Putting a Bing Map on your Website

update : if you have arrived here via a web search (e.g. /tag/bing-maps/), please go to the main article page to see my examples in action and read my updated advice about putting maps on your blog!

Looking at my analytics, I was surprised to find that some users had managed to land on my blog having searched for ‘putting a Bing Map on your website’. I assume this site appeared in search results because of the tags ‘Bing’ and ‘Maps’ which occur frequently in my posts. Inspired by this discovery, I have decided to provide the answer to this search query here so as not to disappoint any future Bing map seeking visitors.

The Easy Guide : what are your options?

1. Use Multimap embedded Maps
2. Use the Bing Maps API
3. Use the Multimap Open API
4. Resources

Multimap embedded Maps

Did you know that Multimap, the largest UK-based online mapping service was acquired by Microsoft in December 2007? Multimap is now part of the Bing Maps portfolio and includes much of the mapping data and imagery available on the Bing Maps site whilst having kept its distinctive and popular local map styles, notably Collins Bartholomew (A-Z) and Ordnance Survey in the UK. So if you are using a Multimap it is a Bing Map. Go forth and embed:

• Go to multimap.com, search maps and find the map you want
• Click on the top right of the map next to the print button
• read and accept the terms and conditions by ticking the box then click ‘customise and preview’
• follow the instructions on the next page and copy the html for insertion in your page and if you feel confident you can also edit the html to further customise the result

An embedded Multimap

<div id="MMEmbeddedMap">    <iframe frameborder="0" height="400" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.multimap.com/client/embed/?width=650&amp;height=400&amp;lat=51.47805&amp;lon=-0.00368&amp;zoomFactor=16&amp;emid=HxidDF8KkD6gftefSe7mDU3teaLHNmVi&amp;qs=London&amp;countryCode=GB&amp;mapType=map&amp;moveMap=116,46" width="650">    </iframe></div>

This is a map of Greenwich Park pinpointing the location at which I took the pictures for my Photosynth, HDView and DeepZoom post. The code below is what I used to create this map. It is copy-and-pasted from the multimap embed service. I have tweaked it a little, but you don’t need to if you are not comfortable with that. Note that with minimum effort you get:

• a draggable map (yes you can move this map with your mouse)
• context actions by right clicking the map (zoom in/out and ‘move map to here’)

That’s a lot for around 5 minutes work and I am a big fan of the local maps (here A-Z) which display so much more information than standard vector maps found on Google and elsewhere.

Use the Bing Maps API

This is more advanced than the previous example, but delivers much more potential. If your site is non-commercial you can use this for free. Licensing information for commercial sites is at the bottom. You will need at least a basic knowledge of JavaScript to use this although for basic functionality, it is still very easy.

• go to http://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers/ and click on the interactive SDK
• grab or edit then grab the code you need from there (the ‘Show Me’ tab gives you the interactive preview so you can see the results of any changes made straight away without having to leave the SDK)
• paste the code into your webpage and away you go (see below for advice to wordpress bloggers)

A Bing Map showing Birds Eye view with a Photosynth overlay

Mouse over the marker to see the synth.This is again the same location I gave above showing the View of London from Greenwich Observatory photosynth, which featured in the Photosynth, HDView and DeepZoom post. Here I used the basic interactive SDK code to show a specific Birds Eye scene and added an overlay with the photosynth included inside as an iframe (this code snippet is also a copy and paste from the photosynth website).

var synth1 = "<iframe frameborder=0 src='http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=38e9b3b7-db8e-4155-918d-345344f2ea8b&delayLoad=true&slideShowPlaying=false' width='400' height='300'></iframe>"; <!--Pushpin Objects for each Synth--> var propertypin1 = null; <!--Lat Longs for each Pushpin--> var propertypoint1 = new VELatLong(51.47812550689915,-0.0017300248145924524); <!--Instantiate Map--> function GetMap()      {         map = new VEMap('myMap');     map.LoadMap(propertypoint1 , 17);            map.AttachEvent("onobliqueenter", OnObliqueEnterHandler);         }         function OnObliqueEnterHandler()         {            if(map.IsBirdseyeAvailable())            {               var ViewFromObservatory = new VELatLong(51.47812550689915,-0.0017300248145924524);                map.SetBirdseyeScene(ViewFromObservatory );            }map.onLoadMap = AddPropertyPins(); }<!--Call back adds pins to the map--> function AddPropertyPins() { map.ClearInfoBoxStyles(); <!--Pin 1, Synth 1--> propertypin1 = new VEShape(VEShapeType.Pushpin, propertypoint1); propertypin1.SetDescription(synth1); propertypin1.SetTitle("View of London from Greenwich Observatory"); map.AddShape(propertypin1); } window.onload = GetMap;

This is the code I used to display the map and synth. You will also need to call the API and set a containing <div> to display the map as per the sdk (1 line each).

