style views_slideshow pager
@Scorchio Thanks for that. I was successfully able to convert the layout from '1 of xx' to '1 2 3 4 5 6 x' by overriding views-slideshow-slide-counter.tpl.php and modifying the views_slideshow.js. My changes are below.

views-slideshow-slide-counter.tpl.php

&lt;div id="views_slideshow_slide_counter_&lt;?php print $variables['vss_id']; ?&gt;" class="&lt;?php print $classes; ?&gt;"&gt;
&lt;?php 
    $slide_count = count($view-&gt;result); 
    for($i=1;$i&lt;=$slide_count;++$i)
        print '&lt;span class="num'.$i.'"&gt;'.$i.'&lt;/span&gt; ';
 ?&gt;
 &lt;/div&gt;


views_slideshow.js

Drupal.viewsSlideshowSlideCounter.transitionBegin = function (options) {
  $('#views_slideshow_slide_counter_' + options.slideshowID + ' span').removeClass('active');
  $('#views_slideshow_slide_counter_' + options.slideshowID + ' .num' + (options.slideNum + 1)).addClass('active');
};