PW3D

Have you noticed that that some YouTube videos are in 3D? It's called YT3D, it was added as a feature to the Flash player, but then discontinued and is not part of the modern (html5) player.

The video is transmitted as a stereo signal, and the youtube player app blends it into your choice of display (interlated, anaglph, parallel...). Awesome!

There's no good (and certainly no free) equivalent for photos though.

Somewhere around 2012 I made one! It requires you to be able to request the page off a server, and for it to retrieve it from PicasaWeb. Since PicasaWeb was discontinued a while ago, this page is for reference/record - PW3D will not function any more.

It was an exercise for me in Javascript and CSS and HTML5. It's one single hand-written .html file, with everything in it and no external dependencies (It was a deliberate learning exercise - hand-writing code like this is not something you'd sensibly do these days).

~~It's an ongoing interest. If something fails to work or you have some burning feedback, please contact me.~~

PW3D is free, open-source (GPLv2), has a large number of rendering modes, doesn't use Flash, and can be integrated into other sites.

How does it work?

Your images live on Picasa's servers. PW3D does not store images for you.

The PW3D file is here. You can use it there too, there's no need to make your own copy or move it anywhere.

You tell PW3D everything it needs to know in URL arguments, and off you go. It works internally with Javascript but it always keeps the URL up to date so that you can copy/paste it or bookmark it, or send it to others.

What Browser Should I Use? or Hey! Why Aren't There Anaglyphs?

I recommend Chrome (now the world's most popular browser!) or Firefox (my favourite). If you use Chrome or Firefox you do get Anaglyphs. The anaglyph modes won't work in Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari. The reason is that those browsers don't (yet) support a key feature. I'm working on possible workarounds for older browsers, but no luck yet. If you use Safari you'll see an extra rendering mode called "Experimental" - it's not perfect but it's the best that I've got.UPDATE - I have an SVG-based solution that works in a few browsers. It will be integrated soon.If you know how to access a cross-origin-enabled image in one of these browsers (maybe using XDomainRequest()?), or can figure out how to render an anaglyph in a <canvas> without calling getImageData(), or know a different way to make an anaglyph render using a cross-domain image, then please tell me how!

Can Embed A Gallery On My Own Site?

Yes!

Depending on what you're doing and what browser you use though, you may run into browser security issues. Your site will be getting a page from (my) Google Drive, which is asking Picasaweb for images to display. Some browsers will suspect trouble and silently block it from working.

In Firefox or Chrome, you see a little shield up in the address bar somewhere, if your gallery doesn't load, try clicking on that. It will sometimes help (depending on your browser and security settings), if you change "https" to "http" for your address.

I've put an embedded gallery at the bottom of this page as a test.

A note to experimenters: If you try copying PW3D onto your own computer, it may fail for a different reason: Web-browser security features to stop malware from hacking your machine. Web-browsers place even-more severe restrictions on what a locally-saved html file is allowed to do, than online.

Embedding

For embedding, just use the <iframe> tag like this:

I'm hosting PW3D here (right-click, copy link), and it will receive updates. Instead you can link to this one here, which I will not update (which protects you from changes you might not want).