Thumbnail scrolling

[Jmondo]

Hi, has anyone figured out a way to make the pano thumbnails glide better when scrolled? Still hoping this bug gets fixed, but wondering if maybe a css solution has been discovered.

[Hopki]

Hi,
Can you give an example of what you mean by glide better?
Do you have any examples?
Regards,
Hopki

[Jmondo]

Hi Hopki,

Since pano v6, the thumbnail scrolling stops dead as soon as your fingers stop moving. Prior to pano v6, the thumbnail scroll bar had "momentum" scrolling, meaning the thumbnails would continue to move, depending on how fast you scrolled. Here's an old article from 2010 describing what I mean: https://tinyurl.com/wsgbug9

Here is my site for reference...please look on a mobile phone so that the thumbnails require horizontal scrolling: www.doverhouse10a.com

This was a follow up to another thread I started here: https://tinyurl.com/ryusjy4 - in this thread is a screen-grab video demonstrating the before/after scrolling change.

I think this is an important UX issue that can make a site feel dated - If there is a javascript "quick fix" I would greatly appreciate any advice.

Best,
Jesse

[Hopki]

Hi Jesse,
OK got it. I'll write up a bug report.
Regards,
Hopki

[Jmondo]

Thanks Hopki, in the meantime I’ll try to solve with JavaScript, though I keep coming up empty.

Unfortunately I don’t see the programmers addressing this anytime soon, as I recall you entered this bug last May but it didn’t make it into the 6.1.2 update. Fingers crossed.

Best,
Jesse

[Jmondo]

Hi Hopki, checking in to see if there has been a fix to the thumbnail scrolling movement. It seems like a minor detail, but I think it's a pretty important user experience issue. Scrolling through thumbnails with a choppy movement makes the site feel outdated, which is a shame because Pan2vr is such a powerful program. The best analogy I can come up with is that It's like driving a new porche with manual roll-up windows.

Any updates would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jesse

[k.ary.n]

Hi, Jesse.

Have you updated lately? This was fixed in version 6.1.3...
https://ggnome.com/doc/whats-new/#pano2vr-613

[Jmondo]

Hi, thanks for letting me know. I don't get update notices even though the box is checked in my preferences. It's also unclear how to update without being charged. Can you give me any tips? I don't seem to be recognized in the system.

[Jmondo]

Hi Karyn, I figured out how to update, thanks. I had to open the program on its own, without clicking on a project to open it.

I republished my project and uploaded it. The thumbnails now have inertia, but it’s very slight. It also doesn’t have a rubberband effect when you get to the end - it just stops abruptly. I Wish it could act the same way a Standard text box scrolls.

Is there any way to control this inside the skin with code?

Here’s the republished site for reference:
https://the360listing.com/apt5G/

Thanks again,
Jesse

[360Texas]

[edit note]
I fixed the link. - Great tour by the way.

[Jmondo]

Thanks!

[Branigan]

Hi Karyn, I figured out how to update, thanks. I had to open the program on its own, without clicking on a project to open it.

I republished my project and uploaded it. The thumbnails now have inertia, but it’s very slight. It also doesn’t have a rubberband effect when you get to the end - it just stops abruptly. I Wish it could act the same way a Standard text box scrolls.

Is there any way to control this inside the skin with code?

Here’s the republished site for reference:
https://the360listing.com/apt5G/

Thanks again,
Jesse

Just to let you know: using Firefox 78.0.2 on a PC there are no scrolling thumbnails at all. Just a row of them at the bottom of the screen, stuck to the left-hand side and even changing the width of the browser does not make them scrollable; it just cuts off the right side of the row. There is no Gyroscope On/Off icon, as mentioned in the Site Key, nor could I find any red Information Hotspots.

Also, I thought my images were soft, but yours are much softer. Have you considered changing the Interpolation Filter - as I only just discovered it defaults to Mitchell (quite soft) - to Lancsoz3?

But, got to say: really nice tour and I'm nicking the startup navigation info box idea, as I've used a text box at the start to explain how to navigate and something like your icons would look much nicer.
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L-Filter.jpg (61.26 KiB) Viewed 3667 times

[Jmondo]

Hi Branigan,

Thanks for the feedback, I love being able to improve my work. I should have been more specific that while the issue is present on desktop, it's more relevant on a mobile device. Please have a look on one and let me know what you think.

Re: Firefox browser, are you sure the thumbnails don't scroll after you've narrowed the browser? While it looks cut off on the right side, they still scroll on my end. If you don't mind, please take a second look and let me know. I'm an apple guy and don't get to test on PCs very often.

Also, thanks for reminding me about the gyro reference in the site key. There's supposed to be a "mobile only" tag on desktop experience, I don't know why it disappeared. I will add back - much appreciated.

As for the info hotspots, you didn't find any info hotspots because that particular tour didn't have any. I should have a solution for tours that don't have info hotspots.

Lastly, I'm not sure what you mean by "soft" images, but I will certainly play around with the interpolation filter and see how it effects my images.

Thanks again for your feedback. Happy to return the favor if you'd like to share a link. And glad you like the intro icons, feel free to take the idea. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator so I make all my own icons. That's a never-ending situation for me, always playing around with them.

