In a prior post I went through changing the size the 360 is displayed using the “Embed code with ID” settings. Some people may find it easier to use the “General” settings in iPanorama to set the desired size of the displayed image. Just insert the “Standard shortcode” and you are done.

Leaving all settings at their defaults, and using the “Standard Shortcode” I get the following for my #9 iPanorama tour.

So, it appears that the “default” ends ups 543×269… why, I have no clue.

Note: You MUST add the units, in this case it is pixels, so make sure you put “px” after the number!! Or you will get really frustrated trying to figure out why it isn’t working!

Now, to experiment, in “General” settings, “Container”, Turn off Container “Auto width” and “Auto height”, then set them to another value. I used 300px by 100px here.

Not so useful at this size! Unless you just wanted people to see the controls!

The actual image comes out at 269×89, maybe to preserve aspect ratios? Allow room for borders? Maybe padding? Again, I don’t know, but it does change the displayed image size. You can tweak the sizes to get closer to the actual display size you want.

Changing the Container size, but only using the Width setting while leaving the height set to “Auto”.

Again, we can see it has changed size, to match the width entered into the Container settings. Not sure where the height comes from!

This is mostly to show that in fact these settings work, and how to make basic changes to them.

I see questions on the WordPress support size about changing the size of the window a tour is displayed in. Thought I would demo it, just for fun.

To do this I normally just use the “Short Code” section “Embed code with ID”.

I’m not sure, but you may want to leave the settings in “General” checked for “Auto height” and “Auto Width”, but this may over ride them anyway.

You can see this defaults to a window width of 560 pixels by 315 pixels. That makes the window look like this:

Inspecting the page shows that indeed it is a 560×315 size.

Changing the Embed shortcode to now be 760×215 we can see the effect on the display size.

Again, we can confirm the actual display size in comparison to the first window.

So, I think it is about that easy to set the initial display size.

Still playing around with the iPanorama plugin for Word Press. When reading about the features on the web site I noticed it said there was a compass to help keep you headed in the right direction!Since I do mostly 360°’s of nature preserves and trails, I thought a compass would be nice. I never could find out how to make it work, and so wrote in the support forum to see what was the secret!

Turns out, it was turned on in the program, one of those many little things that get missed during a major update. No problem, the author soon restored it, and I was off to the races!

It was nice, but I thought it lacking, at least for what I wanted.

As you can see, it was quite small, and being black and white was not easily noticeable. While some people may like the fact that it is unobtrusive, it wasn’t for me.

I wrote the plugin author and asked about if, and how it could be changed. He replied promptly that yes it could be easily done in the “Custom CSS” section. Unfortunately as much as I wish I was able to program, I can’t.

He was very accommodating and sent me some sample code. I tried it, and it works so good! And while I can’t write original code, I can often hack up what is there to tweak it to my tastes.

So, if you have an interest, and want to add, or change the compass. Here are my hopefully simple directions.

• (1) In the scene you want a compass to appear in first make sure it is enabled.
• (2) In the settings, turn the “Compass” slider on.
  • Note that you must do this for each scene in which you want the compass to appear.
• (3) There is a field for “North offset”. Nothing to do now, but you may want to come back here later. If your compass does not point north correctly change the degree offset here.
  • Tip: clicking on the compass points it due North. If the image is not showing North at the top rotate the image so North is “Up” then note the current angle and estimate the degree change needed.
• Save the tour, then if you use the preview button you should see the default small arrow. Where it appears depends on the widget (Theme) you are using. It should look like Figure 1 above.

But you don’t want that plain old compass do you! First you need a good compass image. Then to change the default to your custom image, copy this code into the “Custom CSS” window:

(4) Make sure you enable styles!

(5) enter or paste the code and modify the URL for your compass image.

.ipnrm .ipnrm-widget .ipnrm-compass:before {
    display:none;
}
.ipnrm .ipnrm-widget .ipnrm-compass:after {
    display:none;    
}
.ipnrm .ipnrm-widget .ipnrm-compass.ipnrm-active {
    width:64px;  
    height:64px;
    background-image:url();
    background-size:contain;
}
?

You can further tweak the size using the “width” and “height” parameters.