Skin Complexity/Size Limit

[russphotography]

I have noticed in a couple of other posts that creating a skin that is too complicated, there for probably to large, can cause issues with devices that do not have much memory. I have not seen anything in this forum that discusses limits on skin size and complexity. Does anyone have a feel for this?

[Hopki]

Hi,
Its not how complex the skin is its how many images/skin elements are shown in one go, how much has to be loaded.

Example:
If you add an image to a skin and set to not visible on start up, it will still load on startup taking up valuable cache memory.
You need to add an external loader to your project with no URL. Then have a button click, set text action to set the URL of the loader to point to the image. At this point the image will be called from its location on the server.

There are other ways of doing this too, example have the file path in a hotspot URL text field then use a mouse click, set text $hu action for the external loader.

If you just want to display up to two or three popups in the skin in any one panorama you can use tags and node markers, as a node marker is activated it can set the text for the external loaders. On deactivate is can remove the text. Each pano can activate different node markers setting different text for the same external loaders.

Regards,
Hopki

[russphotography]

Thanks Hopki ... this makes a lot of sense. I have been looking at work done by Diginetmedia and was very impressed how much they place in their skins. I was not sure how they could get so much in and avoid memory problems.

Your response prompted another question. Is it possible to set a action that would call up a different skin that would change the language from English to French for example.

[Hopki]

Hi,
Yes there are a few ways to do this, you can have a button with several set text actions, one for each text box in the skin. This is ok for tool tips over buttons etc. For hotspot tool tips toy can set each language in the user data, example set on language in the title and the other using description, then the set text action can change the place holder in the text box to display the correct language, $ut and $ud.
Regards,
Hopki