Micrio's FAQ
Below are the questions that we've most commonly been asked. If you have a question that's not in here, contact us!
What browsers does the viewer work on?
The latest Micrio client viewer (version 3.0+) fully works on all current mobile and desktop browsers (from 2017). For more details, see this page.
Compatibility for older browsers
Micrio has a compatibility version for older browsers, Micrio 2.9. If that is required for your visitors. Not all latest features are available, but it supports 2d and 360 imagery, markers, tours, and audio.
If you have specific questions about using this version, please mail us.
This versions still works on:
- MS Internet Explorer 11
- Apple Safari 10
What makes Micrio unique?
There are quite a few web libraries available that allow you to view and zoom through ultra resolution images, and support markers, tours, etc. Micrio is one of them, however created totally from scratch, having its own performance optimized algorithms and unique features such as positional audio and music.
However, what sets Micrio apart the most:
It's a full service: not only is it an image viewer, it's also a full server environment that processes your original ultra resolution images (up to 10GP out of the box), provides globally optimized CDN-fronted hosting, has an online editor to enrich the images with markers, tours and audio, and much more.
You don't have to be a developer to use it. The Micrio editor is well documented and user friendly, allowing non-developers to create and share or embed their own interactive experiences easily.
So not only is it a solution for viewing ultra resolution images, it also saves you the headaches of processing, annotating and hosting them.
Can you produce our content?
As we are not a content production agency, if you don't have good source materials yet, we recommend you find a local photographer, illustrator or artist to help you create your materials. See this article to learn more about optimal file formats to upload.
Can you develop our bespoke Micrio project?
We at Micrio do not provide development of your own custom projects or implementations. However, Micrio has been used by many in-house developers and web development agencies, due to extensive documentation and support.
Most local firms or independent developers will be able to help you out.
Always recommended are Micrio's Platinum Partners, who have used it to create many projects with it:
Is Micrio open source?
At the moment, Micrio is not open source.
Can online visitors easily download or rip my valuable high-res images?
Easily: no. Possible: yes. If someone takes the effort to learn the Micrio hosting data model, they can download all the individual image tiles of your images. Though this is not a very easy thing to do, as they need to understand the inner workings of Micrio, and also be able to deal with thousands of individual tiles.
There is no easy way to download full-resolution Micrio images.
If you have internal or protected material, and you want to protect this, Micrio already offers two options:
- In the dashboard, you can choose to set a password for your images, and people viewing it need this.
- Or, you can make it only accessible to viewers who are in the same Micrio group as you, without making your images public.
However, once images are published without password, they are publicly available on the web.
If you still want to protect your images from that point on, for instance to prevent people from ripping it for unlicensed print media:
- You could embed watermarks in your original image uploads.
- You can choose to upload lower-resolution versions, limiting its exposure. The disadvantage is that the overall viewing experience also diminishes with this.
Another option is to have a watermark embedded in each image tile by Micrio itself. This is an Enterprise feature. Please contact us if you want to learn more.
The bottom line is, no matter how tech-savvy someone is, anyone can still even take screenshots of viewing your images and stitch them together to one big image. Once you have published a Micrio image to the world, your images are able to be captured one way or another.
Overall, for copyrighted images, it's a good idea to have a visible image license for anyone viewing your images. You can add this yourself in the Micrio image editor, or when you are using embedded Micrio in your website, be sure to include your license clearly.
Can Micrio be used with physical touch screens?
Yes, no problem. Since Micrio is basically a website, any touch capable screen that comes with a modern web browser will work correctly with Micrio.
If you have specific questions about this, contact us.
Does Micrio support IIIF?
Yes! Full Image API 3.0 support, both as client and as image server! Check our IIIF pages for more details.
I have a 4GB TIFF image file. This is certainly too large to put in Micrio?
That's not a problem. Behind the scenes, Micrio processes all your uploaded original images, cutting it up to a lot of very small parts, and saving them in a web-compatible image format such as JPG.
This means that every time someone views your image, only the specific image parts based on the user's screen size and zoom level are downloaded! Your original file will never be downloaded by the viewer.
See this article for more information.
Can I use Micrio in a protected environment?
By default, Micrio images have unlisted unique IDs, meaning it will not be indexed by search engines or published anywhere. If your own website has a protected area where you would like to embed your images, you can simply embed Micrio there.
