Why this plug-in? Why not the default ones, or other plug-ins?

Because this plug-in is more suited to a collection of photos intended to tell a story in a way similar to an annotated slideshow. The default web galleries in Lightroom, and the plug-ins you can purchase at various sites, may often be inadequate for the following reasons:

• Problems with Flash-based galleries:
  • Although the FLash-based galleries may look good, they require the web visitor to have the Adobe Flash plug-in installed. The viewer needs to wait for Flash to load. Many people these days have Flash-blockers that stop Flash from automatically loading, since they perceive it as an obstacle.
  • The viewing is often perceived as slow, hogging cpu performance, and causing the fan in the computer to make too much noise.
  • With Flash, there is no color management, so if the viewer has a wide gamut-display (which is becoming increasingly popular), images will be over-saturated (screaming colors). With low-gamut displays, such as laptops, images will be under-saturated (washed-out colors). In theory, Flash 10 has a certain form of color management, but Lightroom will not generate a Flash gallery that exploits it (not even version 3 beta of Lightroom).
• Problems with most HTML-based galleries:
  • All built-in galleries in Lightroom are based on a grid of images intended to display a "gallery" of individual photos to be sold or displayed as stand-alone photos, rather than a sequence that tells you a story. When you enter a large version of the image, and then click the image again, you are taken back to the grid rather than to the next image.
  • All built-in galleries in Lightroom are based on setting the maximum size of the image in pixels, regardless whether it is landscape or portrait format. This is highly inadequate, since with modern wide monitors, landscape photos can be much wider than portrait photos can be tall without the need to scroll.
  • A grid can only hold so many images, so you have to click the next "page" of the grid to load the next grid page and so on.
  • Most gallery plug-ins you can purchase are based on a similar assumption of a "gallery" of photos to be sold rather than a sequence of photos telling a story. Some plug-ins use a scroll of "large" images, but that is at least not what I want.
  • Most gallery plug-ins consume too much vertical space of frames and margins, but vertical space is the most precious dimension with most monitors. And they don't allow for much annotation below the image, since they are not really intended to tell a story.
  • None of the built-in galleries offer you a choice of fonts or styles.