New viewer question

On the beta version it is full browser and not full screen. Will this full browser version be available say as a non-branded version? I like this better than full screen.
I also posted this on the forum but no answer!

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Permalink Reply by Jerry R Bridges on February 16, 2009 at 10:18am
Surely someone has an answer to this question, how about it Alan?
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on February 16, 2009 at 12:06pm
Hey Jerry-

The current plan is to offer the new player as a drop-in replacement for the current photo/pano/slideshow viewer.

However, the new player will be "widgetizable" meaning you will be able to easily embed it on any web page.

We hadn't really considering using it as "full browser" the way the beta is currently working, mostly because people want to have all of the links and such as well, which aren't in the new player at this time. We could of course consider this for the future.

Alan
Permalink Reply by Jerry R Bridges on February 16, 2009 at 12:19pm
Thanks for the reply Alan. Maybe the other members could comment on whether they would like the option to publish the "full browser" view.
When will the new viewer be available?
I visited my son this past weekend in FL. He is using a 40" LED TV as a monitor and the beta version looked great even in full screen. My daughter-in-law loved it and said that was the way to shop for a house.
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on February 16, 2009 at 12:25pm
Wow, it's great to hear that kind of feedback.

I can't say for certain when it'll be finished, but we are working as fast as possible. We are doing some things that haven't really been done before in order to be able to make the transitions great (Ken Burns effect between panos and stills) and suitable for conversion to video, so that is taking some time to get right.

We will continue to post beta updates and hope to have a better timeline soon.

Alan
Permalink Reply by Jerry R Bridges on February 16, 2009 at 12:29pm
Thanks Alan. One question, when I viewed it on the 40" monitor the beta version had the newer menu at the bottom. But now that I'm home on my computer it is showing the older version menu. Why the difference?
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on February 16, 2009 at 12:43pm
Probably it's cached in your browser cache. We put 1 month expirations on that content. If you clear your browser cache it should work.

Or, load this URL directly and hit refresh. The player won't work here, but it'll update the version in your browser cache. Then go look at a tour again.

http://www.tourbuzz.net/www/tourplayer.swf


Alan
Permalink Reply by BayAreaVR.com on February 17, 2009 at 12:22am
Any chance of seeing some screenshots of the new player?

I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have up your sleeve :)

I hope business is good (for everyone!).

Take care,

Eli
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on February 17, 2009 at 1:10am
The new player is available "live" as we continue work on it. We just updated it last week, and you can view your own tours in the new player under the "View Tour" tab on any tour. There's a link to the beta player.

Alternatively, here's a link to one of our demo tours with the beta player: http://tours.allaboutvirtualtours.com/public/vtour/beta/2264

Alan
Permalink Reply by Chris Thomas on February 18, 2009 at 10:29pm
I'm kind of with Eli on this one. I know you guys are hard at work, and really look forward to seeing the new tour. However, you've mentioned that the new viewer is going to be a swap-out for the existing viewer area. Does that mean the thumbnail gallery and branding area will remain the same as well? Honestly that is the biggest complaint that I get from potential clients. I have 4 agents that I'm shooting for right now that have chosen to stay with the Tourfactory template and just have me send me the photos to them via email or a download link to a zip on my server.

Is there a chance that we can see some mock-ups of the new tour and perhaps vote on some new ones. I sent you all a real rough draft of a new design to dress up the current layout several weeks ago. It's in no way great but if you're going to keep the layout the same and just change the viewer area I'm not as excited as I once was.

Not to try to throw all this at your guys at once, but is there a way you can have the panos/vrs not rotate until they're completely loaded. When I first started with you guys, your ptviewer implementation was in my opinion great because of the quality and the fact that it didn't start to rotate until the whole pano was loaded. Also, can there be a way to default the pano to stop turning when someone grabs it? When I look at some of the panos and want to stop for a minute, I have to manually hold the pano still or I have to toggle the rotation at the bottom. With the older ptviewer you had it built in to stop as soon as someone grabbed the image and then 5-10 seconds later it continued rotating.

