Photo by Marvin Meyer

As many of you already know, opening a 360 product view from your hard-drive may not always work "out-of-the-box" in modern web browsers. Since the release of Firefox 68 and the announcement that the next version of Microsoft Edge is based on the Chromium browser, pretty much anybody who uses WebRotate 360 needs to be aware of the required extra steps to configure your browser for local tests or offline viewing.

The good news is that everything works without issues once the 360 spins are uploaded online or loaded via a local web server on your computer or network. Also, the next version of WebRotate 360 Product Viewer will come with a built-in web browser that will be pre-configured for pain-free local and offline viewing.

Update [Nov 11, 2022]: Latest v4 now includes a built-in web server, so as along as you lunch the browser previews from inside SpotEditor (i.e not manually by clicking or dragging published html files), the following steps are now NOT required in v4 and onward.

Update [Aug 10, 2023] Latest v5 now includes WebRotate 360 QuickView that can be used for local offline viewing and SpotEditor previews.

Now lets see how to configure browser security for your local testing in these popular web browsers:

CHROME, EDGE and OPERA

When you launch a local preview upon publish in SpotEditor, it's loaded in a local web-server that is built-in in SpotEditor (since late v3.6.5 beta), so the preview works as-is in any browser.

If you want to launch a published view manually by double-clicking a published html file or dragging it to a browser window, things get trickier as you have to first configure the browser to allow loading local files.

On Windows we recommend creating an extra browser shortcut (on your desktop for example) and pasting this extra flag at the end of the Target field of the shortcut:  --allow-file-access-from-files. You may also rename the shortcut so you don't use it accidentally for regular web browsing.

Just make sure there're no instances of browser executable still running when launching it with the extra flag.

Alternatively, you may use this script and save it as .bat file that you can run on Windows to automate closing all active browser windows (if any) and re-launching it with the correct flag. Replace chrome.exe and its path with msedge.exe or opera.exe accordingly:

Set "App=chrome.exe"
Start /WAIT taskkill /F /IM %App% /T
:loop
Timeout /t 1 >NUL
tasklist.exe /FI "ImageName eq %App%" /NH |find /i "%App%" >NUL && Goto :loop
call  "c:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --allow-file-access-from-files

On Mac, we need to use Terminal app and an extra script file to launch Chrome with required permissions as follows:

  • Create an empty text file and paste this line:
    open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --allow-file-access-from-files
  • Save the file as webrotate.sh to your desktop for example
  • Launch Terminal app and type in the following (replace YourUserName):
    chmod +x /Users/YourUserName/Desktop/webrotate.sh
  • Close Terminal app.

Now that you have prepared an executable script, you can launch Chrome with required settings whenever you need to test your 360 product views by opening the script file in Terminal via the "Open With" command in Finder.

Consider installing Firefox just for testing your published 360 product views as configuring offline file access in Firefox is pretty straightforward as described below.

FIREFOX

Follow these steps in Firefox to enable the loading of local files the way it has been possible in the last ten or so years until the release of Firefox 68.

  • Open Firefox.
  • In the address bar type in about:config
  • You will see a message, warning that changing anything there may be harmful.
  • Confirm that you accept the risk to proceed.
  • A new page now opens where you can change Firefox configuration.
  • In the search bar at the top of this page type in privacy.
  • Find this option in the filtered list security.fileuri.strict_origin_policy (or privacy.file_unique_origin if using Firefox prior to v95).
  • Click it until it displays as false as per attached screenshot.

This does expose you to a known security issue if somebody tricks you into downloading and launching a rogue html file from your hard-drive so you may consider setting up a separate Firefox profile if this is a concern.

SAFARI

To be able to preview your published work locally in Safari 11 (and up), navigate to Safari's Develop menu and check "Disable Local File Restrictions" as shown below. If you don't see the Develop menu in the menu bar, choose Safari > Preferences, click Advanced, then select "Show Develop menu in menu bar".

iOS

For offline applications where you need to load 360 spins on devices with iOS, consider third-party apps such as the one discussed in the following blog post:

Using WebRotate 360 Product Views Offline on iPad