How to use Bing Maps API in my wordpress blog

Yes, the problem is that by default:

• wordpress does not give access to edit the code in the document head
• you need to be able to add the ‘onload’ attribute to the <body> tag to load the map and this is also not possible without some template hacking in wordpress (especially to do this for individual posts only)

The solution (one of many I’m sure):

1. Install this plugin http://lud.icro.us/wordpress-plugin-head-meta/ which enables you to add your own code to the header of any individual post
2. use this in your script:

   window.onload = GetMap;

   instead of the onload event in the body tag

3. put the script above into a file and upload to your webserver (where you host the blog)
4. Add two custom headers using your newly installed plugin, the first to call the VE Map Control and the second to call your script

   1: <script src=http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.2 type="text/javascript"></script>2: <script type="text/javascript" src="[path-to-my-js-script]"></script>

That should do it. It worked for this page anyway .

Update: note this method will only work on the page for which it was intended, so for example I noticed many users arriving here via web search http://blog.harakis.net/tag/bing-maps/ where this page comes top, but the maps will not display because the wordpress plugin applies to individual posts. You could use a plugin to apply to the whole site to solve this, but I didn’t want to do that as it requires needlessly downloading these APIs on pages where they are not required.

Use the Multimap Open API

As I mentioned earlier Multimap is part of the Bing Maps portfolio and there is an Open API available for non-commercial use for this too:

http://www.multimap.com/share/documentation/openapi/

This is also very easy to use and has lots of demos and code samples to look at and use. There are some differences between the apis and you might prefer to use multimap if you are used to it or just prefer the map styles and controls.

• Sign up for an openapi key http://www.multimap.com/openapi/signup/
• read the documentation and examples provided and use the code provided to build your map
• customise the code and put it on your page

A localised Multimap map with a Photosynth in the infobox

Click the marker to see the synth.This is a map from Radom, Poland with a photosynth I made of a lit Christmas Angel in the town square. A nice feature of the Multimap API is localisation. By adding a parameter to the end of your API call (?locale=pl-PL in this case), you can localise the map control. All widgets and text are in Polish. I used just two demos to get this working:

• http://www.multimap.com/share/documentation/openapi/1.2/demos/localization.htm
• http://www.multimap.com/share/documentation/api/1.2/demos/restyledinfobox.htm

Just a few lines of code gives you a fully functional localised map with widgets, marker and embedded photosynth inside the infobox:

function onLoad() {    mapviewer = MMFactory.createViewer( document.getElementById( 'mapviewer' ) );    mapviewer.goToPosition( new MMLatLon( 51.40114006829573,21.153375506401065 ), 16 );    mapviewer.addWidget( new MMPanZoomWidget() );    mapviewer.addWidget( new MMMapTypeWidget() );    var marker = mapviewer.createMarker ( mapviewer.getCurrentPosition() );    var html = '<iframe frameborder=0 src=\'http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=85e818df-734d-4ecb-82f8-9cb65f202c7c&delayLoad=true&slideShowPlaying=false\' width=\'400\' height=\'300\'></iframe>';marker.setInfoBoxContent ( html, { } );}MMAttachEvent( window, 'load', onLoad );

I added this code to my javascript file created for the Bing API map above and hey presto, Multimap (Bing) map on my blog.

Resources

Credits

• http://blog.timwarr.net/2008/08/22/my-1st-photosynths-on-a-map/
• http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2008/08/20/photosynth-released-now-let-s-mash-it-with-virtual-earth.aspx

Reference

• Multimap
• Bing Maps for developers
• Multimap Open API
• Johannes Kebeck’s blog
• Bing Maps blog
• Bing Maps forum
• Multimap forum
• Photosynth website

Commercial Licensing for businesses

• Bing Maps (including Multimap)

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Bing, Google, Yahoo: Blind Search

Following from my last post about Microsoft’s new search engine BING, here’s an excellent ‘taste’ test giving you the chance to enter your search term/phrase and get the results from all 3 search engines minus branding.

