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How to use the Cube illustrations.

Keyboard & Mouse

The cubes illustrate a move sequence, which you can go through forwards or backwards using the VCR style buttons below them.

You can control the cube with either the keyboard or the mouse. The two methods don't mix well. Stick to one. I prefer the keyboard.

Common for both is that holding down the shift, control and/or Alt keys will change the moves in useful ways. I could explain it all, but it's easier if you just try it. The keys do slightly different with keyboard and mouse. Note that you can easily make slice moves with things like 4 and shift + 4.

The Enter key undoes the last moves. Shift+Enter redoes them again.

Mouse

To turn the whole cube, just click and drag. To turn sides, you need to shift or/and control-click. Alt and meta (if you have it) does stuff too.

Keyboard

First of all, to get keyboard control to work, you have to click on the cube first to make it receive keyboard events.

Rotating the whole cube is done with the A, S, D, Z, X and C keys. Try them and you'll see what they do.

Turning individual sides is done on the numeric keypad. The left keys (7, 4, 1) controls the left visible side. The middle keys (8, 5, 2) controls the top/middle one, and the right ones (9, 6, 3) controls the right visible side. This is assuming you have not turned the cube with the mouse. If you have, the Home key reset the view.

The middle row (4, 5, 6) turn clockwise. The top row (7, 8, 9) turns anti clockwise, and the lower row (1, 2, 3) makes half turns.

If you're left handed or otherwise different, I, O, P / K, L, ; / ,, ., / and the arrow keys duplicate the keys above. It seems the shift key doesn't work with the numeric pad on Windows, so that's a reason to use IOP etc instead.

Space will pause/start play, and the = key(s) will mix the cube.

Colors

There are several different coloring schemes on available Real World cubes. I use the one I learned the cube with. It is forever programmed into my whole being.

It is known as the "plus yellow" coloring, since green (blue + yellow) is opposite blue, orange (red + yellow) is opposite red, and yellow (you get it...) is opposite white.
Maybe someday I'll figure out how to make the coloring settable by the viewer, but for now this is how it is.

I also use grey for faces that are uninteresting for what I'm illustrating, and dark gray for the already solved block of the cube. This is pretty much the way I think of the cube when I solve it.

Troubleshooting

If you can't see the cubes at all, you probably don't have Java installed or activated in either your browser or computer.

If it used to work but doesn't anymore, restart the browser or the machine.

Mail me at cube@lar5.com








Addendum (2023)

Parameters:

move
pos
sidecolors
spintime
initmove
initrevmove
initrevmovemove
bgcolor
txtcolor
txtbgcolor
backtrack
misc

Move parameter:

moves: B D F L R U b d f l r u x y z
modifiers: ' < > | 0 1 2 3 4 Z

Misc parameter:

The following are the possible values for the misc parameter:
arrows, closepeek, debug, fullpeak, rhview, showalg, shading, solving

Multiple values can be entered as shown:
<param name=misc value="arrows, closepeek, showalg">