Tooltips and smart scale plugins

Two more open source plugins: long-awaited ToolTips and SmartScale plugin.

tooltips example


tooltips.swf, tooltips.fla (source).

smartscale.swf, smartscale.fla (source).

ToolTips plugin

ToolTips plugin is very simple: add alt tag to all hotspots you want to see the tooltips:

<spot id="left" alt="move left" static="1" align="BC" salign="BC" staticX="-225.5" staticY="-5" url="images/black_l.png" /> <spot id="right" alt="move right" static="1" align="BC" salign="BC" staticX="-150.5" staticY="-5" url="images/black_r.png" />
ToolTips plugin searches and shows alt tags using nice yellow box. That’s all, nice and easy.

So alt tag is a part of Hotspots code, you can change it dynamically, I’m using in example above:

onEnterFullscreen="full.alt=exit fullscreen" onExitFullscreen="full.alt=enter ullscreen"
This code is changing the tip for fullscreen button depends on the stage state.

SmartScale plugin

SmartScale works with hotspots too. It searches tags with smartStale=”1″ attribute and changes the scale and positions of navigation buttons depends on the screen width (good for flexible windows). This functionality cannot be done using Hotspots script so it doesn’t support conditions. But some Actionscript in the plugin did the trick.

Linear scaling looks a little inaccurate (too big buttons if your screen is really wide), so I added an additional scale mode in SmartScale plugin: it reduces the size of buttons only if the width is less than 800. It prevents missing buttons if your screen is small, but it do not scale the buttons more than 100%. Check the second example.

This second scale mode is switching on by additional parameter in XML:

<smartscale> mode=reduce </smartscale>

Both examples are good if you want to create your own plugin to work with Flash Panorama Player hotspots.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Flash, Flash Panorama Player. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

36 Comments so far

  1. Now I hope to see an avalanche of plugins for FPP! And even more if you release the API docs. ;) The Smartscale plugin is interesting. If I’m thinking about it a little, it’s quite great! Solves some nasty issues about interface design…

  2. Hi Denis,

    Very nice Tooltips.
    For hotspots (not static), I suggest to add the following code under the line 34:

    hotspots.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, doOut, false, 0, true);

    Congratulations and thanks!

  3. Thanks for the tooltips- you’re always one step ahead of me. I was about to request that feature!

    I noticed a glitch with the tooltip not fading after a loadpano action (this is with a non static hotspot, box object, distorted). The toolip persists even after the second pano is loaded. This doesn’t happen if I move the mouse away from the hotspot before the second pano finishes loading. I see this when viewing offline with both Safari and Firefox.

    Once it occurs, it will disappear only if I mouse over another hotspot (static or non-static) in the new pano.

  4. I should have tried Ricardo’s suggestion first. Yes! this cured the problem. Thanks.

  5. Hey,

    I was googling for blank screens loading for a flash movie, can you let me know what the bug was and how you fixed it?

    If you could email me that would be great, as Im ahving a similar prob!

    Toni x

  6. alot fo people have created the panorana.

    The thing I was looking for was that when I “zoomed in” I want to be able to look around like I had move a couple of steps forward, not just scaled up the graphics.

  7. Is there a problem with the latest Adobe Flash plugin? none of my Flash produced panoramas seem to work anymore after installing it…

    Michael

  8. It seems that flashpanoplayer had no update for a long time,is it stopped develop?

  9. To vrp: not at all.

    The current version utilizes the main panorama funstions. Thousands of site are using this version.

    FPP API allows to build new simple extensions, so now you can find new updates for Flash Panorama Player outside this site. I want to mention this site especially: http://flashpanos.com/ Great job, guys!

    Now I’m accumulating the material for the next big update.
    Let’s see what am I woking at (have alpha/beta status):
    1. Flash Component for Adobe Flash CS3.
    2. AIR application as GUI for FPP.
    3. New Hotspots (makes possible interactive swf application instead of faces images).
    4. Fisheye panoramas.
    5. Video panoramas.
    6. Extended FPP SDK.
    7. Single SWF file compiler for FPP.

