For Immediate Release

SOURCE: Media Lab, Inc.

December 15, 2011 15:28 ET
Media Lab Releases SiteGrinder 3.5

Media Lab Adds Power to Its Popular Website Development Plug-In for Photoshop

LOGAN, UT–(Marketwire – Dec 15, 2011) – Media Lab Inc., premier provider of Photoshop plug-in website creation technologies, announces the release of its new SiteGrinder 3.5 website development plug-in for Photoshop. SiteGrinder 3.5 now writes HTML5 and CSS3 code allowing designers to take advantage of features in the latest browsers and Apple iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone.

The Media Lab SiteGrinder 3 platform is a collection of powerful website development tools that automatically convert Photoshop PSD files into standards-compliant web pages. SiteGrinder 3.5 creates elements such as customized CSS text, web-optimized images, interactive buttons and menus, drop shadows, rounded corners, transparency, CSS animation, image galleries and much more.

In addition to SiteGrinder 3′s 60+ hints and already long list of capabilities, Media Lab has added many new features to SiteGrinder 3.5. The new features include:

Support for HTML5.
CSS3 gallery effects.
Pin elements like social media toolbars to browser edges.
Simplified Headers and Footers.
Specify your own CSS classes on layers.
Google Font support for custom CSS typefaces on pages.
Accordions for displaying a lot of information in a small space.
Improved uploading to web hosts.
Image buttons in forms.
New hover and click behaviors.
Smooth scrolling.

Requirements

SiteGinder 3.5
On the PC, SiteGrinder 3.5 is compatible with Windows XP and later, including Windows 7. It requires Photoshop 7 or later including the latest Photoshop CS5, or Photoshop Elements 6, 7, 8 and 9. On the Mac, SiteGrinder 3.5 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.1 or greater, Photoshop CS3 CS4 or CS5 (Mac OS X 10.4 or later for the Intel-based Mac), or Photoshop Elements 6, 7, 8 and 9. Visit www.medialab.com for complete details and to download your copy of SiteGrinder 3.5.

About Media Lab, Inc.
For over a decade, Logan, Utah-based Media Lab, Inc. has specialized in creating interactive Photoshop tools that make it easy to bring amazing web designs to life. In addition to its flagship product SiteGrinder 3.5, SiteGrinder 3 and SiteGrinder 2, have enjoyed an array of favorable reviews and accolades since it debuted in April 2000 under the the name of Photowebber. Prior to the release of Photowebber, Media Lab’s innovative multimedia design tools, PhotoCaster, PSD2FLA, and AlphaMania, were used to create pioneering special effects seen at Disney World’s EPCOT Center in Florida, as well as in numerous popular music videos and motion pictures, such as “X-Men 2,” “Spiderman 2,” “Air Force One,” and “Armageddon.” For complete information on Media Lab, Inc. and its current products, visit www.medialab.com.

SOURCE: Media Lab, Inc.

July 21, 2011 15:32 ET
Media Lab Announces “OpenGraph” Support for Facebook

Photoshop Plug-In SiteGrinder 3 Integrates More Tightly With Facebook

LOGAN, UT–(Marketwire – Jul 21, 2011) – Media Lab Inc., premier provider of Photoshop plug-in website creation software, today announces Facebook “Open Graph” support for SiteGrinder 3. OpenGraph is a way for web pages to provide identifying information, such as special description text and administrator information, to Facebook. When connections are made between a Facebook user and your site, such as when a site visitor “likes” a page, the OpenGraph information will display in the Facebook users news feed. Having this data in essence makes any web page part of the Facebook network.

SiteGrinder with Facebook OpenGraph support now provides an easy to use SG3 control for setting OpenGraph information as part of the external media plug system that is part of the SiteGrinder Content Manager. External media importers already exist for web images, Google Word Processor Documents, Google Presentations, HTML pages and snippets, HTML objects and iframes, generic text, Adobe Lightroom galleries, ShowItWeb galleries, Zoomify, Adobe Flash SWFs and FLVs, Quicktime, Microsoft and other video formats, MP3 audio, and PHP includes. Media Lab is constantly expanding this list.

“Media Lab is continually adding new features and functionality to its SiteGrinder 3 Platform to make the Facebook and social media experience more productive,” commented Tom Summerall, President of Media Lab, Inc. “With the release of OpenGraph support for Facebook we are making it easier to create amazing Facebook-integrated pages with Photoshop.”

