Web Page on a Prim!
Update 25 Sep 2006: I managed to max out my month’s allocation of snapshots in less than 24 hours. I have sent the site developer some funds and service should be restored shortly.
If you could look inside of my brain (perish the thought) you’d see all sorts of random parts tumbling around, bouncing and bumping into each other from time to time (but not that often — I am pretty sure there’s plenty of empty space inside). When those parts bump into each other, some sparks fly, an idea is generated, and sometimes I end up with something interesting.
A bunch of people in the Second Life community have been interested in having what they call “HTML on a Prim.” The ubrowser has apparently been used to create a prototype of this feature but to date it has not emerged in a production release of the Second Life client.
Earlier today a couple of those random parts in my brain intersected and I realized that I could do a simple and crude version of HTML on a Prim, building on the work that I had already done to create Text on a Prim. As noted in a previous blog entry, there are lots of ways to create a graphical snapshot or thumbnail of a web page without too much trouble.
So, here’s what I’ve got:
Appropriately enough, I am showing the Second Life home page in the screen shot. I am also wearing a cool new shirt that I found at Designs by Adri (Don’t worry, this won’t turn into a fashion blog anytime soon).
If you want to try this out, go here and then send the URL on channel 3 using a command like “/3 http://www.amazon.com”. Right now it takes 5 to 10 seconds to fetch the remote web page, generate the image, and get it uploaded to the client. Not instant, but not too bad either.
If you are standing in front of the Developer Relations Outpost and are wondering where these things are, they are on the roof!
So what’s next? I am planning to get some decent land and to start selling Text and Web prims sometime soon. I still need to figure out how to embed self-updating scripts in the objects, design real APIs, and all sorts of fun things. Maybe I’ll take a couple of vacation days next month and whip this into shape. This is one of those fun topics where each thing I do begets 10 more ideas, and the biggest challenge is simply focusing on doing a couple of things really well instead of trying to do everything all at once.
Your ideas, comments, feedback, and questions are all welcome, preferably as comments to this post. You can also go in-world and join the group that’s called “Text On a Prim / Web Page On a Prim.” I’ll send regular updates to that group, including solicitations for beta testers.
Dang I’m tired, but this was worth doing.
[...] Jeff Barr in his blog has written up what he has been doing to get a snapshot of a webpage on a prim. He mentions the ubrowser, and the fact that it has been tried but is as yet not in production to put full web functionality as a texture on any object in Second Life. Many of us (us being people interested in such things) are chomping at the bit, as we did with the http requests, to be able to have this sort of function. It makes the integration to web1.0 and web2.0 complete. People will be able to build active bookmark walls with existing content and services as one way to not require a complete re build of content, whilst they move to a more Services Orientated Architecture. A spectrum of options for integration makes this sort of platform even more attractive. I really like the way that many of us in Second Life are all trying to do similar things, but some people get there first. This is a prime example as I know I had considered ways of doing this. Its great that a wide team of people are all trying to both be productive and push things forward, with a hint of competition. As usual its where you read it first that changes your perception of who did it first (before anyone hassles me by saying they have already done it). Jeff has turned his snapshot text on a prim through the media parcel (not unlike the flickr integration on hackdiary) but is doing some rendition of images with an out of world proxy service. I popped over to see it, and bumped into Jeffronius Batra, and he pointed me to the demo area. I asked if it was OK to take some snapshots and to do a trackback. I also asked myself permission to reproduce eightbar as a graphic on a prim via the service :-) [...]
Pingback by eightbar » Blog Archive » Web page as a texture in Second Life — 9/24/2006 @ 6:36 am
Interesting Jeff….my thoughts here http://www.alexbarnett.net/blog/archive/2006/09/24/Virtual-social-software.aspx
Comment by Alex Barnett — 9/24/2006 @ 9:02 pm
Second Life Web on a Prim Hack…
I won’t be able to check this out for an hour or two, but wanted to quickly flag the fact (flagged to me by Second Life resident Troy McLuhan) that Amazon.com’s Jeff Barr has hacked up a system whereby he can put a Web page on the surface o…
Trackback by 3pointD.com — 9/25/2006 @ 2:32 am
“Right now it takes 5 to 10 seconds to fetch the remote web page, generate the image, and get it uploaded to the client. Not instant, but not too bad either.” … who gets footed with the L$10 upload fee? ;)
Comment by Psyra Extraordinaire — 9/26/2006 @ 8:03 am
W00t, Jeff - excellent!
Comment by Osprey Therian — 9/26/2006 @ 8:21 am
Jeff, that’s neat. I have some concerns about how it was done, though.
