Google’s Halloween Image is Slide-A-Riffic

Today Google’s choose to do a Scooby Doo Ghost-Busting theme for this halloween but I am not here to talk about the theme but rather the mechanics behind it.
I have heard the control they choose to implement be called many things such as slider, carousel, gallery, ad-rotater, and best of all multiple image thingy-majig. However I don’t know exactly what to call it. But the principle is very simple. You line up a set of images in div’s or unordered list set the width of the first div to the size of the picture and then tell it not to overflow that div hiding the rest of the images. You then move the images based on the navigational queues to the furthest left. Kinda like shuffling cards.

I have seen this control used on several hundred websites and even this one. It is a great way to get multiple ideas across in an unobtrusive and pleasing way.
However a few questions arise as there are so many librarys and methods to do this.
What kind of library do you use to accomplish this effect, do you use a library?
Do you prefer the slide or fade transitions?
What should we call this control?

Leave answers below or tweet them to @davidbates

Thanks
David Bates

Adobe Needs to Stop Installing Malware

As an Adobe Flash developer I was appalled and offended when Brandon Potter told me that Adobe was installing software on users machines when they explicitly opted out of the install. Totally ridiculous, why would Adobe be doing that? Well I don’t know the answer to that but I can tell you that it is true. If you download the latest version of flash player Adobe will ask you if you want to install McAffee Antivirus. Even if you check no it will still install it… As a developer I chose Adobe as a platform I could trust as they did not do these kind of things in the past… Now I am having to re-evaluate that trust and with so many other alternatives for cross platform development like Silverlight I don’t know if I will continue to use Flash.

Full Story on Brandon’s Blog-Dear Adobe: This is NOT okay

Thanks
David Bates