Smart Slider 3.22

Here is a Carousel Slider done in 3 steps using Smart Slider 3.22
CAUTION: Nextend’s SmartSlider has a severe edit problem -it is wiping out earlier images by overwriting them with new slides and destroying valuable slide data – CAUTION

The top 3 WordPress premium sliders plugins – Layer Slider, Slider Revolution, and Smart Slider 3 – are in a knockdown battle for the top spot in terms of features, ease of use and performance. As the table below shows the top 3 WordPress slider plugins have a rich set of common  features:

Common Features of the 3 Premium Sliders
Features	Layer Slider 6.03	Slider Revolution 5.4	Smart Slider 3.22
Sliders Types Supported	4 Types		11 Types
Landing Page Creation	Hero, Landing Pages	Hero, Landing Pages	Hero, Landing Pages
Slider Template Library	50		100+
Responsive D,P,S	Yes	Yes	Yes
Layers Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Animation Capabilities	20++, Burns, Para	20++,Burns, Para	20++,Burns,Para
WP Post/Page	Yes		Yes
Output Modes	WP, HTML		WP, HTML, Joomla, Magento
Unique Features	Skin, CSS,

First, it is important to underline three features that go beyond most sliders of just 3-4 years ago:
1) Slider Template Library – dozens of prebuilt sliders which users select & customize for fast slide build
2) Responsive Mode – includes specific slider layout for different devices
3) Creation of landing page and 1 page website layouts – using headers, rows, columns, buttons and layered animations on one-slide Hero sliders

In effect Sliders are beginning to duplicate WordPress PageBuilder ideas and features. As a result, with so many common features among the top 3 sliders, they compete as much on ease of use, performance speed, support services, as well as distinctive features. So let us see how well Smart Slider performs.

Working With Smart Slider 3.22

This is the Smart Slider Dashboard and starting point for creating a slider. And users have two main choices – create a new slider from scratch or 

The first example will use New Slider to create a Carousel slider [Smart Slider calls them Showcase sliders].Here is the Slider Type options screen:
Now we are ready to load in the images. Note we have added Title, Caption and Description fields to the four images to be used in the Carousel/Showcase slider. We just clicked on the first slide and loaded all 4 slides from the Media Library at once:
Next we save the slider with the name “fall1” and use the Preview button to check how it looks.And of course that is the slider shown at the top of the this review.Note we did not have to specify any slider options such as Autoplay, Bullets, Thumbnails, etc. Most of these default settings work well. at the start.So we have quickly produced a working slider using images from the media library. Next we shall produce a slider by modifying one of Smart Slider’s many templates.

Template Library Slider

The idea behind the template slider is to borrow or copy the idea for a slider from the template library and then just modify its contents to match your specific needs. This is done all over the place in by most of the popular PageBuilders like Visual Composer or Site Origins PageBuilder. So here is our choice for a template slider for a landing page application:

This template has 5 layers in  which we will delete two layers [the Rock and Mountain background. Next we add our Warkworth Wet oak image at 1600 x 1200 as the new background. Then we change the header from a A California Road Trip to Warkworth Wet in the Fall. Likewise the subheadings are quickly changed. Then by switching to Canvas mode it is easy to drag and drop the header, subheadings, and button to new positions on the slider. And essentially we are done.
Here is what the Ciontente Editor looks like during the edits:
And here is the preview of the new Landing Page as adapted for tablets its target market.
Now here is where Smart Slider 3 really shines. We want to create a bunch of HTML, Facebook, and Instagram  apps using these type of Landing Page sliders with animated layers and quick button presses to take users to various client sites. Smart Slider not only has HTML,Joomla and Magento code generators but a half dozen more for Facebook , Intstagram etc. Very helpful.

If you have had a similar Smart Slider overwrite problem, please add a note with details to the comments.