Drupal 7 Image Slider Modules

We have been exploring module option lately to provide dynamic image blocks for a few clients.  In some cases it's simply a rotating image, in others, we need to present an image with a text overlay, where both the image AND the tes=xt come from fields on a piece of content.

For Drupal 6.x our favourite (read easiest to get installed and running) module was the Views Rotator module eve though it only made it to stable alpha in D6. We used it very successfully on a number of sites, including lab4.com.au 

But as we try to do more and more build in Drupal 7, we were looking for a replacement.  Views Rotator has been deprecated in favour of Views Slideshow in D7. But the module that caught our eye was ddblock module.  it seemed to have most mature D7 support.  So we gave it a go.  For many hours. Uninstalled and reinstalled. And repeat.  Although there are lots of people saying this module is great and works for them - we just could not get it to work for us.

Particularly frustrating when you know that others have it working - so it's most likely something stupid that we have done ourselves, not a buggy module...  but in ay event, perception is reality, and reality was we could not get it working.

So we gave Views Slideshow a try.  And boy, am I glad we did.  Easy to install, flexible, customisable and completely integrated with Views.  Views Slideshow is the winner, and will be the image (and other content) rotator of choice for some time to come.

• There is plent of good infromation of the module page here http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow
• Theres a homepage about it here http://drupalmultimedia.org/slideshow
• And good documentation here: http://drupal.org/node/755010
• There are great tutorials available - including some D6 ones by my favourite video tutorial maker mustardseedmedia.  Bob at Mustardseed has been making extremely high quality, information packed videos for a long time - and a lot of what I learned about Drupal in the early days came from his videos and podcasts. (Thank you Mustardseed!)