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A Virtual Earth slide show Gadget for Windows VistaBy Lionel LASKEMobilis Immobile is a Virtual Earth slide show Gadget for Windows Vista |
Javascript, XML, HTMLVista, Visual Studio, Dev
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"Mobilis Immobile" is a Virtual Earth slide show Gadget for Windows Vista. So with "Mobilis Immobile" ("Mobim" for short), you can travel all over the world to your favorite places without moving from the front of your screen! By the way, "travel without moving" is exactly what "Mobilis Immobile" sentence means in Latin.
To install the Mobim Gadget just drag it from the gadget gallery on the sidebar or on the desktop.
Mobim can be displayed in three different views:
Here is a screen capture of each view:
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| Docked view | Undocked view |
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| Flyout view | |
Mobim gadget has an enhanced settings windows. See below:
Here is what each option means:
Mobim gadget can display two types of slides:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"
xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:gml=
"http://www.opengis.net/gml">
<channel>
<title>Perpignan</title>
<link />
<description>Famous place in Perpignan, France</description>
<item>
<title>Castillet</title>
<description>[mode@o][zoom@1][sceneid@10995771]Castillet Castle built
in 1368.</description>
<geo:lat>42.70069438573455</geo:lat>
<geo:long>2.893863466593684</geo:long>
</item>
<item>
<title>Dames de France</title>
<description>[mode@o][zoom@1][sceneid@10995756]</description>
<geo:lat>42.6985786771285</geo:lat>
<geo:long>2.888311216990704</geo:long>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
The slide show begins as soon as you drag Mobim on the sidebar/desktop or as soon as you exit from the settings windows, committing your choice.
A control bar allows you to control the slide show more precisely. The control bar appears automatically when you move the mouse cursor over the gadget. Using the pause button, you can suspend/resume the slide show; using the next or previous button you can move to the next or previous slide.
Note that the control bar is also usable in the flyout view. In this case, the control bar of the smaller view controls both the smaller and the larger views.
Mobim allows you to customize the slide show using general settings or using a setting for each slide. To do that, you need to encode settings in the description field of your collection or your feed with a special pattern.
Three parameters could be used:
Note that parameter values do not appear in the description field in the detailed view.
Of course, Mobim relies on features of Virtual Earth. Virtual Earth can load and use as pushpins, a GeoRSS, or a live collection. Unfortunately, Virtual Earth handles all items as a layer and you can't control the way the layer is displayed the first time. Moreover, you don't have access to the full characteristics of items. So for Mobim, I rewrote the loading of GeoRSS feed and live collection from scratch. Here how:
loadItems. Find below an excerpt of this function:
function loadItems(callback)
{
...
collection = new Array();
...
afterLoad = callback;
httpreq = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
httpreq.open("GET", urltocall, true);
httpreq.onreadystatechange = processRequest;
httpreq.send(null);
}
When the request is done, Mobim must process the response to fill the collection array. The process depends on the type of collection: GeoRSS or Live Collection. Which is exactly what the function processRequest does. See here:
function processRequest()
{
// only if req shows "loaded"
if (httpreq.readyState == 4)
{
// only if "OK"
if (httpreq.status == 200)
{
if (islive)
processLiveCollection();
else
processGeoRSS();
if (collection.length > 0)
{
if (shuffle)
shuffleCollection();
afterLoad();
}
else
System.Debug.outputString("no feed available\n");
}
else
{
System.Debug.outputString("error reading feed\n");
}
}
}
Today, to find if a URL is a Live collection or a GeoRSS feed we just have to do a test on the prefix of the URL (Live Collections start by "http://maps.live.com/" or "http://local.live.com/".
Processing GeoRSS is pretty simple, it's just an XML text and Mobim parse it node by node.
function processGeoRSS()
{
var items = httpreq.responseXML.getElementsByTagName("item");
var title_string;
var description_string;
var link_string;
var point;
for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++)
{
title_string = getElementText("title", items[i]);
description_string = getElementText("description", items[i]);
link_string = getElementText("link", items[i]);
point = findPoint(items[i]);
if (point != null)
collection.push(new MobimRSSItem(title_string,
description_string, link_string, point));
}
}
http://maps.live.com/UserCollections.aspx?action=RetrieveAllAnnotations&cid=
XXXX&mkt==en&mapguid=1111111111111&contextid=2222222222222
Where XXXX is the collection ID in the initial URL and where 1111111111111 and 2222222222222 are contextual numbers whi are irrelevant here. In response to this call, the Live Server return a JSON response like this:
VEMap._GetMapFromGUID('1111111111111')._lm.RetrieveAllAnnotationsCallback(
[
new VE_Annotation('D4783333CD255A28!116','Statue of Liberty, New York,
USA','http://www.nps.gov/stli/','','01/01/0001 00:00:00',
'Located on a 12 acre island, the Statue of Liberty ...[zoom@16]',
'40.6892944466626','-74.0444612503052','0','0','',
'01/01/0001 00:00:00',[]),
new VE_Annotation('D4783333CD255A28!117','Key West, Florida, USA',
'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West,_Florida','',
'01/01/0001 00:00:00','Key West is a city and an island...',
'24.5553986767496','-81.7980194091797','0','1','',
'01/01/0001 00:00:00',[]),
...
],'2222222222222');
Each item of the embedded array is exactly what I need: characteristics of all items in the Live Collection. After a few substitutions and a call to eval, it's now easy to retrieve an array:
function processLiveCollection()
{
var response = httpreq.responseText;
// Compute start
var start = response.indexOf("([new VE_Annotation(");
if (start == -1)
return;
// Compute end
var end = response.indexOf(")],'2222222222222');", start);
if (end == -1)
return;
// Extract from start to end
var strarray = response.substring(start+1, end+2);
strarray = strarray.replace(/VE_Annotation/g, "MobimLiveMarker");
// Eval collection
collection = eval(strarray);
}
Feel free to create your own Live collection or GeoRSS feed and view it with Mobim. A good start to find nice places all over the world is the Bird's Eye Tourist web site. Also do a follow up to the Virtual Earth blog Team where a lot of Virtual Earth tips and tricks are listed. Here some of my favorites collections (drag & drop URL in URL field and use recommended settings):
Do not hesitate to contact me for bugs, questions, or comments.
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Last Updated: 11 Apr 2007 Editor: Sean Ewington |
Copyright 2007 by Lionel LASKE Everything else Copyright © CodeProject, 1999-2009 Web10 | Advertise on the Code Project |
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Can any body tell me how this thing works????? I installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled, it's still does not wrok. 
What's wrong with this gadget????? It is supposed to work but how come it doesn't??? Can someone please guide me how to fix this??? My e-mail is jomo300@yahoo.fr