Are you biased to your favourite brand? Try this:

http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

Credit goes to Michael Kordahi http://delicategeniusblog.com/ for making this.

Microsoft Bing, Because It’s Not Google (better?)

• But it’s not Google?
• Not so fast batman!
• What’s so good about it fanboy?
• What needs to improve?
• Conclusion – am I a Google2Bing switcher, is it better?

But it’s not Google?

Well, I’ll be straight with you. When I found out that Bing was going to be the new name for Live Search, I thought someone was having a laugh. Frankly it sounded naff and the name has been pilloried on twitter and various tech blogs. This unfortunate ‘acronymisation’ of the new brand implying that people won’t use it because it’s not as good as Google resonated with me until I tested the full-featured US version.

I had also read that respected industry people like Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak were impressed with the new search (‘Decision Engine’ as Microsoft are positioning it) but when I looked at the UK localised version, I couldn’t really see what was so great about it.

Not so fast batman!

To date the features haven’t been rolled out in the UK version. A switch to United States and wow, this really impressed me. Now I know what the MSFT execs were talking about. It’s not the name, but the functionality or product behind it that makes the brand and this one has taken some big steps forward in search. It had to be good, because Microsoft are not just trying to better Google’s search product, but also overcome the negative brand equity accrued over the last few years with Live Search.

What’s so good about it fanboy?

Here’s a lowdown on the features that have impressed me.

The homepage design

How to get users to come back to your website rule no.1: make sure you update your homepage often. The new Bing homepage has a number of changing parts including a different image each day with some ‘hotspots’ inviting discovery enabling the user to drill down into the featured topic.

This at first reminded me of the Wikipedia ‘Did you know’ feature, and for me it works in this context too. Clicking through often reveals not only further information on the subject, but some of new functionality available with Bing that users might not otherwise quickly discover.

There are also other features pulled through from Live Search such as popular now: which reminds me a little of twitscoop (a good thing: real time information is crucial in today’s web).

Predictive filtering

Microsoft claim that search has become a bit tired and static with one dominant player monopolising the market (ok I know, they would say that, wouldn’t they). One area they saw a gap in was in how people narrow their searches. According to their research, a chunky 42% of searches need refining and moreover that analysis of search behaviour demonstrates that the way people refine is predictable.

Having identified this ‘predictable’ behaviour Microsoft have built a number of categories to identify common search themes and then provide the user with ready made filters on the left-hand panel. This is a well-designed feature and something that seems so obvious you wonder why Google didn’t do something like this ages ago. Again doubtless Microsoft have borrowed ideas from other sites such as ebay and price comparison sites where your searches are guided and filtered using common categories, nonetheless the implementation is slick and the broader general search context gives it added value.

Some good examples are products, places, films and symptoms each with their own common filters. Still  Google are doing stuff in this area, so expect more developments. I like the ‘wonder wheel’ which Google so far are making no effort to surface. See this example of symptoms ‘headaches and dizziness’ I tested on both Bing and Google. Disappointingly Bing didn’t give me the nice filters you see above with Limassol above http://www.bing.com/search?q=headaches+and+dizziness&form=QBRE. Google was much the same, but if you dig a little:

That is nice but it is not a way of narrowing your search, more it facilitates ‘discovery’. I hope Microsoft will work fast to pad this feature out to work whenever expected (try ‘Madeira’-works, ‘Funchal’-no, ‘Thessaloniki’-no, ‘Salonica’-works) and I expect Google to react.

Decision making tools

Microsoft noticed that a lot of user sessions on a search engine are iterative viz. someone keys in a search term, goes away somewhere, comes back, does a related search and so-on until they eventually get to a point where they can make a decision. One use scenario given was a Kodak EasyShare camera:

That is a very good result for a product search. You get the filters I alluded to above in predictive filtering, but also some aggregation and categorisation of reviews + price comparisons, product details, cashback. That really does go a long way towards Microsoft’s ambition to make Bing a decision engine – in this use-case. It should greatly reduce the amount of iteration needed when using Google for the same kind of search/decision and save the user significant time.