Honestly I don't want to nitpick, those are just my thoughts.
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on February 18, 2009 at 10:35pm
Chris-

Thanks for the note.

The plan to swap out just the player is only the initial plan. We aren't married to it, and we are also investigating the idea of having multiple layouts available as well, so we could just make the "full browser player" one option, along with the current one.

However, the first "release" version of the new player won't have any branding info or additional links, so no one would probably accept it in that form anyway.

Keep the comments up, though, that's how we know what's on your minds!

BTW - I don't recall seeing a design concept from you, are you sure that we got it? Feel free to post it here as a pic.

Alan
Permalink Reply by Chris Thomas on February 19, 2009 at 11:25am
Oh I thought I sent one in an email a few weeks ago. I personally like the easy to navigate simplicity of Tourbuzz, but clients want something dressed up. All I did here is just cut/pasted the existing tour and added a few extra small things and basically tried to rearrange it in a way that works on a widescreen monitor better. I think the full browser idea for the viewer is a good idea also, but I did this several weeks ago. Here was a rough draft:

I posted a larger version in my photos.

Here is what I changed besides the obvious moving of sections:
- Added short description area under Agent's image/contact/branding.
- Removed the outline border and created a bevel and drop shadow.
- Added a small (3-5px) black edge to the border around sections. "Frames" the sections, adding seperation.
- The single strip of thumbnails does 2 things: 1) Thinner banner and consequently bigger vertical image area, and 2) is more like a timeline. I like to arrange and order my photos in the order most people view a house: Front exterior-> Entry hall-> Formal Living Room-> Den/Family Room-> Kitchen-> Dining Room-> Master Bedroom-> Master Bath-> Secondary Bedrooms-> Secondary bathrooms-> and ending with the backyard so that a loop will make it seamless with the starting Front Exterior. A timeline style seems more intuitive to a walk through to me.

In a coded web version you can have the description area on the left resize for the window. I would stress keeping the viewer window 3:2 ratio no matter what. All of us Photographers using DSLRs shoot images in 3:2 natively. Start throwing in ratios less than that like 4:5 of a non-DSLR camera, or images with slight ratio crops and you end up with a ton of dead space on the right side. The beveling will be tough to do with custom backgrounds. You might keep the bevel for a template group of colors. Custom backgrounds could follow the same layout and bordering of sections but not the bevel.

Counters:
-"Looks too much like OBEO with the thumnails at the top" - Obeo doesn't have full branding options and a description on the left side.
-"Looks too much like RTV/Tourfactory/Circlejerx with the description on the side" There are only so many places you can put a description area without having page changes. The others only have basic MLS information and not a written description. Including the MLS information in the "Info" area puts all the information at a viewers hands without cluttering the whole screen.

Honestly I don't even think this is the absolute best design but it was what I came up with quickly at the time that could be an easy recoding of the existing layout. I'd like to see what some of the other Tourbuzz members can do.
Permalink Reply by Alan Pinstein on February 19, 2009 at 11:43am
Chris-

Thanks so much for posting this, looks like you put some time into it and really thought about it!

There are some really good ideas in there.

It gets complicated technically because of our "designs" system and the expectations people have with the headers, especially those that have CUSTOM headers already.

I have been a bit disappointed by the large amounts of dead space left by most stills, so there is a lot of validity to trying to reduce the width of the image area to a ~3:2 ratio. It would also reduce edge distortion on the virtual tours caused when the pano player is excessively wide.

I typically don't like horizontal thumbnail strips because horizontal scrolling is *really* annoying. Plus, you can't see very many thumbs that way; that's why we do them the way we do now. You can see 2x as many and they scroll vertically. They are still arranged in timeline order. Plus the new player will have a horizontal thumb bar that doesn't require scrolling so it might be the best of both worlds.

Let me think about this and talk to Paul as well and get back to you.

Also I'd like to hear what other customers think of your ideas. Please comment away everyone!

Alan

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