The September releases of MetaSlider are now available with tons of new features.
When you install these versions, you’ll find a noticeable speed improvement thanks to the Lazy Load feature. You’ll see see lots of usability improvements. MetaSlider Pro users are now able to design the background of their slideshows, and add captions to YouTube and Vimeo videos.
We’re building the most user-friendly slideshow plugin in WordPress, and this release is another step towards that.
You can now upgrade to MetaSlider Free 3.102 and MetaSlider Pro 2.49. In this guide, I’ll show you what’s new in these releases.
Table of Contents for this post
Lazy Load for slideshow images
This has been the most requested feature from MetaSlider users: you can now use Lazy Load for slideshow images. MetaSlider is already the fastest slideshow plugin, but this can speed up your site even more. MetaSlider will only load slides when they are required by your slideshow.
Here how the Lazy Load feature works:
- Images from first two slides load will load immediately.
- When you advance to the second slide the third slide image will load.
- When you advance to the third slide, the fourth slide image will load.
The biggest speed gains will be on sites with the most slides. For example, you have a slideshow with 100 images, this feature will make sure that only the first two images are loaded when a visitor arrives on your website.
Usability improvements
These MetaSlider releases have lot of usability improvements. I’ll highlight just three of the upgrades that you’ll see when creating slideshows. First, you’ll now see an “Add Slide” button below your list of slides.
Second, the “Save” button now stands out visually so it’s easier to use.
Finally, there’s also a toggle for sidebar sections to make it easier to see the settings you want to change:
Customize your slideshow container
There is a new “Container” feature in MetaSlider Pro. The best way to explain how this works is to show you. This screenshot shows a slideshow that uses the “Hero” theme.
This next screenshot shows the same slideshow but with the “Container” feature activated. This feature makes it easier to integrate MetaSlider into your slideshow design.
In this third screenshot, you can see the “Container” settings. You can control the background for your slideshow container, plus the padding and margin.
Caption support for Vimeo and YouTube videos
It’s now possible to overlay captions on top of your Vimeo slides and YouTube slides. This image below shows a caption on top of a Vimeo video, using the “Highway” theme.
Here’s an example of a caption on top of a YouTube video. This slideshow is using the “Nexus” theme. Please note that his different from the subtitles / captions that you can add to slideshows using the VTT format.
What’s next for MetaSlider? A new lightbox
One of the most popular requests we’ve had from MetaSlider users is a lightbox option. This will allow visitors to click on any image in your slideshow and get an enhanced look at that image.
We’ve just released a new and improved version of the MetaSlider Lightbox plugin. There are a ton more features coming in the next few weeks. You can use the plugin to turn any slideshow into a full-screen display. This screenshot gives a preview of how the lightbox will appear. You have the option to show the thumbnail navigation you can see below the main image.
We’re also working on a Pro version of MetaSlider Lightbox. Here’s a list of the first features that will be available for Pro users:
- Zoom into each image
- Rotate the images
- Fullscreen mode
- URLs for each slide
- Social sharing