Suggestions

[Petie]

Most browsers have some sort of indication built into the status bar. Coding a progress bar manually is far more effort than it's worth.

As for your error suggestion, that's already done. Try uploading a text file or JPEG image and see for yourself.

[Dazz]

You can see the progress in the bottom left corner in Chrome, is what Petie is effectively saying. I'm unsure on other browsers, but it's displayed as a percentage in Chrome.

[Petie]

Come to think of it, it might only be in Chrome, which is a shame.

[SuperFlomm]

There is an Add-On for Firefox called UploadProgress. Though I have not tested it yet.

[Petie]

Related, are zip icons planned to be implemented any time soon? I recall someone saying that zip downloads would get a special icon border sort of like the ones RTB used to do with the old icon system.

Bringing this up again, curious if it's potentially happening. I think it's a good idea.

This is finally up and running! Take a look and let us know what you think and/or if you have any suggestions!

[medusa86]

Hi! 
I don't know if this was already suggested for the Models site, but do think that a embedded OBJ viewer could be implemented?

Something like http://www.solidsmack.com/design/a-free-...-required/

Thanks!

It's a great idea, but I think it might be more effort than what you get out of it...

Pretty much this. I do appreciate you providing a link to a possible solution though! This has come up before but it's usually just "you should make it so we can view the models on the site" and no suggestion on how to do so. That said, models are submitted as zip files so, to make this work, they'd need to be uncompressed on the server side (since you still need the textures and such - it's not just one file that goes into displaying a model) which isn't a resource or space-efficient process unfortunately.

Thanks for the answer... 
I've forgot that all models are compressed on a Zip file... 
I do believe that there is a way to actually have a plugin to read the obj and materials inside a ZIP file (like https://sketchfab.com/) but I'm still researching how to do it.

If I find anything, I'll let you guys know...

I've been visiting the site for some time now so I want to try and be part of the active community now

[aceres]

Well, you could use Adobe Flash. There's an AS3 Zip class but it doesn't support folders inside the zip, perhaps there's another one that supports folders. This can be used to extract any resources inside. You could also have a treeview object to show contents of the zip and user could select objects or images to view on their own.

Then using Away3D you could display 3D objects and even animations if present. However supporting various formats won't be easy. Besides many 3D formats, you have image formats like TGA or DDS which may lack classes for them to be opened in Flash.

Another useful thing would be the ability to get the already downloaded zip from Flash so that it won't have to be downloaded again.

[Petie]

Besides the fact that what you're proposing seems extremely complicated to set up, it relies on Flash which is not something I intend to implement now. It's full of holes and it's dying technology so it's better to avoid it at this point.

[aceres]

That was a suggestion to medusa86 since he mentioned plugins. He could look into Flash if he wants to spend time on this but I guess no need since you don't intend to use it. However I'd like to note that if someone made a SWF like this, it would be extremely simple for you to use. You would just need to add extra few lines of embed codes in your pages and SWF would do the rest. You could add regular link below incase someone without Flash opens the page.

I'd also like to mention that it wouldn't be anymore complicated than Unity or HTML5. Especially with HTML, it's usually a headache to get things to work correctly in every browser. And Flash isn't dying on desktop as much as Apple made people believe. All this "Flash suckz" propaganda was mostly fueled by Apple to prevent people from accessing millions of free content so that they would use their app store instead. This is obvious judging by the excuses given by Steve years ago, they simply make no sense since all they had to do was provide the option. "On", "Off", "On Demand" options render any kind of excuse pointless since it lets both people who want and don't want it on their phones be happy at the same time. I'm sure Apple would ban HTML as well if it didn't meant banning all web pages.

Anyway, if you insist that Flash is bad, what do you think about Unity or HTML5? Though I doubt you could find anyone willing to do it in HTML5.

[Petie]

My point wasn't that Flash is overly complicated. It's that any solution is going to be complicated due to the nature of the submissions. They're not all in the same format or organized in the same way. They don't even all contain the same features.

And Flash's death is not Apple propaganda. Major sites are moving away from it. But even if it's not already on its way out, it truly needs to be. Flash is one of the leading sources or zero-day exploits out there and I, for one, will not be disappointed to see it disappear.

We're getting off topic though. My point is, as much as I'd love to be able to actually display the models live on the site, there doesn't seem to be a way to do it simply using the files we already have uploaded (and/or without a massive drain on server resources processing the zip files on the fly).

