A new toy to add to my collection, SpaceNavigator.
Put some extensive testing into it the past day, installed it on Ubuntu 8.10, MacOS and Windows Vista 64bit.
My initial reaction is, wow. It really shows they put a lot of effort into making it work where ever one might need it. Ubuntu needed a bit of configuration, as 8.10 has this hotplug Xorg driver that gets in the way. Then just a regular install and it works with a updated Blender.
The configuration tools are the same throughout platforms and usability is also identical. Trough the device depends on the applications use of it for OOTB functionality, it also has some individual program configurations.
The SpaceNavigator itself has absolute positioning, although it registers as a relative positioning device (that makes linux use it wrong without drivers). Phisically its a big heavy metal ring with plastic/rubber controol ends. The metal is there to keep it grouned while you use the up/down axis. Rotating it left/right works to about 5 degrees and about double that for all the other axes.
The thing I disslike about it is really something I fealt before with the graphics tablet but didnt mention. The bright blue circual light. When I leave my pc standing for some time, monitor turns off and the room turns blue. (not as bad as with the pulsating bamtoo tablet but non the less brings alot of unneeded attention to itself)
The best use I found for it is Google Earth and Blender. Worth the 60$ ?
Creating a kiosk environment.
The tools:
The requierments:
- Firefox 3
- Linux
- Non-exit-able
- Onscreen Keyboard
As you might expect, I tried everything.
R-Kiosk. Perfect.
A inline javascript Keyboard. While it did what was needed, it fails on forms that are on the bottom of the screen and in Iframes. Good side: Language was dependant on the page’s language. But Fail.
xvkbd. While I did manage to place it on top of Firefox and lock it so people cant close or edit it, and change their language.. it was annoying to do so. Moving it around the screen more so. Porting it to win32 impossible. Fail.
Ok, lets try a different aproach.
http://stlouis-shopper.com/~jtjsoftware/software/vkeyboard.xpi is a firefox Addon I found. A simple tweak made it work on Fx3. Here is what I made. The first step in porting the app, is thus in bad shape. ~Win.
If there is enough interest in such a plugin for Fx3, I myself and the original author will continue to work on it. A lot of things are already on my mind that I want to do with this project. Suggestions ?
Image by via CrunchBase
I’ve found myself trapped on a Windows Vista environment for the next two weeks. The reason is that I recently bought a new PC and while installing OpenSUSE I realized the next mayor version is due in less then a month so I decided to stick with the then installed Vista Ultimate 64bit to avoid the hassle of upgrading the distro. That would also give me a opportunity to get some insight on the capability of the hardware using the operating system the accompanying software was written for.
Read the story after the jump.. (more…)
