How do I properly insert apple quicktime mov into my website with a"loading percentage" guage?

[Roveer]

I was given a 360 degree panarama of a job we recently did and wanted
to put it into our website. I quickly realized that I did not want
this to load by default as it's 4 megs in total. As a result I've
created a "picture" which users can click on to then pop another page
which will load the .mov and give them 360 degree view. I did this by
inserting a picture, then putting a hyperlink to the .mov with "new
page". It works but has some sortcummings. Hopefully you can help.

1. I'd like to provide some instructions on the "new page pop" on how
to scroll around the quicktime images (click drage mouse etc), but the
"new page" just gives me a blank page with the .mov. I'm guessing I
have to create a new page with my text (instructions) and the .mov?
How exactly do I do this? Oh, FP 2003.

2. Since this file is a little large (and I do not have any way to
make it smaller, not my file). I want to create a progress bar or
loading bar to let the slower users know where they stand. How do I
do this?

I guess that's it. It works well on most of my computers right now,
but I noticed on my laptop at home it did not work and I'm not sure
why. That's why I want these features so I can see where I stand.

Thanks,

Roveer

 

[Andrew Murray]

I don't believe you need such a thing as the download progress bar idea.
Browsers have this built in. If you don't want the MOV file to be
displayed directly on the web page and to play in the QuickTime
player/plug-in, you can "Zip" it into a compressed folder and make the
hyperlink to the zip file

In this way the user's browser will prompt to download the folder and all
the user does is save it to their hard drive, and decompress the file and
extract the file and open it in Quicktime. The browser's download dialogue
will (depending on the browser) give you, any one or a combination of:

1) progress bar of some sort
2) estimated download time remaining (would be influenced by the users
connection, line quality, congestion to your server etc)
3) countdown of the file size being downloaded/remaining (how this displays
depends on the browser)
4) connection/transfer rate (in kbps) or similar information.

In FrontPage you create a simple, standard hyperlink to the ZIP file - and
publish both the HTML page and the zip folder to your server. This is the
simplest method.

Creating a download progress bar to effectively recreate what the browser
already does for you requires programming/scripting and would not be the
easiest task by any means.

Regarding the instructions, it sounds like you're linking directly to the QT
file. What you need to do is open a fresh page, and insert the QT file into
that page, then make the link to the HTML page, not direct to the mov file.
Without seeing the site I can't suggest anything here for sure.

What errors did you get - when it didn't work on the laptop.....what type of
connection do you have, and have you installed the Quicktime player and the
component required for the panorama feature? I think you need an extra
plug-in for Quicktime Player to play those 3-D type panorama displays
because they are not standard QT movies (video).

 

[Roveer]

I don't believe you need such a thing as the download progress bar idea.
Browsers have this built in.   If you don't want the MOV file to be
displayed directly on the web page and to play in the QuickTime
player/plug-in, you can "Zip" it into a compressed folder and make the
hyperlink to the zip file

In this way the user's browser will prompt to download the folder and all
the user does is save it to their hard drive, and decompress the file and
extract the file and open it in Quicktime.  The browser's download dialogue
will (depending on the browser) give you, any one or a combination of:

1) progress bar of some sort
2) estimated download time remaining  (would be influenced by the users
connection, line quality, congestion to your server etc)
3) countdown of the file size being downloaded/remaining (how this displays
depends on the browser)
4) connection/transfer rate (in kbps) or similar information.

In FrontPage you create a simple, standard hyperlink to the ZIP file - and
publish both the HTML page and the zip folder to your server.  This is the
simplest method.

Creating a download progress bar to effectively recreate what the browser
already does for you requires programming/scripting and would not be the
easiest task by any means.

Regarding the instructions, it sounds like you're linking directly to theQT
file.  What you need to do is open a fresh page, and insert the QT fileinto
that page, then make the link to the HTML page, not direct to the mov file.
Without seeing the site I can't suggest anything here for sure.

What errors did you get - when it didn't work on the laptop.....what typeof
connection do you have, and have you installed the Quicktime player and the
component required for the panorama feature?  I think you need an extra
plug-in for Quicktime Player to play those 3-D type panorama displays
because they are not standard QT movies (video).









- Show quoted text -

I think I may have explained what I wanted to do poorly. When I click
on the picture which hyperlinks to the quicktime 360 degree mov file
it pops open a new window (which is what I want) but then sits there
for the period of time it takes to download the 4mb file. On my
connection that only takes few seconds, but on others it could take
few minutes. I want a gauge so that users know that something is
happening during that time and that things are progressing. I'm not
just creating a link to download a file (which would give you a
browser gauge). The second thing I wanted to accomplish was to give
scrolling instructions for quicktime 360 in the "new window" that pops
up. Right now since I'm using "new window" as my "target frame" all
I'm getting is a new window clean. What I want is a new window that I
can place text into (with the QT screen as well) to let people know
how to navigate around the QT 360 picture. I'll put it up on a test
site and provide a link so everyone can see what I'm talking about.

Roveer

 

[Andrew Murray]

I think I may have explained what I wanted to do poorly. When I click
on the picture which hyperlinks to the quicktime 360 degree mov file
it pops open a new window (which is what I want) but then sits there
for the period of time it takes to download the 4mb file. On my
connection that only takes few seconds, but on others it could take
few minutes. I want a gauge so that users know that something is
happening during that time and that things are progressing. I'm not
just creating a link to download a file (which would give you a
browser gauge). The second thing I wanted to accomplish was to give
scrolling instructions for quicktime 360 in the "new window" that pops
up. Right now since I'm using "new window" as my "target frame" all
I'm getting is a new window clean. What I want is a new window that I
can place text into (with the QT screen as well) to let people know
how to navigate around the QT 360 picture. I'll put it up on a test
site and provide a link so everyone can see what I'm talking about.

Roveer

I now realise what you meant, but my answer focused on if the user wanted to
manually download the file and view it "offline" and I took your question to
mean "what is the alternative if the user doesn't want to stare at a blank
screen while the file downloads...."

Anyway, on doing a Google I found these results searching on "download
progress bar script"
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=d...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

The google results present a variety of alternatives such as Javascript. -
your users would need javascript turned on in the browser. Alternatively
there are PHP or ASP scripts (your server would need to support either of
these).

To the second part of your question:
To place your help text in the same screen as the movie, you first need to
create a new page and insert the MOV file into it - I think what you're
doing currently is simply linking to the file directly, which means there is
no real web page there.

Please read this MSKB article about inserting a MOV file in Frontpage:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272574 - (the article says it is for FP
2000, but I expect it will work in the version you use).

Once you place the QT file in a page, you can add the help text (you said
"scrolling text" so maybe you can insert that into an iFrame - which means
you need a separate file e.g. called "help.html" and then you insert an
Iframe into the movie's page (call the movie's page "movie.html" for
example)

A look at the site would be helpful, so please post the link.