Here are the plugins:

• Widgets on Pages
• Add Widgets to Page

I prefer the second one, because it isn’t limited to 6 post/page widget areas and you can give the post/page widget areas a meaningful name. And also because the first one seems to conflict with another plugin I would like to use (Sociable).

23 May 2010: I have to rectify the part above that I wrote 5 days ago. First of all, there was no conflict at all between the Widgets on Pages and the Sociable plugin. The problem was caused by the Add Widgets to Page plugin (I’ll come to that in a moment). Secondly, the new release of the Widgets on Pages plugin no longer has the limit of 6 widget areas: now they are unlimited, so there’s no difference between the two from that point of view.

Now, when I thought the first plugin was in conflict with the Sociable plugin, what was really happening was that the second plugin didn’t display the widget where I wanted it in the page, but at the beginning. Even before the title. I found the fix for that.

So in the end there was a problem, but it wasn’t what I first thought it was (I mixed up the tests of the two plugins…), and I blamed the wrong plugin. I apologize for that. Right now, I prefer the first plugin. Although with the fix the second one works fine too. Let’s hope the author of the Add widgets to page plugin will implement the fix soon.

When using the second plugin, remember this:

If you use this plugin, and after adding [addw2p name="widgetareaname"] to a post or page, when you go to the admin widgets panel, you don’t see the new widget area appearing, don’t worry.
Just go to your site, and view the post/page. You’ll see something like this:

please set some widgets to show from Appearance -> Widgets.

Now refresh the admin widgets panel, and you’ll see the new widget area.

There should be no problems with this upgrade, but if there are, let me know.

I apologize for any inconvenience caused.

So, what’s new? Version 1.3.2 fixes a bug concerning the transparent background. In the widget’s HTML code, the object wmode parameter was set as ‘opaque’, resulting in a white background, even if the background transparency of the slideshow was set to 0 (transparent).

In the new version, wmode is set to ‘transparent’, which means that all objects laying underneath the flash object (like the site’s background color) will shine through the transparent parts of the slide show. So now, if you specify the background transparency as 0, it’ll work as it should.

Attention: the wmode was set to ‘opaque’ for a reason: it prevented the flash object from being shown on top of everything, thus obscuring drop down menus (this is a flash behaviour, not something specific for the slideshow). I think ‘transparent’ will work just fine, but I haven’t had the possibility to test it. If you notice a problem, please let me know. In that case, I’ll have to add a new setting to let you choose between wmode ‘opaque’ and ‘transparent’.

So, what’s new? Version 1.3.1 fixes a bug concerning the widget title. Version 1.3 always displayed the title, even if none had been set. In some WordPress templates, this caused an empty coloured box to appear above the slideshow (in other templates it might have other effects). In version 1.3.1, the title (and all related graphical effects)  is displayed only when you set one.