    And last couple of months I taked participation in some custom projects based on FPP. So, guys, forgive me for temporary silence, I was busy a little. But I’ve never stop working on new FPP features because it is my favourite project. :)

    Also, I’m waiting with impatiently for Adobe Flash 10. It will be really great step for Flash panoramas. The update to new Flash version will really easy for FPP’s customers. ;)

  10. Friends, I bought the FPP but the package sent to not filed an executable to install the program on my computer Apple. Someone help me?
    Edson@edsonchagas.com

  11. Hi

    I added a FlashPanorama to http://www.stonesailing.org.uk - which works fine .. but I can’t get tooltips to work.
    As far as I can see I’ve followed your instructions and I’ve placed the swfs in a folder /files on the site. The following is part of the implemented code:

    Any thoughts please?

  12. I started using the panorama player at work recently and want to know if this program is still
    being maintained. I havent seen anything new since this tooltips plugin.
    Thank You

  13. The tooltips plugin seems to work fine - except:

    When you use national characters in the “alt=” field (above 0×7F) there seems to be a problem - at least when using ISO 8859-1 encoding. These characters just don’t show at all. And you can’t use HTML encoding (&auml;) either.

    I havn’t tried UTF-8 encoding, but none of my other HTML pages use it, so…

    Any bright ideas?

  14. Chris (and others).

    FPP is still being maintained and a new version is expected to be released soon.

    The blog is not very active, but you should check the forums for updates and answers to your questions and everything else related to the player.

    The forums are found here: http://flashpanoramas.com/forum/

    Hope this helps.

    Trausti

  15. HI. I`ve just buy the FPP and here are some bugs that I`ve met with:
    not working externalTest.html. It shows the pano, but I could not start to rotate panorama using buttons.
    preview_pano.html - it shows the preview of panoramas, but on the clicks nothing happens
    bw_preview_detection.html - it is not working at all on my machine

    The tooltip plugin do not shows russian letters in tips.

    I`m using opera browser it it helps you to fix this troubles

    all other exemples are working properly.

    That`s it.

    FPP helps me a lot but it takes time to understand how it works.. Hope sometimes it gets users-friendly interface, that would be very important step!

  16. Hi!

    Is there a way to display ISO-8859-2 characters (like: ä, č, ď, ť, ž) in the tooltips?
    I’ve tried to use ä instead of “ä”, but it displayed white space only.

    Thanx

    Peter

  17. Sorry, it shold be:

    “I’ve tried to use ä instead of “ä”, but it displayed white space only.”

  18. simply i’ve tried tu use HTML entity instead of character “ä” (the entity was parsed as the actual character in my previous posts)

  19. the toolpis doesnt works on my pda.why?
    windows mobile 5

  20. my website use tooltips and works correctly.looks
    http://www.lesalmabarozes.com/

    explain your probleme

  21. i use too on :
    http://www.sortir-dakar.com

    and tooltips works perfectly.

    contact me for resolve your problem hervé.if i can help you ,i do .

    bye

  22. Great plugins, this kind of thing brings food on the table by saving us time and making life easier. Thanks a lot for sharing, love the plugins, great food for though to see everything that is developed!

  23. Hi,

    I was wondering if there was someone out there who could help..I am using tool tips quite successfully but I have encountered a problem. I need to italicise the scientific names in my alt tag but can’t work out how to do this (I can italicise the whole alt tag but not just a few words).

    Is there a way to achieve this?

    Thanks.

  24. i cant arrived to put a scale effect on my virtual tour. someone can help me?

  25. go on my website http://www.sortir-rennes.com
    on this website ,you can see some virtual tour, copy the xml and look after how you can integrated in yours website the xml

  26. thank a lot errika

  27. have you got an exemple of your xml for integrated this code please

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  32. Hmm…I’m not sure if this works for me. It would appreat the script is executed when I shut down, not when I log in.

    Also another question: the script I want to roon requires root access. Do I need to do anything sepcial?

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