[aceres]

We're getting off topic though. My point is, as much as I'd love to be able to actually display the models live on the site, there doesn't seem to be a way to do it simply using the files we already have uploaded (and/or without a massive drain on server resources processing the zip files on the fly).

That's all a matter of whether the chosen environment has a Zip extractor class written or not, the rest is just making use of it. The real trouble is getting those files from the zip correctly to have the model rendered (which has nothing to do with server resources since it'll be happening in the user's browser).

And Flash's death is not Apple propaganda. Major sites are moving away from it. But even if it's not already on its way out, it truly needs to be. Flash is one of the leading sources or zero-day exploits out there and I, for one, will not be disappointed to see it disappear.

Most people went with the flow but there are still many Flash game sites or Facebook games. I also have a Flash banner on this site right now which means you are actually already using it. From what I read, exploits have to be coded into the SWF so there shouldn't be a problem if it's from a trusted source. Should a person do it, you could have them post the codes here so people can check it and you can build the SWF on your own to remove risk. So would you accept Flash in this case or not?

If not, is there anything else you would accept like Unity or HTML5 so that someone interested can work on it?

[Petie]

You're not wrong about games and sites like Facebook still making use of Flash to a certain extent but it's not nearly as prevalent as it once was. I was just giving an example as to why it wouldn't be bad for Flash to finally die off. That being said, it isn't just compromised SWFs that pose a security threat - the platform as a whole is riddled with issues. Again though, that's not my logic here.

As for the server end, you're not entirely correct. Sure, extraction of the zip might happen on the client side if whatever plugin we were to implement downloads the zip first but that is still a pretty significant drain given that the zips are often fairly large and the entire file would need to be transferred every time someone wanted to look at it (barring caching on the client side, of course, but that still only mitigates a small portion of the issue). But again, even that isn't the primary concern - there's just not enough consistency in the data to work out a way to do this without massively overhauling the existing submissions and coming up with set guidelines for future ones.

If you can figure out way to alleviate all of these issues, I'm all ears but just coming up with a plugin that's capable of reading the contents of a zip file isn't enough to make this feasible.

[aceres]

Getting zip downloaded every page view is indeed a problem. How about the plugin first shows the regular preview image and there could be a button to load the zip file for further examination. Once it's downloaded, the plugin can show the object if it can or error message that it couldn't process it. Then there could be another button to download the already downloaded data to the user computer. This should be about the same strain on the server.

I found this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23599...irectories which is said to handle subdirectories in Zips so I will try a Flash project with OBJ files. Btw, I think it should be possible to render geometry (without textures/materials) relatively easy.

One question though, are they all Zip files or are there Rar, 7z etc. as well?

[medusa86]

Ok, I think I found something worth checking out.

There is a way to do all this using only JavaScript. 
There are two scripts on the web:
zip.js - Let's you zip, unzip files directly on the browser (I think it works in the background)
three.js - To view 3D models online

Since I'm using the computer at work I've still haven't had much time to see how to make these two scripts work together... and if it can't be applied to this site, no problem, at least I've learned something.

[Petie]

Getting zip downloaded every page view is indeed a problem. How about the plugin first shows the regular preview image and there could be a button to load the zip file for further examination. Once it's downloaded, the plugin can show the object if it can or error message that it couldn't process it. Then there could be another button to download the already downloaded data to the user computer. This should be about the same strain on the server.

I found this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23599...irectories which is said to handle subdirectories in Zips so I will try a Flash project with OBJ files. Btw, I think it should be possible to render geometry (without textures/materials) relatively easy.

One question though, are they all Zip files or are there Rar, 7z etc. as well?

I'd still much rather do this without Flash. HTML5 canvas/JS would be preferred. Still probably worth experimenting with. And your idea may reduce strain on the server enough to make it feasible.

They're all .zip archives. We used to accept other formats but have since re-archived all non-zips and changed the system to only accept zip files.

Ok, I think I found something worth checking out.

There is a way to do all this using only JavaScript. 
There are two scripts on the web:
zip.js - Let's you zip, unzip files directly on the browser (I think it works in the background)
three.js - To view 3D models online

Since I'm using the computer at work I've still haven't had much time to see how to make these two scripts work together... and if it can't be applied to this site, no problem, at least I've learned something.

I haven't looked at them yet but it seems promising given that it's all JS. Hopefully we can work something out because I really would love to see 3D models directly on the site.