VRMLWorld.net

[steve]

Just installed abnet and was pleasantly suprised to be up and running in a few minutes.

I've had some experience of abstracting the html/javascript interface to contact & cortona and think cortona would make a good client for abnet. Could also detect the html browser and switch to using embed tag with cortona 5 so Firefox etc would work.

Can anyone see any problems with this ?
Is someone already doing it ?

I see there is a big chunk of heavy looking vrml which gets loaded from html into the vrml browser. Could anyone me if that needs some debugging for cortona.

Steve

[admin]

I'm not working on it, but it would be great if this stuff worked
with Cortona. Make sure you grab the latestgui interface.
The one that is included in the server distribution is kind of
dated. The new version splits out some of the javascript
into different files. You can get it here:

http://vrmlworld.net/abnet2/latestui.zip

As far as the big chunk of VRML, you don't have to
implement the VRML interface like that. You could use
pure javascript and the rich Cortona API. For Contact,
it was easiest to add the VRML nodes and script.

If you look at the fluxax.html page included with the
ABNet server, you can see how I used the SAI interface
instead of the big chunk of VRML. The lines you want
to look at start around line 390.

If you have any questions you are welcome to Skype me.
(There is a link on my kimballsoftware.com contact page)

It would be great to make this cross browser. I'll include
any changes in the server if you get it working.
Anyone interested in doing a java x3d player version?

As far as Firefox, you will have problems getting the ABNet
Activex client to work in Firefox. Firefox only supports
activex if you install the firefox plugin that enables ActiveX
controls.

Thanks,
-rick

[steve]

Ok Rick I'll have a crack at it over the next few weeks.

Getting it working in firefox is quite a big deal for me, I'd like to use abnet with web app with loads of javascript and its just impossible to develop it using IE. 90% of the end users would be IE however.

Have you tried your ActibeX module with the firefox wrapper ?

Steve

[admin]

I have not tried ABNet with the firefox wrapper.

I also haven't tried any of the VRML players with Firefox. I
did read some accounts somewhere about people having
problems with javascript + Firefox but I can't seem to find
those links anywhere now.

Have you used javascript + cortona + firefox? Does that
even work? Sorry, I thought the Cortona API was ActiveX
only? Last time I checked you couldn't use javascript
with Cortona except on MSIE. That is a major reason
for me not focusing on Firefox.

[admin]

I just installed the latest Cortona 5.1 using the manual install. It
installed correctly and now I can view a .wrl file using Firefox 1.5.
Then I got daring and went to this page:

http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/sdk/examples/createvrmlfromurl/

I get a popup that says:

[admin]

I just downloaded the mozilla activex plugin from
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm

I tried with the sample pages there but it didn't seem to work.

I then tried it with ABNet. It didn't work either although
it is probably because of my code. When the ABNet ActiveX
plugin starts up, I use the IWebBrowser2 Interface via COM to
query the container application to find out what page ABNet
loaded from. That interface is probably not available from
Firefox. I'm not expecting the container to be anything
except MSIE. In my code, if that call fails I exit. I'm guessing
it is taking that code path unless the Mozilla Plugin is smart
enough to fake that COM interface.

The other alternative at this point is to use the ABNet
communication applet.

-rick

(bleh .. and they wonder why I don't won't to try and support every vrml/html browser. I haven't even added the stuff I really want)

[steve]

I have been using cortona quite successfully in firefox 2.0 and Netscape 8
Strange thing is that although Cortona is ActiveX its works fine and I've never downloaded the firefox ActiveX wrapper.

The reason for your error was that your HTML page needs to be substantially modified from Cortona 5.0 onwards to work with both IE and Mozilla. Cortona 4.3 used vbScript. Now its all javaScript. Another big difference is that older html pages using the SDK would have used the OBJECT where as Firefox requires the EMBED tag and does not fully support OBJECT tag.

I am very impressed with Cortona In Firefox.

So you have a Java applet version. Which JVM does it require ?

[admin]

The applet version works with any jvm. I compile it with the
TARGET VM of 1.1. I need to rework some of it as I haven't
been keeping it up to date with the server. I'll email you
a copy once I have it updated.

Do you have any examples of Cortona 5 working with
FireFox online that I could take a look at?

Thanks,

-rick

[steve]

so pleased to be a forum junkie already

[steve]

here is a cortona firefox example
also works with ie6,7
its just an alternative cortona user inteface i made to learn the sdk

http://www.veps3d.co.uk/vepslite/