Enhanced Previews

This is where it gets a bit controversial. Microsoft have really stepped it up when it comes to previews your results:

• mouse-hover synopses and high-level navigation: this is nice once you work out where to hover!
• ‘enhanced’ view: for Wikipedia entries and I think other stuff too you get some sub-navigational links plus this in your results. This shoves the whole page in Bing: handy huh? I can see why Microsoft wanted to do this (gives you what you want without having to leave the site during your session), but hmmm this is borderline. I’m not sure what I would think if it were one of my sites. On the one-hand I would like the fact that extra content layers are exposed through deeper linking and higher relevancy, but on the other I would be quite uncomfortable about the wholesale use of my content on someone else’s site (presumably without permission).
• video previews: this is great. Hover over a video on the video results and starts playing there and then. Sweet. That really saves some time checking out stuff that you might not be interested in without having to leave the site. Ditto my point above about content use: I believe this has caused something of a stir already. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

What about Porn?

No-one ever mentions this, but porn accounts for the largest portion of search queries I believe. Surely this is an important, ahem vertical. Let’s face it ‘Paris Hilton nude videos’ must be one of the most profilic search phrases in the history of the web. And don’t slate the porn users as edge cases or irrelevant. They are the majority of the male population and no doubt a decent percentage of females too. They need ahem servicing too and no doubt the same porn searcher might later be using their preferred search ‘tool’ for different kinds of content like flight booking or product searching.

Well, I think pornsters will appreciate the video search which gives better previews of their target search and also the other enhanced preview facilities. The image search also makes better use of space than google giving more results which aids the eye-candy-per-pixel factor. Am not sure about relevancy though. A quick check on ‘Paris Hilton nude videos’ and Google comes out on top for relevancy I would say in my ‘expert’ opinion: as for other search terms, hmm will let you know later .

I am intrigued if Google/MSFT et. al actually do any serious work targeting this market and if they do what.

What needs to improve?

• Relevancy! Microsoft have made great strides in this area, but are still behind Google for initial  results and their relevancy to the search. Bing is now much less bad compared to Live Search which often fell at the first hurdle: but still this is crucial and MSFT have to continue to work extremely hard in this area to keep within touching distance of Google
• Hurry up and roll it out in the UK and other non-American countries, being non-American this irritates me, not only that but for every UK Bing use between now and the time all features do roll-out in the UK Bing is losing brand equity – as it did with me. If my job didn’t involve working closely with MSFT I might never have known and dismissed Bing out of hand.
• Smooth over the rough edges .. fast, there are still plenty of these and they need to be culled ruthlessly and quickly
  • a map search should always give a Bing Map, not sometimes, the maps integration is much improved but still not good enough
  • I expect items obviously qualifying for predictive filtering will always get that treatment, not randomly and sometimes as is the case now e.g. try macbook pro 17 and macbook pro 15
  • inconsistencies such as when you are on a product page in shopping (see the example above) and you click something else like ‘manual’, the shopping filter disappears

Conclusion – am I a Google2Bing switcher, is it better?

No. Not yet anyway, BUT Bing has genuinely stolen some of my personal search market share from Google. Some tasks Bing performs better than Google and vice versa and one can be a good backup for the other although for the no.1 success factor relevancy, Google still reigns as king. I will use both for now….

Microsoft have really done well here, they did their homework, spotted the gaps in the market and moved on them. The interface is a refreshing change to Google’s and the previewing and predictive filtering are genuinely very useful.

I believe this will take market share from Google, probably more than the 2/3 odd percent Ballmer is hoping for this year.

Google, who pulled a crafty counter-punch on the day Bing was announced by later announcing the awe-inspiring Wave, will have to react to this. They can’t sit on their laurels, especially if they expect Microsoft to build aggressively from this decent platform. Good news for you and me: the users.

But not only Google will be worried. Price comparison sites and flight checkers should worry, this will eat into their market. Even sites like eBay may see this as a challenge as Bing begins to move into its territory ever so slightly, not least after having ‘borrowed’ some of its search filtering techniques. This is where MSFT have been smart, in positioning Bing not just as a search engine head2head with Google, but as a slightly different animal, one that should give people what they really want as fast as possible, not just more search results.