Best,
Jesse

[Branigan]

OK, a mistake by me: I'd only viewed on a desktop and had made the mistake of assuming that narrowing the browser to mobile size would trigger the mobile settings - as it does on my website - but forgot about needing on touch/is mobile etc.

The info popup tells you what to do on mobile, although the 'X' in the corner does not work, only pressing Start Exploring does.

Tiny aside: Could having a capital letter (apt5G) in the name cause issues with any browser? Capitals don't "really exist" in web addresses, although sometimes Unix does take note of them and typing in 'apt5g' gets 'corrected' to 'apt5G' by your website, which is a little non-standard. As an example, I had my files called things like 'Location.xml' and these worked when tested locally, but refused to work on my website, which is apparently forcing everything to lowercase. Changing to 'location.xml' fixed that. Your website is doing the opposite and forcing an uppercase letter change. No idea how some browsers might react to that.

On a mobile the gyro info is there, relevant, appears and works; although movement is a little jittery when rotating the (or 'my', anyway) phone. If I rotate perfectly smoothly - in fact I tried rotating my chair so I didn't move in any other way - it still manages to jiggle up and down very slightly as well as rotate. Could be the phone, but based on experience with jiggling Hotspots, my suspicion would fall on Pano2Vr's maths or oversensitivity first. Also, when I rotate manually with a finger, as it's almost impossible to do so perfectly horizontally, when I release the screen, after about a second it skips to where the gyro says it should be. This can be disconcerting. Possibly have a slow correction back to the gyro position like the Horizon correction does in Autorotate? I set that to 0.1

Or perhaps consider auto-toggling the gyro off once people start doing it manually and show the little gyro instruction popup? That's especially relevant when the phone is held at an angle, as it keeps on skipping back to looking at the floor. Or is there a way to realise that and 'recalibrate' the gyro to the angle the phone is held at? Like if they drag the image down because they're holding the phone at an angle and don't want to look at the floor; then make that the 'new horizon'? Not sure what the best option is there really, as I don't use the gyro option at all. Possibly the auto-toggle off is 'least work'?

The thumbnails do scroll on mobile, although there is no obvious indication that they should (some tall, narrow arrows left and right might hint it?) and they scroll at twice the speed of my thumb's movement. I had a problem figuring out how they work, because the room only changes when you release the thumbnail i.e. you can hold one for 5 seconds and nothing will happen, then it will change on release. Although if you scroll and release then it won't change, and you have to press and release a new thumbnail to change. But, if you scroll left, then right and end up with your thumb still on the original thumbnail when it will change to the room. No idea how much of this is 'built in' to the scrolling mechanism, or what is a design choice. Again a problem I don't have as I'm using Lite and made my own custom navigation buttons.

On mobile your navigation arrows are quite small and neat and perhaps slightly blend into the background in a few locations. Think old eyes on a small phone sceen... You probably don't want anything too outlandish - less is more, after all - but if they pulsed or bounced very slightly and slowly they'd stand out and also hide the auto-jiggling movement caused by the lumpy maths when the screen rotates and they lag behind it by a few pixels.

Almost lastly: the text on the thumbnails is fairly small (quite small on desktop too) and (again) tricky to read with my eyes, even with reading glasses; and my phone has a 6.53" screen. Is there a way to write it larger when on mobile (also slightly larger on Desktop)? It will obscure more of the thumbnails, but at that size it's hard to see what they are anyway and I'd use the name as more of a selector than the image, as they're semi-darkened and a little hard to make out.

Yes I'm sure about non-scrolling on the desktop. Here's the image. There is no need to scroll here, but if I narrow the browser (or if you had more rooms?) they still don't scroll. If nothing else: they aren't central.

Edit: One last thing: Is it intentional that your diagonal 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' arrows don't look like the others?
They're not so different that they convey very different information. Perhaps something like the 'line' part looking like little stairs would make them stand out more?
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stairs.jpg (20.27 KiB) Viewed 3629 times

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All the best.
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Yes-I'm-sure.jpg (380.9 KiB) Viewed 3642 times

[Jmondo]

Thanks for the additional feedback! Very much appreciated...

You touched upon two things that I have spent much time trying to communicate to the company. I have two other chains dedicated to (1)jittery movement, and (2)the snapping gyro movement, which I agree is disconcerting. In my gyro post I used krpano's functionality as a good example, where the gyro movement doesn't snap to the horizon, it just picks up were the finger left off. Much better experience, and I wish that could be fixed. I'm also at a loss for the jitteriness, I wish there was a solution. Do you know (or anybody reading this) of a way to at least make the snapback slower?

I use capitol letters more for marketing purposes, when it makes a URL more legible and easier to process/remember, knowing it doesn't matter if someone uses caps or not. I don't usually add that to the actual URL, not sure why I did - I will fix just in case, thanks for the tip.

Can you explain how you get your thumbnails to move slower? I didn't think that was something I could control. Older versions of pano2vr didn't have this problem...the thumbnails moved smoothly and had a rubber band effect at the end. I don't know why this changed in v6.

The upstairs icons are intentionally different, though perhaps too subtle? I like the stair line detail you suggested, I will play around with that. Thanks!

The "X" works on my end, I don't know why it doesn't work for you. Also, the thumbnails scroll for me on desktop when the browser is narrowed. I wish there was a more universal browser experience, there are just too many variables - it's exhausting.

Thanks again for all of your feedback!

Best,
Jesse