Including the panorama into a web page

Source : http://www.panoguide.com/howto/display/web.jsp

First you need some panoramas or object movies

It pretty much goes without saying that before you can put panoramas or object movies onto the Internet, you'll need to create them first.

Choosing a "viewer" to use in the web page

It is important to realise that the software you use to create your panoramas or object movies with will not necessarily create the web page for you. Also you will need a different piece of software - a "viewer" to display the panorama in the web page. This "viewer" need not be from the same company as the software you used to create your pictures and movies

The software you use for creating panoramas will have a choice of output formats (the exact choice varies from program to program ). Some of these formats are images and some are special file formats for panoramic pictures (there are also special file formats for object movies). The difference is that the special file formats include the information the viewer needs to know in order to display the picture, such as whether the panorama is a full 360 degrees, whether it is cubic, spherical or cylindrical, whether there are any hotspots that link this panorama to another one, etc.

If, for example, you decide that you want to use QuickTime in your website or on a CD, and your software doesn't allow you to create QuickTime movies, what you need to do is to save your finished work as an image and then use another program to convert from the image to a QuickTime movie.

The main thing that should influence your choice of viewer is what you want it to look like - in the case of panoramas this is affected most by what kinds of image projection the viewer supports. For both objects and panoramas you will probably want to think about the functionality you want: do you want to create hotspots to link panoramas and objects together into a virtual tour? Do you want to include music or sound effects? Do you want those sound effects to be directional? You can use the products feature search to search for viewers that have the features you want.

Putting a simple QuickTime panorama or object in a web page

A lot of websites use QuickTime, so I'll start with that. To put a QuickTime movie into a web page all you need do is add HTML to the page like this:

Note that CLASSID must always equal: clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B, CODEBASE must always equal: http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab and PLUGINSPAGE must always equal: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/. The other attributes should be customized to your web page. The OBJECT element can use any EMBED attributes QuickTime understands. Visit http://www.apple.com/quicktime/authoring/embed.html for more details.

Note: Helmut Dersch's latest PTViewer (java) viewer is able to display QuickTime movies including cubic QuickTime 5 movies.

Using Java instead : Helmut Dersch's PTViewer (java) viewer (for instance)

If you choose to use a file format that requires a plugin to be installed on the end user's machine, you risk alienating those users that don't have the plugin. I always assume there are some users who either can't download the plugin (perhaps because of a firewall) or who don't want to (perhaps they don't know how or are worried they will mess up their computer by doing so).

A Java applet is a neat and increasingly popular alternative to a plugin viewer. A Java applet is a small computer program that you put on your website and which is downloaded by the end users' web browser when needed. So they don't have to install a plugin in advance and it all happens automatically. Both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer are capable of supporting Java applets. So, all you have to do is upload your chosen Java applet to your website, put the Java applet into your webpage, and then if someone wants to view your work the Java program is automatically downloaded to their machine. No plugin, no complicated installation, nothing. Not everyone has Java installed though. If you do a standard Microsoft Interner Explorer installation the Java VM will not be installed. It's only installed later if you load a web page with Java in...

There is one more problem with using Java. Some browsers (notably Netscape) have memory limits which prevent large images being used. This is why it is recommended that you keep your panoramic images below 500,000 pixels in size when using their java viewer. If you exceed this you will see an error message 'Out of memory' on some web browsers. Helmut Dersch's PT Viewer for Java can avoid this problem by cleverly splitting the image into sections, by-passing the limitation in the Java VM.

Most Java viewers simply require an image, such as a JPEG,

The information needed to control how the panorama should be displayed is instead added to the HTML.

This means that creating a virtual tour involves a lot of work!

	Advantage	Disadvantage
Plugin	Faster Generally more features	Some people won't have the plugin hotspots and other features are controlled by the VR file
Java	Normally no user-intervention required Generally file format independent Lots of different viewers available	Slower Some people don't have Java Memory limitations in some web browsers hotspots and other features must be coded in HTML

Make your panoramas available in more than one way.

and/or Just use HTML ...

Some common mistakes

• Remember that once on the web the filename is case sensitive

• Remember to check the size of your panorama.

• Wrong path.

• Do not set the plugin or applet to have a vertical size that is greater than that of the actual image. Doing so will cause the image to be scaled up and the image will look poor quality

• Loading a large image into a Java viewer may result in an 'out of memory' error in some web browsers. Avoid using images larger than 500,000 pixels.

Helper to create the code : PAGEotX or 0-360 Form