Display problem wit XML version on Firefox

adam_071082

New member
Hello,

First of all - congratulations on a great product!

I have been working with the free version for a while now, managed to publish an xml presentation consisting of 72 images (1280-960). When viewed on Internet Explorer everything seems to be fine: images load and animation goes smoothly. However when I view the same animation in Firefox, every now and then there is a white screen flash in between consecutive images which spoils the overal animation sequence.

On the other hand, when I publish the same animation with JavaScript disabled, everything loads and plays smoothly in Firefox and the same animation takes ages to load on Internet Explorer (tried on version 7.x)


Any help solving this problem would be very much appreciated,
Peter
 

WebSupport

Active member
Hi Peter, interesting. A couple of quick questions:

- What FF version are you using for testing?
- Do you see this behavior when testing locally on your machine or remotely also?
- Are you using hot-spots?
- If possible, please send us a live link to that sample to support at webrotate360 com.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
 

adam_071082

New member
- I am using the latest version of FF
- I have noticed problem with white blinking both locally and remotely
- I have not been using hotspots yet
- Will send you a link to a test sample tomorrow
Is Spot Editor browser universal since I've also noticed that websites using your viewer take enormous time to load on IE 7. If the viewer isn't universal - is there any way to get around it?
For your information - my animation consists of 72 images with 1280x960 resolution.
 

WebSupport

Active member
SpotEditor just creates an xml file that is loaded in the same way across all browsers, the main difference being JavaScript mode enabled / disabled.

RE: IE7 - you mentioned Flash mode (JavaScript disabled) loading slow in IE7 in your first post. Some thoughts here: (1) they are using our old Flash viewer that couldn't load images asynchronously. (2) the Adobe Flash plugin in IE 7 has some issues now (3) We're discontinuing Flash support with the upcoming release in a couple of weeks and will be suggesting all users to start switching to JS-only mode with the new release. (4) As of May 2012, estimates of IE7's global market share were 1.5-5% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_7

Looking forward to your link (thanks!) - hopefully we can address this quickly!
 

adam_071082

New member
As promised here is the link to the presentation (javascript mode): http://blog.ekosiarka.eu/Prezentacje-3D ... domat.html
If you're planning to discontinue using flash with the viewer - that's absolutely fine by me. Now let's move to the issue bits:
a) I'm using Firefox ver. 17.0.1 and to elaborate on the problem - there is a multitude of white flashes before the first whole 360 rotation completes. After that the rotation goes quite smoothly but every now and then there are white flashes in between consecutive images - just as if the system loaded them over again.
b) On IE everything goes perfect but on Chrome the animation seems to be losing on speed - as if it slowed down from the set 4 rotate period to 6 (tried it on several computers with slightly different versions)
Overall, I think you have done a tremendously awesome job with the spoteditor and I'm looking to purchasing the pro version in the coming future. If we can just address the problems above and find proper solution to them, will my problems implementing and using it vanish forever :)

Just one more remark: have you tried displaying same animation on Opera as there are some issues too...
 

WebSupport

Active member
Thanks for the details - and hopefully you will be soon one of our PRO clients! :)

Regarding the flashing, looks like your web server is not configured to request browser caching for images in HTTP headers. In other words, browsers are not required to keep images cached and can follow their own rules as to when to reload an image again from the server. IE is still caching them regardless, but other browsers just follow the rules and re-download image again and again, and this delay is what's causing the white flash and sudden slowdown on Chrome. This is "expected" behavior as we can't force browsers to cache the images and have to rely on the web servers being configured to cache images on the first place (this is usually the case with most eCommerce and commercial websites / web servers).

If you can configure your web server to request Cache-Control on JPG images (you would probably want to do this anyway for your website(s) in general), the issue will be resolved I believe. Here's some info on this:
http://www.chicagostyleseo.com/2010/04/ ... your-site/

Looks like you are using Apache web server, so hopefully you have access to configure the cache headers..
 

adam_071082

New member
I have cache-controlled on jpeg and other image formats on my server and the situation stays the same. You can view the source code and find that everything has been done as suggested. Isn't the problem the speed of the animation, the size of it, image names, etc. Nothing else comes to mind at this very moment. It still works fine on IE but on other browsers is't having issues. Looking forward to any further suggestions.
 

adam_071082

New member
My point is simple: worked on Firefox ver. up to 16.0.1 - doesn't work smoothly on ver 17.0.1, works on IE, dimms on Opera.
Why don't we do it the following way: download the images from the above presentation at http://viadrus.com.pl/laddomat/ , try to make viewer from it on your server and send me a link to the page so we can both check whether is still poses problems. For you information, I've used the followinf parameters: drag speed factor: 1, rotate period: 5, box size: 640x480, everything else was left untouched.
 

WebSupport

Active member
So I see that you just added Cache-Control and Expires on this server and it didn't help. Interesting. Maybe you are right - there's something about this particular animation config/images that causes it as we don't see this flickering with other samples on latest FF or Opera. Please send us a link to a zip with a complete folder with everything for this 360 view: images / config / viewer files, etc to support at webrotate360 dot com and we will play with it :cool:
 

WebSupport

Active member
Hi, thanks for your post! The latest Opera updates changed something that causes this now. We're investigating.

This only happens when the 360 images are not cropped / sized to the viewing canvas it seems as for example these samples below will not blink in Opera until you zoom-in and start rotating via arrows. http://www.webrotate360.com/360_degree_ ... vices.html

Adam's sample doesn't use the second high-res set so his only image set consists of large images that are loaded right away and then fitted to the viewing box which is what we believe Opera doesn't like now.

So for a short-term workaround while we're fixing this in Opera, you can use both small image set and the large one for zooming in your 360 product views like in our samples, with small images sized to your viewing box on web pages.

BTW: Adam's issue in Firefox was fixed in 3.5 Beta, which you can also download here:

http://www.webrotate360.com/Blog/post/d ... v-3-5.aspx
 

linas40

New member
hmmm, I try to run from spoteditor v3.0, installed in my PC, Windows7, your configured file config.xml of sampleshoe, and it doesnt start in Opera (v. 12.15) as well as Chrome (v 26.0.1410.43), however it works fine in IE 10...
For those first two I see a loading pic only...
any ideas? :?
 

WebSupport

Active member
Opera blocks local xml loading when testing the viewer files on a local computer for security reasons. Once you copy your 360 views online or use your local web server (localhost), it will work in Opera too. Or you can remove the local security check as follows:

- Type opera:config in the browser address box.
- Navigate to User Prefs tab
- Check Allow File XMLHttpRequest
- Click Save below.
 
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