhancement is the ability to automatically accept new members in your group. To activate this feature just login and go to the Management Console. In the console click on 'Groups', select the group to edit and check the 'Auto Approve Members'.

The final enhancement gives you the ability to create a customized widget that users can utilize to create a widget for their blog, wiki, or site. There are a handful of options available - you can create a widget with only your presentations, only those from one for your groups, or by other options like a certain tag. Here's how the widget creator looks:

I created a customized widget that I'm now using here on my blog to display my recent presentations. Here is some sample code that will embed a single column widget for your blog containing presentations tagged 'coldfusion':

To customize the widget, just create your own and enter any tag you'd like.

The last thing I'll mention is the creation of a new Google Group for SlideSix Developers. I had been meaning to put up a custom forum for a long time but decided to just utilize Google for the purpose of offering a discussion forum for anyone interested in using the SlideSix API. More to come regarding the API in the near future. (Hint: There may be prizes...).

That's about it for now. As always, feedback is seriously desired and appreciated.