This is way cool. So as I'm preparing for this SharePoint Master training, I'm working through some site customization. I started playing with a hosted WSS 3.0 site to see what I could do without writing a single line of compiled code.
I hit a big roadblock when I wanted to use a picture library as a source for an animated slideshow. I can't upload custom webparts to the site because I don't have the rights to deploy solutions or features or to manipulate the web.config. So I figured there has to be some way using RSS or something. My first instinct was to start trolling for a free Flash based RSS reader type library. No joy. Most of them either cost money or they wanted to do a one time conversion to output a SWF for a Facebook page or something. Lame.
Moving on... It hit's me! Dude, you're a Microsoft developer so take your butt to "Live Search" and type in the word "Silverlight". Way cool! Turns out there's an open source (uhhh free) on Codeplex that a few XSL script kitties have munged into a SharePoint page. SWEET!
So after following the instructions on an excellent blog post called "Using Silverlight SlideShow and a SharePoint Picture Library" from the excellent SharePoint Evolved blog, I was rockin! In fact, I was able to tweak the procedure a bit and squeeze TWO different slideshows point to TWO different picture libraries on the same page. In my case, I needed one of the slideshows for some rotating "information" slides and the other slideshow for your standard "picture stack" slide show. It looks great and it's dynamic.
So then I got a little creative. I added an extra column to each picture library called OrderIndex. Then I tweaked the CAML a bit to order the data by the OrderIndex. Now I'm able to add and remove images at will AND re-order them however I see fit! And that way cool Silverlight slideshow just picks up the changes and rolls with it.
Rock on Silverlight!