Panorama 2 User Guide
Minimum Requirements
- Pentium 120,
- 32MB of RAM,
- Graphics card with 2MB of onboard memory,
- DirectX 5.
The graphics card should have a hardware blitter for better performance. To
enjoy true color modes, the graphics card should have at least 4MB of onboard
memory.
Multiple OS versions
The rules stated in this text apply to the Windows version of the browser.
Versions for other operating systems may include minor differences, mainly in
key combinations. These differences are listed in textfiles included with the
OS-specific releases.
Troubleshooting
Some popular graphics card drivers have a bug that causes the program to
lock up on startup known to happen with S3Trio and Intel740. In such case
you can try to run the program in high color mode disabling true color
option or to disable vertical retrace sync. option. A better solution is to
get newer drivers from the manufacturer.
Speed Tradeoffs
On old systems the program may run slowly. To make it run smoother, you can
disable some options in the startup dialogbox, for example decrease music
quality or turn the music off for good, disable special effects or decrease
JPEG quality speed up JPEG decompression, though the latter does not affect
the speed on Pentium-compatibles and higher.
Navigating
It is easy to navigate through articles both with mouse and keyboard. As
there are two types of articles, ones with contiguous contents, and ones with
multiple columns, the techniques of scrolling them differ a bit.
To scroll a typical contiguous article, you can:
- use up/down arrows, which select links and scroll articles vertically
by a fixed small amount typically a line NOTE: if the article has aligned
position, up/down arrows scroll by a page,
- use Page Up/Page Down keys to scroll articles by a page,
- press Space key to precisely scroll articles down,
- roll the mouse wheel which scrolls articles in a way depending on
the wheel settings,
- move mouse cursor to the upper or lower edge of the screen and press
left mouse button to scroll articles by a line,
- move mouse cursor to the left or right edge of the screen and press
left mouse button to scroll articles by a page,
- drag the scrollbar thumb to quickly position articles,
- click on the scrollbar beyond the thumb to cause scrolling by a page,
- press Home or End key to scroll an article to the beginning or to the end.
To scroll an article with columns you can:
- use up/down arrows to select links and scroll articles by a column,
- use left/right arrows to scroll articles by a column,
- use Page Up/Page Down keys to scroll articles by a page,
- roll the mouse wheel to scroll articles by a column per threshold,
- move mouse cursor to the upper or lower edge of the screen and press
left mouse button to scroll articles by a page,
- move mouse cursor to the left or right edge of the screen and press
left mouse button to scroll articles left or right by a column,
- drag the scrollbar thumb to quickly position articles,
- click on the scrollbar beyond the thumb to cause scrolling by a page,
- press Home or End key to scroll an article to the beginning or to the end.
Some other legacy key combinations also exist:
- Shift+arrow down/up work like Page Down/Up,
- Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End work like Home and End,
- Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down also work like Home and End.
You can move through visible links either using up and down arrow keys or
by pointing the links with mouse. To enter activate a link you can press
Enter, Ctrl+right arrow or simply click left mouse button on that link. This
way you can enter an article or cause some external action e.g. start a web
browser.
To exit an article and return to a previous one you can right-click, press
Backspace, Esc or Ctrl+left arrow.
To quit being in the main article e.g. menu, you can press Backspace or
Esc. In any other article you can press F10, Alt+Q or Alt+X.
Pressing keys 1 through 8 you can select a tune. Of course the actual
number of available tunes depends on an issue. To select a tune entered in the
startup dialogbox, you can press the F3 key. To turn off the music, you can
press 0 key. You may also want to adjust the overall sound volume with +
plus and - minus keys up and down respectively. The music is normally
playing in cyclic mode, i.e. song by song. To select other modes you can
press the R key for random playback or the L key for looping playback. To
return to the cyclic mode press the C key.
If an issue or an article contains more than one background image/theme,
the other themes can be activated with Ctrl+number keys numbers 1 through 9
are available.
Other available keys:
- F1 - display help,
- F2 - save current article to disk in HTML, if only possible,
- F4 - enable/disable effects e.g. smooth scrolling at run-time,
- F7 - search through articles by words,
- Ctrl+P - print current article,
- Ctrl+Enter - copy selected link to clipboard.
List of keys
up select next link or perform article type-dependent action
line up, page up or column left
down select previous link or perform article type-dependent action
line down, page down or column right
left page up or column left
right page down or column right
Page Up page up
Page Down page down
Home beginning of an article
End end of an article
Space pixel down only contiguous articles
Shift+Up same as page up
Shift+Down same as page down
Ctrl+Home same as home
Ctrl+End same as end
Ctrl+Page Up same as home
Ctrl+Page Down same as end
Enter enter link open article, go to the Internet, etc.
Ctrl+right ditto
Esc exit current article or quit if in main article
Backspace ditto
Ctrl+left exit current article
F10 quit
Alt+Q ditto
Alt+X ditto
1,2,..,8 select song slot
F3 select song entered at commandline
0 stop current song
C cyclic playback
R random playback
L looping playback
+ volume up
- volume down
Ctrl+1..9 select background slot choose background theme
Ctrl+Enter copy external link to clipboard
F1 help
F2 save current article in HTML
F4 toggle enable/disable visual effects
F7 search through articles by words
List of mouse actions
move cursor upon link
select link
press left button on link
enter link
press right button
exit current article
roll mouse wheel
scroll depends on what is defined in Control Panel
move mouse to upper edge of the screen/window
scroll up
move mouse to lower edge of the screen/window
scroll down
move mouse to left edge of the screen/window
scroll left only in multi-column articles
move mouse to right edge of the screen/window
scroll right only in multi-column articles
drag left-click and move the progressbar thumb
scroll
left-click on the progressbar beyond the thumb
scroll by a page
Technical Stuff
The program uses registry key HKEYCURRENTUSERSoftwareChris DraganPanorama
to store configuration information.
The program uses system temporary directory TEMP or TMP environment variable
to store temporary files usually font libraries.
Articles are saved in a subdirectory SAVE sub- to current directory. The
list of visited articles is saved in file visited.txt in current directory.
The program uses Intependent JPEG Groups JPEG decompression routines.
http://www.ijg.org/.
The program uses unrar decompression routines http://www.rarsoft.com/.
The Windows version of the program is capable of playing modules XM, IT, S3M
and MOD as well as MP3s and WAVs using BASS music system
http://www.icl.ndirect.co.uk/music/.