mcidas-V in a webpage?

[kbedka1]

A question was asked here, could McIDAS via ever be used interactively within a webpage, similar to the way people link to google maps to get directions? One could interact with the data to a limited extent in the same way one does by zooming into google maps.

[davep]

Hi Kris,

Since McIDAS-V is built using Java, it is conceivable that it could be modified to run as a Java Applet in a webpage. However I'm not sure there are any real benefits to doing this. When you run an applet in a browser it has to get the Java classes from a remote server, and the McIDAS-V class files and resources are quite large; currently about 60mb. Functionality would also be limited because the local servers would not be available (they are compiled binary code and are OS-specific). We did offer a Java Web Start .jnlp file for for a little while, but found that there were many compromises in functionality and user experience. Downloading and installing McIDAS-V does not require Administrator access, so anyone with access to a machine with a browser should be able to install it.

That being said, you can use Google Maps (or Google Earth) to view the output of McIDAS-V. Simply save your display as KML:

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/doc/mcv ... tures.html

then import into Google Maps:

http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documen ... pport.html

Of course you won't have all of the data probing capabilities of -V, but you should be able to overlay different layers and pan/zoom.

DaveP