Spinning Earth
( Click here to go to Utech Spinning Earth for WordPress )
Free to download, free to use
The Spinning Earth is a tiny Flash movie that can be displayed on your website or application. Unlike conventional movie clips, it is extremely small in size (less than 50kB!), yet rich in graphical content. Other rotating globes are either huge in file size or have very basic graphics. A sophisticated algorithm allowed us to combine the best of both worlds; a small file and great looking graphics.
Spinning Earth is free and you can set the background to any color you like (see readme.txt).
Still using Internet Explorer and getting an error when opening the zip file? Try FireFox!
Alternatively download SpinningEarth.7z which can be opened with the free 7-Zip from
How to put Spinning Earth on your webpage
For instructions how to embed Spinning Earth into your website please see readme.txt which is enclosed in the download.
Attention WordPress users
If you use WordPress there is an even simpler solution with a plugin. Please follow this link to go to the Spinning Earth for WordPress plugin page.
GRACIAS POR EL RELOJ
[...] Spinning Earth [...]
Fabulous and elegant! and easy to use! and small file size!
Well done and many thanks!
This is a very elegant animation indeed. So bad every time I download this the file is corrupted (So says Winarj, and 7-Zip says this is a compression format not supported).
Thank you for your feedback and for pointing this out Valter, I have made some changes to the page. Spinning Earth can now be downloaded as 7-zip file as well. Thanks again.
I cannot unzip file with any program.
Which file are you trying to unizip (there is a zip and 7z forma) and which operating system are you using?
I have Windows 7 Pro 64bit, I believe I tried the included zip program, 7zip and winrar.
I have already finished the project that I needed this for so I will not need the globe.
Thanks,
Alex Molitor
Hello, is it possible to setup this globe to a transparent background? I’m presently using revolver maps but they are heavy on resources. You can see more at http://www.skyriver.org
I’d like to make the globe at 180 pixels.
Thanks
Den
Yes Den, that should not be a problem. Simply replace the bgcolor parameter in the OBJECT and EMBED tag with the WMODE parameters:
1. In the OBJECT tag:
replace
<param name="bkcolor" value="#....>with
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">2. In the EMBED tag:
replace
bgcolor="#..."with
wmode="transparent"Hope this helps
Cheers
Meini
Hi Meini,
I noticed that you had a new version with a brightness and a URL option. What code will I need to add to incorporate these new options on my site? This is tmy code now:
Thanks
Den
Looks like the code didn’t make it…
Hi Den,
yes the commenting system here does not like code too much. But what you want to do is to replace both instances of the url and/or brightness figures with what you want it to be. Brightness has a range from 0 to 100. The new readme file shows an example. Should be easy enough to work out. Let me know if you get stuck.
Cheers
Meini
Fun widget. Any plans for a speed control option. It would be great to have it slow down to real time – that is one revolution per 24 hrs – maybe with a clock feature as well.
Thanks for the work regardless.
No, not really, but if you need customization, send me a message via the contact form and or to meini at utechworld.com and I we can talk about it.
Have fun
Meini
Hi,
Very nice animation but a little too big. I tried to play with the flash variables but I cannot scale down the video. I’d yo see it maybo at 30%.
Thank you, bye.
Thanks Pierre, there is no limit in how big or small you can have the earth. Just remember to change both value pairs for height and width to the same number. So there are actually 4 values to change.
HTH
Meini
Hi, Thank you for a well designed spinning globe. This was just what i needed. Is there any way to make the water semi transparent?
Thank you,
Randy
No, unfortunately there isn’t, but you can make the background transparent as described above.
Interesting… somewhere I’ve seen a very similar spinning globe, but it marked the geographical location of recent visitors on the image with green dots. I’m actually looking for that one. :S I wish I’ve bookmarked it, but I haven’t. Aren’t you the developer of that one also, or otherwise do you know where can I find the one I’m looking for?
No, sorry, can’t help you there. The key feature of this spinning globe is its size and therefore download speed, which I believe is unbeatable. Obviously the more features the bigger the file gets.
Hi. first i want to thank you for such of beautiful spinning earth graphic. is there any way i can stop the image from directing people to your website? please let me know. thanks
Hi soli,
This is a new feature that I only enabled recently. Simply add or change the flash variable “url” to a blank string or the URL of your choice. Don’t forget to do this it in both section of the code. For an example you can inspect the code on this page.
HTH
Meini
please forgive my ignorance on the subject
How do I do that? would you please explain to me? thanks
I do not know what level of knowledge you have and what software you use, therefore, as much as I would like to, answering your question would equate to writing a book. If you use WordPress have a look at my WordPress plugin of the Spinning Earth. If not, you need to at least tell me how far you got with implementing the SE. Please also remember to download the file again as I only recently changed it.
Let me know where exactly you are stuck and I try my best to help.
sorry I don’t have any knowledge with any of the terms you just use
i was just trying to make it so it didn’t have the option to click on it. that’s when it directs me to your web.
Have a look at the new readme file, which I just uploaded. It contains an example. Let me know if you still can’t work it out.
Thank you very much! God bless u
I would like to use the spinning globe on a website that I am developing that will be moved to its own url in the near future. It is currently at [...] and will be moved to http://www.conservfirst.com in the near future. This spinning earth would be perfect for my client’s site, which currently has the blue marble photo. I have followed the readme.txt instructions, but it isn’t working, can’t see it. When I refresh the page, I see a blank square just for an instant where I placed the code in my code. I am testing it at [...] Please let me know if I am missing something. Thanks. Great graphic by the way!!!
[Post edited by admin]
See reply to next post
I just changed the background color to #0000ff and the blue square shows up, but not the spinning earth graphic.
Make sure the two links to the swf file are correct. I noticed in the example, the filename has been differnent to the real one. Thanks for making me aware of this. I shall change this straight away.
Thanks. It works great now!
Hi Meini!
What an awesome thing! I appreciate you for your contrubution for WordPress family.
I would ask for maybe it could be a better idea that when we install and activate a widget appears in the widgets area to put this into sidebar.. or please recommend me for another plug-in to put the nice globe into my sidebar.. many thanks
You can use the Sidebar Shortcodes plugin and then simply use the regular WP Spinning Earth shortcode. Let me know how it works.
Hi Meini,
Is there a way to embed the animation in blogger as a widget? Or host the swf.file somewhere and hotlink to it?
Hi,
solved the problem! It’s working.
Fantastic simple animation of our globe! How to place left or right in a post wordpress site?
http://www.utechworld.com/projects/spinning-earth-for-wp/
How do I change link destination (URL) for the spinning Globe
Interesting Earth’s rotation visualisation could be found also here: http://time.unitarium.com/earth-clock/