So .. conclusion: I think the success of Bing will depend on MSFT rolling out all features fast and globally and very importantly, the rough edges need smoothing. People will tolerate some glitches at first using a new tool with lots of cool features, but if the glitches remain over time this tolerance will disappear. The next few months together with the promised $100mill marketing campaign will be critical. The other factor is of course if and how Google reacts.

• back to top

Photosynth, HDView and DeepZoom: a new era in digital imagery?

PhotoSynth and DeepZoom, both using Silverlight technology and powered by SeaDragon, have been around for a little while now and have received much critical acclaim in the technosphere.

The latest release of PhotoSynth has a number of new features and is now commercially available with Virtual Earth Bing Maps integration, the platform powering Live Bing Maps.

Here is the view from one of my favourite local landmarks:

SynthView – the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home of Time

I took these pictures with my mobile phone on the spur of the moment. No special equipment needed for an amateur like me. You can see the panorama and the panorama-plan beneath given to aid visitors. Standing there for a few minutes is quite entertaining because you can hear the same conversation repeated in multiple languages between different tourists. I caught what sounded like Japanese, Russian and Italian, ‘blah, blah St.Pauls, blah Millennium Dome/o2 Arena, blah Canary Wharf’ etc. accompanied by lots of pointing gestures.

I managed 85% synthy which is ok, but it still meant there were some ‘orphaned’ pictures. The new ‘hotspot’ feature (thumbnails on the right in ‘highlights’) gives an easy way to zoom into these orphaned images, making navigation easier. There are also extra controls beneath the map making it easier to move around the stitched image-set.

Now that Silverlight is the viewer, it means that both pc and mac users should have no problem viewing Synths and I personally hope that it is not too long before Linux is supported by Silverlight too. Overall I think it is a brilliant imaging tool for bloggers and absolutely can be useful for businesses. The tourist and real estate sectors are being touted as obvious beneficiaries (to show properties, points of interest etc..), but I can see this technology becoming pervasive as it continues to evolve.

How to put a synth on your blog or web page

It’s not Rocket Science, in a nutshell:

1. Take a lot of pictures of your subject, following the guidelines at photosynth.net
2. Upload them using the free software available on Live Labs
3. click the ‘<>‘ embed icon to the right of the synth and copy the code, then insert into your blogpost or webpage

How can Photosynth improve?

Make no bones, I love this technology, it is accessible, easy-to-use and visually stunning. It can still get even better though as a service, some thoughts…

• An online service like DeepZoomPix for creating synths, completely platform-independent, that is in the spirit of the future and cloud computing, and you no longer run the risk of alienating mac/linux users
• I hope Silverlight will be truly cross-platform and work with Linux, a dependency here although there is always Moonlight, nonetheless I think the move to Silverlight was definitely a positive one
• Look at ways to work better with Social Networking Platforms to make the service more integrated and interoperable, easier sharing, publishing to Facebook etc..
• improve the geotagging facility and integrate VE Bing Maps with the interface instead of as a pop-up so users can quickly see the geographical context of a synth

HDView: A panorama Royal Observatory Greenwich

These are a subset of the same pictures used to create the Synth above. This is a Silverlight driven, HDView panorama using DeepZoom imaging format. There is a hell of a lot more you can do with DeepZoom (see Hard Rock Memorabilia Deep Zoom or Charles Darwin for example to be blown away), but the format supports these panoramas nicely too.

This is also at the least a big improvement on just a standard photo, and with better quality than achieved with my mobile phone you can have quite an immersive image.

How to put a HDView panorama on your blog or web page

This was a little more work, but not a lot:

1. Take some overlapping pictures of your subject
2. Download and install the freely available Microsoft ICE
3. Make a new composition with ICE and export using DeepZoom format
4. Upload the html page created by your export, the .xap file (Silverlight controls) and stitch images (directory) to your web server, then either include as an iframe as I have done or you could use the markup from this page to embed the object on your webpage/blogpost. With blog posts this can be a bit tricky if you don’t control the markup in your header, but it is possible (there are plugins etc..)

Seadragon

SeaDragon powers the images you see above, it looks like a very smart technology which enormously enhances the ability of your browser or client to view large numbers of complex images in one viewer. I’m going to quote one of the co-creators of Photosynth, Blaise Aguera y Arcas:

“Seadragon is an environment in which you can either locally or remotely interact with vast amounts of visual data. And it doesn’t matter how much information we are looking at, how big the collections are or how big the images are, it does not make any difference because the only thing that can limit the performances of this system at any given time is the number of pixels on your screen”

Sourced from ted.com

That sums it up nicely for me, I imagine the potential for this is huge. Nasa are already publishing images of their Space Station online using this and CNN displayed a fantastic crowd-sourced synth of Obama’s inauguration, ‘the moment’. Great examples of this potential.