This however does not prevent people with access to those areas from still finding out the Micrio IDs and sharing them with others.
For even more control, you can use your own cloud hosting provider with Micrio, allowing more fine-grained access on HTTP and account levels based on your own infrastructure.
This is however up to your own development, and we do not offer support in creating these solutions.
Can I pay for one month of Micrio, and then have the image in my site forever?
Micrio is a subscription service, and the subscription fee consists of two parts:
- The software license to be able to use the Micrio infrastructure, dashboard and editor, and viewer client for presentation to your visitors. This license is only active when you have an active Micrio subscription;
- All hosting and delivery of your images and content. If you have a million visitors of your project, your usage costs will ofcourse reflect this.
Ending your Micrio account will depublish your images, and you will no longer have a license to embed the images in your site.
Can I embed my Micrio images on multiple websites?
A Micrio subscription (Standard and up) comes with the license to embed your images into a single website, as per the terms of agreement.
Where "a single website" means its main website domain. So if you own
museum.com, it's no problem to embed your images both onwww.museum.comandgallery.museum.com.However, to embed images on different websites, a separate subscription will need to be made.
Can my website users add their own markers?
Micrio itself does not support this. This would make Micrio an immediate social media platform, where moderation and bot and spam detection is unfortunately highly necessary.
We do not offer these services, and do not offer this feature within the Micrio platform itself.
However, nothing stops you from creating this feature for yourself. Micrio has a fully documented data model and API, so you can create and deliver your own markers & tours in your own website platform.
Can I run Micrio on my own server?
If you want your Micrio projects to not be hosted by Micrio, you can provide your own cloud hosting account for this with an Enterprise subscription. You can use your own Google Cloud, MS Azure or Amazon AWS hosting for this.
See this article for more information.
Hosting Micrio images on your own webserver
There is no support for hosting Micrio content anywhere other than the cloud hosting providers listed above.
Using Micrio in an offline environment
For specific cases, such as providing Micrio experiences in a location which is offline, or offers limited connectivity, there is limited support. Please contact us with your specific questions for this.
What's under the hood?
JS Client
The latest Micrio client is made using:
- Svelte, TypeScript & WebAssembly (AssemblyScript) and WebGL for high performance rendering
- Custom Elements
<micr-io>tag integration, which comes with its own powerful client API - Full auto-generated TypeScript documentation on the web, and declaration file, to be used in your own TypeScript projects for full code compatibility
See this Q42 engineering blogpost for the journey of migrating the Micrio client to WebGL and WebAssembly for version 3.0.
The server setup
The Micrio server is setup like this:
- Hosted in Cloudflare and Google Cloud
- Google Services: .NET Core 3.2 (C#) / C, Cloudflare Workers: TypeScript, WebAssembly
- Image processing servers are running in a scalable linux cluster. Image and asset hosting in Cloudflare / Google CDN-fronted storage for quick global delivery (or you can use your own)
- The newest dashboard is made in SvelteKit and runs in Cloudflare
Can I replace an uploaded image with a new version?
There is no real image replacement function in Micrio. This is because the image data (tiles) gets globally cached, and once an image is published, it's not possible to replace all globally cached image data with 100% certainty.
If you want to replace an image, you need to upload the newer image in the dashboard first, which will result in a new image ID. Then, in the image editor, you can copy the previous image's data (markers, tours, etc) into the new image under the "Image" menu.
After that, if you wish you can delete the previous image. Just be sure that immediately the old image will be unavailable for visitors. However, any reused assets in your newly uploaded image will remain.
I have found a security vulnerability in your platform. Will you compensate me for the reports?
We get quite a lot of security reports from independent researchers. We provide bounties for valid reports that meet either of the following demands:
- You can access our database / backends
- You can directly spoof users / user sessions which do not belong to you
- You can manipulate or access restricted data in the platform (such as user projects)
What we get a lot, and which are not rewarded, as most likely they have conscious foundations:
- CSRF attacks (a few URL endpoints allow it by design)
- Local click jacking (ie. running a custom JS inside the Micrio environment)
- Auth Cookie scoping (by design)
- Anything CSS related (ie. path-relative CSS references)
If you have found something you believe is valid for a bounty, please contact us at support@micr.io.