First, the script seems to be uploading a webpage snapshot as a texture. If so, that’s an example of “automated resource creation.” The Lindens have stated repeatedly that automated resource creation is not something they want to allow. Have they changed their stance on the issue? If so, do they plan to allow all users to enjoy ARC, or did they grant a special exemption for this project?
Second, LSL2 offers no method for performing programmatic texture uploads. Did you have access to special script tools to perform this? If so, will the tools be made available to everyone or were the tools made available for this project alone?
Thanks. :)
Comment by paul felts — 9/26/2006 @ 8:38 am
Jeff, have you brainstormed any means of putting clickable links on your prim-pages? I had some ideas about getting cursor coordinates, projecting them onto the prim surface, relaying that data (somehow) via http request to your outworld script and…
well there is where it breaks down :(
Comment by Luciftias Neurocam — 9/26/2006 @ 9:48 am
NM. I see now that it’s done with Quicktime. :)
Comment by paul felts — 9/26/2006 @ 10:17 am
Great work Jeff - does this mean I can forget about doing the internal version of “Web On A Prim” now :)
Seriously though, it’s exactly this kind of creative use of the functionality we provide that I find so inspiring.. I am continuing to plug away on Mozilla integration, albeit in the evenings - I’m making progress but it’s very slow going.
Congrats again.
Cheers.
Callum.
Comment by Callum Linden — 9/26/2006 @ 2:16 pm
HTML on a prim is going completely the wrong direction.
We need to improve the ability of LSL to control client textures, with some kind of ability to render text on a prim client-side, using something similar to media textures like this… but all in LSL, without bloating the already hefty SL client with a whole separate rendering engine. Much more efficient and much better integrated into the SL world.
Comment by Argent Stonecutter — 9/26/2006 @ 3:59 pm
[...] Web Page on a Prim! Proof of concept to display web content in Second life (tags: scripting secondlife web lsl) [...]
Pingback by NMC Campus Observer » links for 2006-09-27 — 9/26/2006 @ 11:27 pm
Argent, while I agree with much of what you say about the direction for the client in the long-term, I think it’s worth considering this as a useful short-term approach while we (all) anticipate the long awaited uBrowser. The media streaming support is there. The Mozilla Gecko engine is not there yet. Seems like a worthy hack to me. Anything that hints at where the client should be going can surely only be a good thing.
Comment by Roo Reynolds — 9/29/2006 @ 4:29 am
[...] I straightened out some isses with the Web Page on a Prim, and it is now up and running again. I have some big plans for this and for the Text on a Prim and hope to have something saleable in another week or so. [...]
Pingback by Jeff Barr’s Blog » Back From Boston — 9/29/2006 @ 4:30 am
Hi Jeff, I’m a bit late to the party - this is cool, I did something a little similar (but more basic) with BBC news - I have a news ticker that displays the latest 10 news headlines on a prim (cycles through them, displaying each for 10 seconds). If you touch a headline, it launches the browser with the BBC news page for the item that was displayed at the time you touch the prim. If anyone’s interestes to see it, screenshot, link and teleport etc. at http://menti.net/?p=13
Comment by Mario — 10/4/2006 @ 8:01 am
This is nice work Jeff! Reminds me of the Gopher/MOO integration paper from Larry Masinter in olden days, http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/MOO/papers/MOOGopher.html
Comment by Dan Brickley — 10/9/2006 @ 1:02 am
[...] Web on a prim, oh yeah! [...]
Pingback by Jeff McNeill » Blog Archive » The virtual and the real interpenetrate… — 10/9/2006 @ 9:49 pm
[...] Web on a prim, oh yeah! [...]
Pingback by Donnagh McDonnagh » Blog Archive » Real World and Second Life interpenetrate — 10/11/2006 @ 11:22 am
[...] Well there is a Amazon guru working on this idea and hes almost ready to start selling the application. Jeff Barr is his name and as well as webpage on a prim hes also got text on a prim. I’m off to check out his work and beg for a beta release to test. [...]
Pingback by Its webpage on a prim party time! at CytroTech — 10/24/2006 @ 7:25 am
this is amazing, but…
How do you actually do it?
Please Email me @
roryflyguy@gmail.com
Comment by MCDOODLe — 2/3/2007 @ 11:58 am
good question, mcdoodle. it can`t be true that the diskussion stopped!?
Comment by martin — 2/25/2007 @ 2:06 pm
[...] SECOND LIFE, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Jeff Barr (right) has the futuristic title of Web Services Evangelist at online retailing giant Amazon.com; as Jeffrey Batra in Second Life he is working hard on projects that bridge the virtual world and the real one.Will his employer follow suit? [...]
Pingback by INTERVIEW:Amazon’s Jeff Barr on future of shopping — 3/12/2007 @ 6:49 am
Wow… it’s really useful, where can I find the code?
Comment by TheDP — 7/27/2007 @ 8:23 am