just curious as to how other photographers show clients their proofs? At the moment I use Bridge to sort the images & then run a PS batch action. I then use PS to create a web photo gallery which I load on to my web site.
The issue I'm having is some clients find it difficult to sort through a lot of images.

I am not sure what, if anything, I can do to make it easier for them to select the images they want. Many years ago, we would shoot trannies, cull out the duds and show the client the good ones. Then the client could lay the trannies on a light table and easily cull out the images to be left with the final selection. It's this ability for clients to easily cull that seems to be the issue with presenting large numbers of images.

Any suggestions on any sort of sorting/ranking that clients can easily do ? (need a Windows & Mac solution)

My best client still wants contact sheets. Printed, and all that. They find it much easier to pass contact sheets in a binder around to multiple people in an office for comments, etc., than to have each person look at a web site and try to take notes about the photos.

The contact sheets need to have at least the filename under each photo, of course. And each image needs to be fairly large -- say, 12 to a page. The nicest part is that I get to bill them for each one <grin>.

I know this is not a solution for many photogs, but for corporate work it seems very good.

I shot a few hundred shots at a people event, stripped them up on a big sheet, then cut them up with a straight edge and Xacto. Next best thing to 1 hour photo. Actually went very fast. The client loved it..."this is SO COOL!" He made an arrangement out the shots he liked, then asked me to do posters based on his arrangement. Nothing like giving your client something tangible in this virtual world.