CU3ER – a Free Flash 3D Image Viewer
This is one of those apps that makes you stop and look at it and think for a minute. First, it’s just another Flash viewer you can plug into your existing layout. Then when you look at it, it starts to look a little more interesting.
CU3ER (“cuber”) is free to use on both commercial and personal sites. Once you try it, you’ll be hunting for a place to plug it in on your site. So be warned. On many sites, this is a design disaster, of course. On the other hand, you can fully customize CU3BER, so maybe it will look good.
Most of the customization takes place using XML tags and probably the coolest part of the app are the selectable transitions between photos you’re showing. The slicer, which is default and pretty cool, can be customized as to how many cuts, the turning direction for the slices to transition, delays, etc. Makes for a pretty eye-catching show.
Each image can be shown directly, with navigation to move between them, or as a slideshow with automatic delivery, or both. Descriptions can be added to each image, if you wish, or left out for a pure graphics display.
Using the documentation, I had it running in about ten minutes and the basic setup is in as many steps. If you’re comfortable with editing style sheets, you can do even more customizing through the XML. In fact, nearly every aspect of the CU3ER app can be visually changed or manipulated in one way or another through that config XML.
Although the CU3BER isn’t going to look great on every site or in every situation, it’s one of those nifty widgets you get that just has to find a home somewhere on your site. At least once. This is a great app that is definitely fun to play with. It’s free, so give it a shot!
