SeeTerra Photo Album Viewer

You can view SeeTerra photo albums using your web browser. Currently only Internet Explorer version 6 and Mozilla Firefox version 1.5 are supported. You can start by pointing the web browser to the "gallery.html" file in the photo album.

The viewer will show three panes:

An image pane, containing the photo, a description (if one was entered when the album was created), and the date the photo was taken.
A small control pane at the top of your screen. Move the mouse over each control to see a short description of its function. When you start a slide show, your photos are shown in sequence, starting with the current photo. The interval between two photos in the slide show can be configured by entering a number of seconds in the right-most text box. If you are in the right mode of operation you will see here the special Google Earth controls. Also here you will see the buttons "Edit mode" and "Proxy mode" if those modes are enabled in your installation.
A narrow thumbnail pane on the right of the screen, containing the thumbnails of your photos. Click on a thumbnail to advance the viewing of the album to the corresponding photo.

The thumbnail pane loads only a certain amount of photo data, currently up to 40 megabytes. For the photos whose thumbnails did not fit, you will see a placeholder image. Click on that image to load a new set of thumbnails, which might require unloading some other thumbnails to make room.. At all times SeeTerra attempts to keep loaded the thumbnails for the most recently viewed photos. If your album contains thumbnail images (small versions of your photos) then they are loaded in the thumbnail pane instead of your photo. This will speed up the loading of the thumbnail pane and will also enable SeeTerra to load more thumbnails. See the SeeTerra Editor documentation for how to create thumbnails for your album.

Viewing your photos on Google Earth

You can view your SeeTerra albums in Google Earth if you install Google Earth and SeeTerra on your local machine, run in the Proxy mode (see below), and if you have added GPS coordinates to your photos using the SeeTerra Editor. If all these conditions are met you will see the Google Earth controls at the top of the figure:

Check the "See on Earth" box. The first time you do this, SeeTerra will attempt to start Google Earth. This will take a bit.
The "from:" box show the height of the eye, in miles. You can increase/decrease it by clicking on the adjacent arrow buttons.
If the "on top" box is checked, then SeeTerra will attempt to keep the Google Earth window on top of other windows.

When the “See on Earth” box is first selected, SeeTerra will attempt to find a running copy of Google Earth, and if it cannot find one, it will start it. If you have an unrelated copy of Google Earth that was not started by SeeTerra, you should close it and let SeeTerra start one with the right parameters.

A few notes about using Google Earth:

You can recognize that SeeTerra and Google Earth are talking if you see a small cross hair in the middle of the Google Earth window
Sometimes Google Earth is slow in moving to another location. If you are in a slide show mode, you may want to slow down the show
Occasionally, Google Earth might get upset that SeeTerra is no responding quickly enough. In that case you will see a window with an error message saying that "Fetch of NetworkLink 'SeeTerra Proxy' failed". You should click "Ignore" here. If you click "Stop" you will turn off the communication between Google Earth and SeeTerra. If you click "Continue" you will keep getting these warnings.
If you want to stop/restart the communication with Google Earth, you can either restart Google Earth, or you can go to the "Tools/Left Panel" and check/uncheck the box "Temporary Places/SEETERRA.KML"
When you stop Google Earth it will offer to save your Temporary Places. There is no need to do so.
You can improve your view of the Earth if you deselect most of the panels shown in the Tools menu
I have noticed that if Google Earth is running on a secondary monitor, it is extremely slow !
SeeTerra will not start another copy of Google Earth if one is running already. However, if the previous version of Google Earth was not started by SeeTerra it is possible that SeeTerra might not be able to get its attention. In that case, stop Google Earth and restart it from SeeTerra.

SeeTerra operation modes

There are several way to view an album with SeeTerra. In all modes you have all the features of the vieweing mode. What differs is whether you can edit tags, and whether you can use Google Earth. Basically, the following are the restrictions:

To use Google Earth, you must have Google Earth and SeeTerra installed and running on your local machine, and you must view your album (either local, or from a web server) through SeeTerra.
To be able to Edit, you must have SeeTerra on the machine on which the photos are stored: the local machine for a local album, or the web server for a web album. If your installation meets these conditions, you will see a "Edit mode" button in the control frame.
If you are not seeing the photos through SeeTerra, but there is copy of SeeTerra running on your local machine, you will see a "Proxy mode" button.

Here are the various modes of operation in detail:

Direct local: You view a local album by pointing the browser directlly to your gallery.html file (i.e., your Address box shows "C:\Necula\album\gallery.html"). In this mode you cannot edit tags or view your photos in Google Earth. You will see a "Proxy mode" button if there is a local copy of SeeTerra running. Pressing this button will take you to the "Proxy local" mode.
Direct remote: You view a remote album by pointing the browser to a gallery.html file stored on a web server (i.e., your Address box shows "http://www.yoursite.com/album/gallery.html"), and the web server does not have SeeTerra. In this mode you have the same features as in Direct local mode. The only exception is that downloading photos might be slower. In all Remote modes, it is important to have thumbnails. You will see a "Proxy mode" button if there is a local copy of SeeTerra running. Pressing this button will take you to the "Proxy local" mode.
Direct remote with editing: This is just like the Direct remote, except that the web server has the seeterra application and the album directory contains a properly configured cgi directory (see details). You can tell that editing is enabled if you see the "Edit Mode" button at the top of your album viewer window. In this mode, you can not only view your album, but you can also enter a full editing mode. You cannot, however, use Google Earth. You will see a "Proxy mode" button if there is a local copy of SeeTerra running. Pressing this button will take you to the "Proxy remote with editing " mode.
Proxy local: You view a local album by starting the SeeTerra application and using the Browse button to find a local album. You can tell you are in this mode because your Address box shows something like "http://127.0.0.1:8282/C%3ANecula/album/gallery.html". In this mode you have all the viewing and editing features of SeeTerra, including the Google Earth features. You should see a "Edit Mode" button always in this mode of operation. You will also see a button "Direct mode" to reach the "Direct local" mode (except when using Internet Explorer).
Proxy remote: You view a local album by starting the SeeTerra application and entering a URL to your album in the text box. The album is stored on a remote web server that does not have SeeTerra installed. Your Address box will show something like "http://127.0.0.1:8282/http%3A//www.yoursite.com/album/gallery.html". In this mode, you have all the vieweing features, including vieweing your photos on Google Earth, but there are no editing capabilities (there will be no "Edit Mode" button at the top). You will also see a button "Direct mode" to reach the "Direct remote" mode.
Proxy remote with editing: This is just like the "Proxy remote" mode except that the web server has the seeterra application and the album directory contains a properly configured cgi directory (see details). You can tell that editing is enabled if you see the "Edit Mode" button at the top of your album viewer window. In this mode, you have all the features of SeeTerra.