The Media Lab SiteGrinder 3 platform automatically converts Photoshop PSD files into standards-compliant pages that will enhance a Facebook user’s web experience. SiteGrinder 3 creates elements such as customized CSS text, web-optimized images, interactive buttons and menus, drop shadows, rounded corners, transparency, CSS animation and more.

Additional Facebook Fanpage features using SiteGrinder 3

Pages created with SiteGrinder 3 work with Facebook iFrame apps
SiteGrinder 3 pages work with the Developer app so you can create your own iFrame app
Create special content only visible to Fans
Place QuickTime and MPEG movies anywhere on your pages
Create finger friendly drop down menus for mobile users
Supports CSS drop shadows, rounded corners and transparencies
Embed Flash or animated CSS photo galleries into your Facebook Fan Pages
Bring full website content and capabilities to your Facebook pages, including eCommerce

Requirements
SiteGinder 3
On the PC, SiteGrinder 3 is compatible with Windows XP and later, including Windows 7. It requires Photoshop 7 or later including the latest Photoshop CS5, or Photoshop Elements 6, 7 and 8. On the Mac, SiteGrinder 3 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.1 or greater, Photoshop CS3 CS4 or CS5 (Mac OS X 10.4 or later for the Intel-based Mac), or Photoshop Elements 6, 7 and 8. Visit www.medialab.com for complete details and to download your copy of SiteGrinder 3.

About Media Lab, Inc.
For over a decade, Logan, Utah-based Media Lab, Inc. has specialized in creating interactive Photoshop tools that make it easy to bring amazing web designs to life. In addition to its flagship product SiteGrinder 3, Media Lab’s SiteGrinder 2, has enjoyed an array of favorable reviews and accolades since it debuted in April 2000 under the the name of Photowebber. Prior to the release of Photowebber, Media Lab’s innovative multimedia design tools, PhotoCaster, PSD2FLA, and AlphaMania, were used to create pioneering special effects seen at Disney World’s EPCOT Center in Florida, as well as in numerous popular music videos and motion pictures, such as “X-Men 2,” “Spiderman 2,” “Air Force One,” and “Armageddon.” For complete information on Media Lab, Inc. and its current products, visit www.medialab.com.

Using Flickr Sets In Panelsheets

The online photo sharing site Flickr lets you to create arbitrary “sets” of your images.  Flickr supports RSS feeds for these sets, and SiteGrinder panelsheets (as of SiteGrinder 3.04) can display these sets. Here’s how you do it:

1. Create your Flickr set

Log in to your Flickr account and choose Your sets from the Flickr Organize & Create menu.

In Flickr’s set organizer you can create sets and add images to them from your Photo stream using Flickr’s drag-and-drop tool.  Make sure the images you want to use with SiteGrinder have their permission set so that anyone can view them.  You can do this to all of the images you’ve added to the set at the same time by using the Flickr set editor’s Permissions menu.

Note on the order of Flickr RSS: as of this writing Flickr RSS feeds are in chronological order (newest first) based on when the images were uploaded to your stream.  You may be able to change this date in the Flickr organizer.

2. Set up your panelsheet in Photoshop as described in the previous section.

For Flickr use the [[title]] metadata to display your photo’s names and a -panelsheet layer to show a thumbnail of the photo.  Build your page and open up the panelsheet settings in the Design Manager.

An example layout including a metadata layer with [[title]] and a decorative layer behind the panelthumb is below:

3. Get your set RSS url address

Once you have created a set you can click the Flickr logo to return to your main screen.  Under Flickr’s You menu select Your Sets.

Click the set you want to use with SiteGrinder to enter the set viewing page.  Here you will see a clickable link named Feed.

Right-click on this (or control-click on a Mac) and copy the link location to the clipboard.

4. Set up your panelsheet settings for the RSS feed

Set the Data Type to Feed.

Paste the Flickr RSS into the Feed URL field.

IMPORTANT: The Flickr RSS link contains two “&” symbols.  To use this sort of url in the Design Manager panelsheet settings window you will need to change these to &

You’ll need to make this change after you paste the URL into the panel settings window.  You should not do this in the Content Manager’s feed url editor.

So if the original URL looks like this:

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?
set=72157623884410853&nsid=25976997@N03&lang=en-us

You’ll change it to this:

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?
set=72157623884410853&nsid=25976997@N03&lang=en-us

If you want the your site visitor to be taken to the Flikr page for an image then set “What to do on click” to “feedlink”.

Click Apply and you will see your images and their names in the panelsheet.