• Hi,

    the next release - krpano Version 1.16 - is ready!
    I hope you will enjoy it! All details about the new version below.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

    What has changed in 1.16?

    First the obvious news - there is a new version numbering scheme - instead of 1.0.8.16, the new version number is just 1.16. From now on every new krpano release will get a new and unique version number. This change was made to avoid version-differences just by the build-date as in some versions before. So the next version numbers will be, depending on the amount of changes, probably either 1.16.1, 1.17 or 2.0.

    The focus in the last developments was again on the HTML5 version. The HTML5 viewer has been extended and optimized in several ways. Many of previously Flash-only features are now also available in HTML5. But beside of HTML5, also the Flash viewer, the Embedding-Script, the Tools, the Examples and the Skins/Templates have been extended and updated. Here now listings about the most important changes:

    HTML5 - WebGL support

    One important new feature in the krpano HTML5 viewer is the new WebGL support. WebGL is a dedicated API for rendering 3D graphics in the browsers and therefore much better qualified and efficient than CSS-3D for rendering panoramic images. All common desktop browsers (except IE10) and also some mobile browsers are already supporting WebGL very well. So the krpano viewer will preferably try to use WebGL instead of CSS-3D when possible.

    With WebGL it's possible to support the krpano Fisheye-, Stereographic- (Little-Planet) and Pannini-projections also in HTML5. And with the hardware-accelerated WebGL rendering, this is typically faster and smoother and has better image quality than in Flash.

    Another nice WebGL feature is Mipmapping - with mipmapping there will be less aliasing and shimmering. Observable typically when zoomed-out to a less than 1:1 pixel-view. By default mipmapping will be used automatically, but only when the size of the cube-face image is a 'power-of-two' size (e.g. 1024, 2048, 4096). Optionally it's also possible to force its usage or to disable it.

    WebGL - Mipmapping - Compare Screenshots:


    For testing these WebGL features, try the Corfu Tour Example (preferably with Chrome or Firefox). WebGL and mipmapping are used there by default and different projections are available via the right-click contextmenu.

    New Contextmenu - for Flash and HTML5

    There is a new contextmenu in krpano - instead of using the native Flashplayer one, a 'custom-drawn' one will be used now. This makes it possible to let it look and work the same in Flash and HTML5 and it avoids some absurd Flashplayer limitations. That means with it the right-click Fullscreen-option is back again.
    The new contextmenu allows customizing (different fonts, colors, images) via simple BB-code-formated html code, and shows informations about the krpano version and the system (Browser or Flashplayer version) - see contextmenu.versioninfo.

    Contextmenu HTML5 / Flash Screenshots:


    Improved HTML5 support

    Several previously Flash-only krpano features are now supported in HTML5 too: Additionally the HTML5 viewer has a new stagescale setting - this setting reports and controls the global krpano scaling. With it the whole layout can be scaled at once. Its initial value depends on the device and the browser, but it can be also changed dynamically at any time.
    Here a demo for changing it dynamically: Stagescale Testing Example.

    HTML5 - Better device support

    There were a lot of smaller and bigger changes to improve the cross-browser and multiple-device support - some news here are:
    • Internet Explorer 10 / Windows 8 Touch Events support.
    • Touch Events also for Desktop - Mouse and Touch can be used at the same time.
    • Improved Android support
      • More stable and faster rendering in Android-stock / WebView-based browsers.
      • Better Distorted Hotspots clickability.
      • Android Chrome support (correct scaling and better CSS-3D rendering).
      • Android Firefox support (correct scaling).
      • Android Opera(Webkit) support.
    • Improved CSS-3D rendering for Chrome, IE10, iOS 6 (iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 4) and Android WebView-based browsers.
    • BlackBerry support.
    • More detailed informations about the current device/browser via the device object and the xml devices attribute.

    Flash Viewer

    The krpano Flash viewer has been slightly improved too:
    • The internal swf format was updated and improved in several ways.
    • The initial multi-resolution loading is faster - that means when starting to load, the viewer will automatically use much more download requests to get the first view ready as fast as possible. Later the viewer will automatically switch back to fewer download requests to have a more responsive multi-resolution loading, which can quickly react to view changes.
    • There is the new contextmenu.
    • The 'local-only' demo-limitation has been removed.

