If you haven't noticed, version 3.6 of WebRotate 360 Product Viewer has been finally released!

This is a big event for us as it has been pretty much exactly two years since we started working on v3.6 and the number of enhancements and features that went into this release is huge (version history). There have been at least 5 beta releases and numerous one-off builds for our customers who needed some of the new features early in production. In general, our philosophy is to not release often as making sure nothing breaks for users across multitude of setups, browsers, and platforms on the web takes a lot of time.

With v3.6 we have addressed these three major areas:

3D PRODUCT VIEWING

Until v3.6, we could only spin images on a single plane and this was alright for some time. After all, we have been shooting single-row 360 product views since 2009 and knew exactly where the need was. But Internet speeds have increased dramatically in the last 3-4 years and browsers stepped up their game, so loading multiple rows of images for full 3D product viewing become feasible and not just on desktop but mobile as well.

Not to mention, folks started to figure out how to shoot products in 3D and the usage of 3D modeling in product design have also increased. With v3.6 we give you the framework to create cool interactive 3D product views that work across all modern mobile devices and web browsers.

WEB INTEGRATION

What our users always loved about this product is the polished up viewer output. It's super interactive, slick, and fluid with a large number of easily configurable options. We put in extra effort making sure it doesn't take over your product pages while modern enough to contribute to your product presentation.

In v3.6 we pushed further to give you more control over the features and looks as well as more options to assist with the web integration. From advanced APIs and the "shortcode" template to new vector (SVG) skins and Google Analytics integration, with v3.6 you can take your vision to new heights.

MOBILE

A big chunk of work in early-mid 2016 was to make sure the viewer works great on modern mobile devices. We practically rewrote the hotspot rendering engine and introduced new hotspot type to address some of the shortcomings in the earlier versions. Viewer become fully responsive with more control over presentation on small mobile device and high pixel density screens.

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Unfortunately, we couldn't fit in the new incremental zoom which was ready by the time v3.6 release candidate was out as it would require major retesting, so this feature will be released in the follow up v3.6.2 later on. And the work on the major 4.0 release is now going at full speed...

PS: if you are on v3.5 or an earlier release of WebRotate 360 Product Viewer and have either PRO or Enterprise license, please contact us to get the upgrade as it's free for all customers. Users on v3.6 beta can check for updates on the About form in SpotEditor to download this release.

Finally, we have a hefty update for our Magento users.

Extension for Magento 2 has been released, incorporating some of the best features we have implemented in WebRotate 360 Product Viewer v3.6, including analytics, multi-row 3D product views, better responsiveness, API integration, and more.

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For those of you who are familiar with our Magento extensions, there has been always two integration modes you could use: Standard and Ad-hoc.

In Magento 1.x, the Standard integration overrides the default implementation of the product media block, disabling any previous customizations to this block. This downside was addressed in Ad-hoc, which embeds a 360 product view or a popup thumbnail to a selected html element on a product page, making it quite flexible and as a result quite popular as well.

So our new Magento 2 extension is essentially the Ad-hoc mode... We will be releasing an extra module for Magento 2 similar to the Standard integration mode (i.e with a product image gallery) sometime later this year.

PS: since we have learned first hand that a transition to Magento 2 is not a walk in the park (and a lot of companies are still waiting), we have also released a refresh of our original Magento extension for Magento 1.x. This refresh includes v3.6 scripts and minor fixes so you can now enjoy the full power of 2 years worth of the core viewer development (see product history).

A new dedicated page for all our recent Magento releases with detailed installation instructions and release history is now available on our website in the following link:

http://www.webrotate360.com/products/cms-and-e-commerce-plugins/plugin-for-magento.aspx

It's true, SpotEditor still lacks a lightbox (popup) template and we will get to this soon... For now, if you need a quick "out of the box" solution to launch your 360 or 3D product views inside a lightbox popup (and you don't rely on WebRotate's CMS plugins that have it already integrated), use this template. It's simple!

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Here's how to get it up and running:

• Create a new project in SpotEditor or use an existing one.
• Publish it as usual.
• Navigate to the "published" folder of your SpotEditor project.
• Copy the contents of the template zip to the published folder except for 360_assets and imagerotator folders which you already have.
• Open page.html and update the config parameter in the hyperlink to point to your published xml, i.e ...?config=360_assets/YourProject/YourProject.xml
• Change popup dimensions as needed by updating height and width parameters accordingly.
• If you need to change the viewer skin, open viewloader_basic.html and change basic.css to one of these: thin.css, empty.css, retina.css, round.css.
• Open page.html in your browser and click "Test thumbnail" to see it in action. Simple!

PS: if you use Chrome or Opera, remember about this security issue when testing the template locally.

The template is based on the prettyPhoto library that has served us well over the years although we customized it slightly for a more responsive behavior on small mobile screens, etc. Also note that you can use it as a gallery of 360 or 3D product views which you can test by uncommenting the inactive section in page.html in the attached zip.

Just ping us here if you have any issues.

If you haven't noticed, we just quietly released a new version of our popular WordPress plugin.

The announcement was postponed a bit as we were worried it could bring a lot of unexpected customer support during the holidays in case something was overlooked during the release. Now that the holidays are over and we saw a few successful upgrades and new installations, we can finally announce this exciting new release. Why is it exciting?

First off, we have never really released or advertised v3.0 of the plugin. It has been a constant beta for almost a year. And while it packed the new WooCommerce integration and some of the original features of our core 3D product viewer, we never felt it was complete enough to call it a release..

So now with the battle-hardened 3d product viewing function, our brand new SVG skins and the long list of other major core improvements released in the past 12 months (as part of v3.6 core), it is finally a good time to get the new plugin out of the door. Some of the notable plugin enhancements include:

• API integration in wr360embed and wr360expand shortcodes.
• wr360expand shortcode now allows full browser window mode instead of our usual full-screen.
• Minimum viewer height property in shortcodes and global settings.
• Viewer background color in shortcodes and global settings.
• Full-screen support inside the popup shortcodes.
• Custom path for your hotpot indicators (if you have them customized).
• And a long long list of the core improvements and fixes.

We also consolidated our WordPress downloads and installation instructions as well as the plugin history on a new page that is solely dedicated to the WordPress plugin. We encourage all our users to review the Installation notes that have the most comprehensive up-to-date details on the shortcode config and other related notes.

Take it away!