Does anyone know how if possible I could get the same effect as Apple has on its website now when they promote the new MacBook Air, where they start with a full screen image that resides back into an image on the website it self. I have "stolen" a lot of the Apple layout and incorporated in my website where I use the Atahualpa theme. Which by the way is the best Wordpress theme out there.

Take a look at this plugin. It's not exactly the Apple page but you could use an image, set the background to black and 100% opaque, and get rid of the x in the corner per the settings and come close.

I did have a conflict with a plugin I had installed so if it doesn't work try deactivating some plugins.

I kind of like this plugin as it let's you set the time out of the splash screen so people don't have to "click here to enter" which I hate.

Thanks for the quick answer. It looks like this plugin could do the trick for me, but I can't get it to work. Deactivated all other plugins, but it still did not show up. Do you remember which plugin was in conflict in your case? The other issue is that I would like the image to be full screen. This plugin can only handle 999px. This could still work but it is not ideal. By the way, I have 24 other active plugins and they all work great together.

Make sure the Splash image activated box at the top of the settings page is checked (I missed that on my first try).

As far as size of image I would create an image that faded to a color on the outside and then set the background color of the spash image plugin to that color.

The plugin I had problems with with sidebar tabs.

I have the image activated, but I also have Sidebar Tabs. When I deactivated Sidebar Tabs it worked for me too . Is there any way to fix that, because I need Sidebar Tabs. It worked with the background as well when I implemented your suggestion. There are two more changes I would like if possible. The first is that I would like the splash image to open first and not shortly after the site. As it is now you can see the home page before the splash image takes over. The other is that I would like the image to fade away instead into to the home page. What do you think?

PS Thanks for all your help. DS

You now know as much about that plugin as I do. Let's twiddle with it and see who can come up with answers.

There are other tabbed widget plugins that don't interfere with the splash plugin. I am taking a look at them.

Great. It is a while ago I looked at tabbed widgets, and at that time there was none as good. I had a problem though in the beginning that I could only have one tabbed widget per page. When I talked to the developer, he made some changes and corrected the problem. I will send him an email about this problem as well. Maybe he has a solution.

I will be anxious to hear if you find out anything.

I have not heard back from the developer of the sidebar tabs yet, but I just posted an other followup on the issue with a flash image at start up. This is what I wrote.
I have downloaded the plugin Welcome Announcement and would like the plugin to run before the home page in order to get the same smooth opening as the latest Apple website where they start with the new McBook Air. I think Welcome Announcement can do the trick, but as it is now the plugin starts first after the page it self. the other thing is that the menu bar is visible the whole time. I was thinking that if I could start the plugin first and then fade into the home page it would look like the latest Apple solution. Does anyone know if this would be possible?
I will let you know as soon as I hear back from the developer.

I have still not heard from the developer, so I ended up using the plugin "Tabbed Widget" instead. It works good, and I don't have the conflict issue with that plugin.