HTML button to go full-screen

[Ken]

I have implemented a navigation bar using hotspots on all the panoramas on my site http://www.lookaroundcornwall.com. Basically, it's Denis's xml file with the graphics changed. I've used smaller buttons because I didn't want them to be too intrusive and get in the way of the image.

The downside is that I'm concerned that visitors won't spot them, or even realize the image is interactive. I've put a big graphic on each pano page exorting visitors to 'Go Large!' by pressing the appropriate hotspot, but extensive user-testing among my family suggests that most users will expect the graphic itself to initiate full-screen. Is there any way to do this? i.e. have an HTML button communicate with the flashplayer to make it go fullscreen?

Similar problem here http://www.flashpanoramas.com/forum/showthread.php?t=394
But no answers :(

[izoneguy]

Nice site!

[cheathamlane]

Hey Ken:

One quick thought is to place a semi-transparent background behind the buttons, to pop them out from the panorama itself; likewise, maybe change the color of the buttons themselves?

Similar to what I've done at my site (vis a vis the FPP example for a static image preview), you can have a static message before your pano loads, giving more direct explanation to the visitor.

If you don't use that, you could have, once the pano loads, a timed screen with information, which fades out on its own or via a click from the user...

And, AFAIK, there is no way using scripting alone to make the FPP pano go fullscreen... it has to be initiated via a user action for security reasons. If I'm wrong, someone please let me know... :)

(edit)
you can see in the attached image how very visible your buttons are on the white sky... I bet adding a simple background to your button "bar" would help a lot!

[Ken]

Thanks for the suggestions Patrick. Having a preload graphic with instructions has the advantage of a quick loading page, but I'm put off by the idea of giving visitors one more thing they have to do to see the panorama. A timed screen could work, but wouldn't I need flash 5 to do that? I'm a bit hampered at the moment by only having Flash MX which I don't think i can use to interact with FPP. Your interactive presentation is a great idea and, if you don't mind, I'll be borrowing it sometime, hopefully soon. Any tips on how to implement it?
Thanks again. And thanks for the compliment izoneguy!

Ken

[Scott Witte]

I'm a bit hampered at the moment by only having Flash MX which I don't think i can use to interact with FPP.

Ken,

You don't need any version of Flash to use FPP, unless you want to modify some of the swf plugins. One beauty of FPP is that all you need to use it is a simple text editor to write the XML files that will do everything you want.

You need Flash 9 player, of course, but that is a free download.

[cheathamlane]

A timed screen could work, but wouldn't I need flash 5 to do that? I'm a bit hampered at the moment by only having Flash MX which I don't think i can use to interact with FPP. Your interactive presentation is a great idea and, if you don't mind, I'll be borrowing it sometime, hopefully soon. Any tips on how to implement it?

Hey Ken:

Like Scott says, you won't need to get into Flash to make a timed screen -- You could use the onLoad or similar events (in the XML for your FPP presentation) to, say, fade in a graphic, show the graphic for a specified duration, then fade out the graphic overlay. Reference the FPP docs ("hotspots.html#Global_object_parameters" on my machine) for the different parameters.

Thanks for the kudos -- do you mean the "auto presentation"? If you view the XML for that, you'll see it uses a similar idea to pan the panorama, pause view, then move to a new pan location Just in a hotspot script, and not "onLoad").

Cheers!