For me this is digital imagery come of age, instead of only publishing static images, I can almost as easily publish immersive, interactive digital imagery. A big step forward.

Reference

• Microsoft Live Labs (includes SeaDragon and Photosynth)
• Photosynth blog
• HDView blog
• Virtual Earth Bing Maps Technical Evangelist Chris Pendleton’s blog – watch out for iSynth and the unique American-style blog-writing
• Tim Warr’s Blog
• DeepZoomPix – looks a very nice facility to publish online and share without needing a client
• Microsoft Virtual Earth Bing Maps

4NCL 08/09 Final Weekend: Qik Blitz at the Barcelo

I like any technology that saves time and makes things easy for the layman. Qik is a very handy software for your mobile device, that connects directly with your in-built video recorder and your online Qik account. Launch the software, press one button and you are streaming live to the web. All you need is a data-plan with decent connection and video-enabled phone. There is a big expanding list of compatible phones on the Qik website. I used a HTC Touch Pro, Windows Mobile 6.1. Despite a slow OS and other drawbacks, the video works nicely and the vodafone HSDPA connection seems more than enough in every location I have tried.

Here are a couple of blitz chess games from a recent 4NCL chess weekend, played over beers in our team hotel. It’s worth noting that two of the players are pretty formidable. GM Keith Arkell was runner up in the British championship this year and has a fearsome blitz reputation, whilst Simon Williams is one of the UK’s top 10 rated Grandmasters, higher than Keith. Shame about the camera-work, am still learning .

Naylor versus Arkell

Rice versus Williams

Choosing the right chess viewer for your blog

It’s been a long time since I have looked for a chess viewer to put on a website. The last time I tried was November 2000 for the BrainGames World Championship between Kramnik and Kasparov: http://www.chesscenter.com/wcc2000/. Yes this was my work (mostly) and it still functions except for the ads provided by Vavo-dot-com (evidently now a ‘cyber-squatted’ url), one of the many victims of the original dotcom crash in 2001. At that time I used ChessBase7 and was saving directly to the web to cover games live and our traffic brought the vavo servers to their knees. The auto-refresh was downloading all the chess-piece images every time and no caching was going on, so in order to manage traffic a little the playthrough was moved one level down and a static board image together with the moves and commentary was kept on the live page. It was all rather primitive, but it worked when the servers were up and was very popular.

I digress, so more than 8 years later, how far have things moved on? Well, ChessBase is now up to version10 and has an export to web facility and there are still a number of applets out there + now Flash and Silverlight offerings. Should be easy to put something on a wordpress template right? Wrong: at least in my case.

Here are my criteria, not necessarily in order of importance:

1. Reads pgn: basic requirement, ideally pgn from any location, no just local
2. Cross-platform/browser compatible: i.e. you shouldn’t really need to be installing extra software on your server and yes it should work normally in the main browsers (ie6+, ff2+,Safari2+,Chrome, Opera)
3. Supports multiple-games/databases: should have a graceful way of handling files with more than one game and even better if it handles more than one files gracefully
4. Supports annotations: even better if it supports inline annotation and analysis, this is a desirable as opposed to must-have
5. Easily configured: no messing about, I want to get my settings sorted out and then stick to them with minimum change effort for each new use: would it be easy to make a WP plugin
6. Configurability: it needs to work with my blog template inside the content panel which is 600px, I also want the appearance, typefaces, colours to be in line with my theme: this is important
7. Price/availability: preferably free with an open license
8. Live updates: checks pgn files for changes and updates onChange or 2nd best periodically updates whether or not the pgn has changed
9. Performance: works smoothly with minimum lag
10. Keyboard support: this is nice usability (and accessibility) , better than click buttons with your mouse, you should be able to flick back and forth with the arrows

Viewer	Technology	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Overall
Chessviewer	Java Applet
ChessBase	Javascript
DGT	Flash
PGN World Viewer	Java Applet
SilverlightBoard	Silverlight