I got this itch...and the result is the HabitableZone MER2003 Image Viewer.

Yet Another Image Viewer isn't really anything to get worked up about. But this one has one feature that's very cool, IMHO.

About a week ago I had an Epiphany™, and when it kicked in I said to myself "Hey, self!".

Self: "What?"
Me: "Have you noticed a singular characteristic of all these rover images?"
Self: "A lot of them are stereo pairs?"
Me: "Well, yeah, but that's not what I meant. Try again."
Self: "uhhh...."
Me: "That's right! They're chronologically ordered, and lots of the sequences make cool animations!"
Self: "So? Animated GIFs are a drag, movies like the one Nathan did are a fair bit of work, and few people have the right software. What's your point?"
Me: "My point is, why don't we design a Web-based animation viewer?"
Self: "What's this 'we' stuff, kemosabe?"
Me: "OK, OK, I'll do it. I'm the Web designer, anyway."
Self: "Knock yourself out!"

And so I did. The Image Viewer lets you select images from a thumbnail gallery to include in a simple "flip book" animation. HazCam images make nice animations, and surprisingly enough, so do Microscopic Imager images. The MI is a fixed focal-length instrument, so it routinely takes several images moving in closer, to find the optimum focus. Also, you get before-and-after sequences, like when they press into the soil, or grind rock.

The Image Viewer has a few other goodies, like displaying left and right-eye thumbnails shifted left or right, so you can keep straight which is which (this matters in animations: An animation made of both left and right images has a tendency to "rock" back-and-forth in a somewhat nauseating way). In the case of PanCam images, the thumbnails are displayed with a color-code to indicate the filter used, a service to people interested in creating color composites.

I'd appreciate it if y'all would give it a good testing, and let me know with posts on Community of any problems you find, or suggestions for improvement. If it's cool, feel free to spread the word!

A couple of days ago I had another Epiphany™, and another internal conversation:

Me: "Hey, self!"
Self: "Geez, what now?"
Me: "Remember when you said that a singular characteristic of the images is that many are stereo pairs?"
Self: "Yeah, so? You gonna write an anaglyph Java applet to create 'em on the fly? Gonna make everybody go out and buy those 50s-retro red and blue glasses?"
Me: "Nah, that's a lot of work. But I was wondering if you couldn't get some sort of stereo effect just displaying left and right images side by side."
Self: "Hmmm...you'd maybe need to put a sheet of cardboard between your eyes, on the same plane as your nose, to enforce separation....hmmm....maybe, but you're gonna have to try it, I think."
Me: "Yep, I think you're right again, Self. Just let me get the first version posted and get people testing it, then I'll start on cheap stereo."
Self: "Cool, man."

Stay tuned....