    Embedding Script

    The krpano embedding script (the swfkrpano.js) has been completely rewritten. The new script code is smaller and much better and it doesn't include or use the old SWFObject 1.5 code anymore. Some new features are:
    • Improved HTML5-support detection.
    • New callback functions - onready and onerror. They can be used to get informed when the embedding is done (or has failed) and the viewer is ready for interacting with Javascript.
    • The html5=only setting for HTML5-only usage cases. This would be the correct option when only HTML5 should be used - never use html5=always for this case!
    • The new consolelog setting for using the browsers Javascript console for krpano trace logging.
    • And the removepano(id) function for correctly removing the krpano viewer from the html page - here demo: Add and remove panos via Javascript.

    XML Interface

    The krpano XML Interface also provides new features and possibilities:
    • New layout possibilities - when using negative sizes for width/height - then the resulting size will be the size of the parent-element minus the given size. This can be very helpful when using automatic resizing parent elements with percent sizes together with children elements that should have constant padding sizes.
    • There are new delayedcall() and stopdelayedcall() actions - to start and optionally also stop a delayedcall.
    • The escape() and unescape() actions can be helpful when working with external data or special characters.
    • Support for parameters (%0,%1,...) also for 'inline-actions' - these are actions / action-codes that are stored in normal variables/attributes.
    • The scale9grid setting can now be used together with the crop setting. This makes it possible to use only a few image files (often also called spritesheets) for all user-interface images. The advantage of that is that the loading of one bigger file is faster than the loading of many small files.
    • The asyncloop() action has a new additional 'doneactions' parameter for to call code when the looping is done.
    • The krpano actions parsing and execution is faster (in some cases up to 500%).

    Plugins


    Tools

    • All krpano tools were updated to support the new HTML5 viewer file-format the new HTML5 viewer features (License-Protection, Domain-Limitations, Expire-Dates, Private-Encrypted-Files, Branding-Free-License).
    • The Mac OSX and Linux versions were optimized in the their memory usage.
    • And there are additional config settings for further customizing.

    Config Settings / Templates / Skins

    • The HTML5 viewer will be used by default now (by html5=prefer) in the 'normal' droplets.
    • The .html templates were extended with IE10-specific settings (x-ua-compatible and -ms-viewport).
    • New features and settings for the default virtual-tour-skin:
      • thumbs_text - Add the text to the thumbnails.
      • thumbs_dragging - Enable/disable the dragging control for the thumbnails.
      • thumbs_onhoverscrolling - Enable/disable an automatic onhover-scrolling control for the thumbnails.
      • thumbs_scrollbuttons - Show thumbnail left/right scroll-buttons.
      • thumbs_scrollindicator - Show a scroll-indicator for the thumbnails.

    Smaller Filesizes

    Due new internal data structures, optimized code and more efficients compression methods, the krpano viewer files are significantly smaller now. This is good for faster download and startup times and makes space for additional features in newer versions. Without these changes, the new krpanoiphone.js file, which contains a lot of new code, would be already ~145 kb large - and there is still a lot in the queue, so smaller filesizes here were also an important matter.
    FileVersion 1.0.8.15Version 1.16Smaller size ratioFile Description
    swfkrpano.js 13 kb 8 kb~60 %krpano Embedding Script
    krpano.swf 118 kb94 kb~80 %krpano Flash Viewer
    krpanoiphone.js113 kb80 kb~70 %krpano HTML5 Viewer

    Updated Documentation

    The documentation pages were updated:

    Other Changes / Release Notes

    For a detailed listing about all news, changes and fixes, please see here:
    Release Notes - krpano 1.16


  • Hi,

    Still no multi-res for HTML5?

    Not yet, but hopefully soon.


    What do we need to upgrade our tours so it's compatible with the latest version?
    After upgrading only hotspots show. No plugins. No warnings/errors thrown.

    Old tours should be still compatible of course (at least in the in the most cases)...
    I currently can't image a case where plugin elements would be missing... but when you show me an example, I will look at it and try to find out what the problem is of course.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • Congratulations Klaus! very good work!

    I would like some improvements in the include tag! at least to accept the variables that are passed during the viewer embed

    Regards

  • Hi,

    What do we need to upgrade our tours so it's compatible with the latest version?
    After upgrading only hotspots show. No plugins. No warnings/errors thrown.

    PM Sent.

    Thanks for the example!

    I have to say this is unfortunately a 'small' bug in the Flash viewer - the problem happens when the onstart attribute of a <scene> contains '=' or '&' characters. There will be an update/fix in the next days.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

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