Bucky Barkley

Introduction

Slider is the second of three texture display products offered by my store: Buckaroo.

The Slider viewer displays textures placed in its inventory. It can automatically flip through the whole set, with an owner specified pause between slides.

It can also give out several types of items, on a per-texture basis. Each texture may also lead to a different web address.

The viewer can also resize the texture and background prims on a per-texture basis. It also provides a lot of control over aspect ratios and many other facets of display (offsets, color, alpha, etc)

The user interface is toggled on and off by clicking on the picture.

License

Slider is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Configuring and Using Slider

1. Inventory
2. The User Interface
3. Giving Items
4. Sizing And Options
   1. Photo Sizing, Texture Rotation, Alpha, and Color
   2. Texture Name Examples
   3. Background Textures
   4. Slide Pause/Delay
5. Going To The Web
6. The Amazon Shortcut
7. The Amazon Associates Tag

1. Inventory
Place the textures to show in inventory. If you want a click to give out a notecard, name it with the prefix “NOTE.” and put that in the inventory (example: NOTE.myPhotos). There is much more to say about that in the “Giving Items” section.

Note the your textures will display in the order they appear in the Slider inventory (via a slideshow or by manually clicking the previous or next arrows).

Here are two examples of a Slider inventory. The first is very basic:

And here is one that implies much more functionality — we will cover the options that go into it in this document:

2. The User Interface

The Slider User Interface consists of two arrow buttons for moving to previous and next textures, and a green square in the middle for giving items.

The UI is toggled on and off by clicking anywhere on the foreground or background prims. Future versions of Slider will allow a choice of UI positions, so that arrows can always be visible.

It is possible to customize the texture for these three buttons. Add three textures of your own to the Slider inventory:

• UI.give
• UI.next
• UI.prev

3. Giving Items

Some specially named items may be dispensed for any texture. When the user clicks on the middle button, they will be given them.

For a texture named “Photo”, you can add:

• a landmark named “LM.Photo”
• a notecard named “NOTE.Photo”
• a texture named “PIC.Photo”
• an object named “OBJ.Photo”

4. Sizing And Options

4.1 Photo Sizing, Texture Rotation, Alpha, and Color

There are several options that allow each photo to be displayed as it is meant to be. They are controlled by adding flags to the name of the photo. Add:

+x<some number> for a horizontal size in meters
+z<some number> for a vertical size in meters
+r<degrees> for a rotation of the texture
+a<some number 0.0 – 1.0> for alpha (transparency) of the texture prim. (1 is opaque)
+c<r,g,b> for colors to tint the texture (foreground) prim

+h<some number> for horizontal repeats
+v<some number> for vertical repeats

+oh<some number> for horizontal offset
+ov<some number> for vertical offset

+ar<some numer> aspect ratio, multiply horizontal size by this to get vert — this option overrides +z .. dont use both

And there are some Uppercase Options for the Background Prim:

+X<some number> for a horizontal size in meters
+Z<some number> for a vertical size in meters
+R<degrees> for a rotation of the texture of the background prim
+A<some number 0.0 – 1.0> for alpha (transparency) of the background prim
+C<r,g,b> for colors to tint the background prim

+H<some number> for horizontal repeats of the background prim
+V<some number> for vertical repeats of the background prim

+OH<some number> for horizontal offset of the background prim
+OV<some number> for vertical offset of the background prim

+AR<some numer> aspect ratio, multiply horizontal size by this to get vert for background prim — this option overrides +Z .. dont use both

4.2 Texture Name Examples:

Snapshot – default width and height
Snapshot +x1.3 +z1.2 – will show the pic as 1.3×1.2 meters
Snapshot +x2 +r45 – two meters wide, texture rotated by 45 degrees
Snapshot +x2 +z3 +r90 – 2 x 3, rotated 90 degrees (clockwise)

multiple word image:
bucky waiting +x1 +z1.5 +a.5 +c0,128,128
gives: 1 by 1.5, 50% alpha, rgb of 0,128,128

… and resize the background:
bucky waiting +x1 +z1.5 +a.5 +c0,128,129 +Z2.7

…another background example:
info island may 2007 +x3 +X4 +C0,0,0 +A.2 +R45

Want to show the same photo multiple ways? Copy it into inventory a few times, and rename the ends of the filename for the options you want for each one.

.. a couple of aspect ratio examples:
Snapshot +R33 +H0.7 +V20 +h4 +ar.2
SnapshotOther +ar1.2 +AR1.2 +A.4

(+ar is the multiplier for height for the picture prim ..
+AR is the same for the background prim )

4.3 Background Textures

There are special inventory texture names you can use to control what is shown on the background prim:

BG.DEFAULT – the default background texture to use if no others are specified
BG.Snapshot – the background texture to use for the “Snapshot” picture

(in other words, anything that starts with “BG.”)

If no background textures are specified, the default is blank.

4.4 Slide Pause/Delay (and getting continuous shows)

Set the time between slides by using “+st<number of seconds>” in the Description field.

Examples:

+st12 – twelve seconds between slides
+st20 = twenty seconds between slides

To get a continuous slide show, use “+sc”. By default, Slider will advance for 5 slides, and then silently stop. This gives a bit of a slideshow after a user touches Slider and walks away.

5. Going To The Web

Every texture may have one web address associated with it. There are two methods towards achieving this:

• use the +AM flag on a texture name to get to an Amazon web address (see “The Amazon Shortcut” section next)
• use the “urls” notecard to link texture names with arbitrary web addresses

The notecard is named “urls” (and you can append whatever words you wish, as in “urls – music”)

An example of the format looks like:

cnn-texture = http://cnn.com
secondlife = http://secondlife.com

in other words:

texture name = URL

You may use ‘#’ to start comment lines in the notecard:
# this is a comment line

6. The Amazon Shortcut

When a texture includes a “+AM” flag in its name, along with an ASIN (the Amazon unique id for every product), Slider will use this to construct the web address to the product. Here is an example texture name:

Beatles_Rubber-Soul +AMB000002UAO

So in the example, the “+AM” flags Slider that this is a shortcut to Amazon. The “B000002UAO” happens to be the ASIN for a Beatles CD.

7. The Amazon Associates Tag

The Amazon Associates tag is “+AT”, and is given in the description field. If my tag is “MyAmazon-20″, it would look like:

Important: If you have an Amazon Associates account, you may wish to use your own tag. By default, Slider uses a sample tag ‘youraaacount-20′.