Rotating sphere

[Denebola]

Hi.... I would like to be able to have a rotating sphere on my website
that is also a clickable image map. Could someone please point in the
direction of a tutorial to assist me or explain the basics here. Thank
you.

 

[dorayme]

Hi.... I would like to be able to have a rotating sphere on my website
that is also a clickable image map. Could someone please point in the
direction of a tutorial to assist me or explain the basics here. Thank
you.

You can create a spinning sphere using animation software, the
simplest I know is GifBuilder (a Mac program, freeware). There
would be many others. Fireworks and many other graphics programs
would have these facilities. Essentially you make a whole lot of
stills and then the prgm makes them run together creating a movie
effect in an animated gif. You can make an image map (in the
html, you reference the coordinates of the bits of the picture
that will make a user go to another page or whatever. This
technology will be blind to the changing content but could be
useful in a situation where links go according to whether the
viewer chooses latitudes because latitudes happen to luckily
correspond to the y coordinates of the rectangle which is
referenced. Clear as mud? Wait till you hear the fancy doodle
dandy things Travis or Space-Girl (where the hell is she?) will
tell you about Flash!

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Hi.... I would like to be able to have a rotating sphere on my website
that is also a clickable image map. Could someone please point in the
direction of a tutorial to assist me or explain the basics here. Thank
you.

Dorayme gave you good information to make your own. You can also start
with a ready made animated gif. You might find something you like at
http://www.uselessgraphics.com/ . Check under globes and space in the
index. The owner of this huge site offers all of them free. However he
also states that they were collected from all over the web and thought
to be in public domain. Thus I would not assume that all of them are
copyright free, especially if you put them up on a commercial site.
Some image tools will allow you to read copyright information hidden in
images, if any is there. Beware of anything that is from Disney, as
they have made several people remove their images from web sites.If you
site makes money, they might also want a large fee for every hit to the
page on your site with their image since the page was put up.

 

[dorayme]

Hi.... I would like to be able to have a rotating sphere on my website
that is also a clickable image map. Could someone please point in the
direction of a tutorial to assist me or explain the basics here. Thank
you.

Another way to make an animated gif of a spinning globe (say, Earth)
would be to take a little movie of one on your digital camera. Then,
using commands like in Quicktime (a movie player program esp popular
with Macs but also available for Wintel machines), you can get all the
stills put into a folder as jpgs. These can be culled and formatted in a
graphics program (to gif) to make up a reasonably small animated gif.
You would have fun too.

 

[hywel.jenkins]

Hi.... I would like to be able to have a rotating sphere on my website
that is also a clickable image map. Could someone please point in the
direction of a tutorial to assist me or explain the basics here. Thank
you.

I suspect you're already out of your depth. Adding an image map to an
animated GIF is no more difficult than adding one to a standard image.
However, your post implies that you'd like to be able to replicate the
functionality of Google Earth, where a user can click on part of the
image that rotates in to view and gets a different response that
clicking something else. The image map doesn't scroll with the image,
though you could write some JavaScript that could fudge this effect for
you.

The other advice you've been given is, perhaps, off the mark. Try
looking into doing something with Flash. It would also help if you
gave a little detail about what you're trying to achieve, rather than
trying to find the answer to a problem you have not yet defined.

 

[Denebola]

Okay.... i am way out of my depth here...... i'm not a programmer just
a novice with an interest.

So a change of idea......

Could i have a live clock on a webpage and a small area on the page
changes it's picture and link with each second or 60 seconds etc. So
for example, the time is 08:00 and a jpg with link when clicked will go
to a website about breakfast; then at 12:00 the picture and link
changes to a website about lunch etc.

Regards

 

[Richard Brooks]

Okay.... i am way out of my depth here...... i'm not a programmer just
a novice with an interest.

So a change of idea......

Could i have a live clock on a webpage and a small area on the page
changes it's picture and link with each second or 60 seconds etc. So
for example, the time is 08:00 and a jpg with link when clicked will go
to a website about breakfast; then at 12:00 the picture and link
changes to a website about lunch etc.

Regards

Get some kindly soul to write a script (javascript, php) for you in one
of the other newsgroups so look for a newsgroup of the same name. All
the fancier stuff would be through some scripting language pasted into
your HTML page that references the area the holds the image.


Richard.

 

[Sally Thompson]

Another way to make an animated gif of a spinning globe (say, Earth)
would be to take a little movie of one on your digital camera.

<snip>
Um - wouldn't that mean going up into space first? I can never jump high
enough.

 

[dorayme]

<snip>
Um - wouldn't that mean going up into space first? I can never jump high
enough.

I am trying to recall where I saw a nice one, a shop or museum or
some uni. room? I chucked out mine (about 12" diam) a while back,
it looked a bit cheap... and old (prior, you see, to that idiot
American president's attempt to change "the map of the Middle
East")