interactive question
June 30, 2012 10:48 AM Subscribe
Javascript ? Interactive Multimedia Web Presentation ? Is it even possible ?
Hi all - i've been documenting a run down housing estate in scotland -its about to be demolished - the subject is great, the content is wonderful - but when i try to put it on board some sort of javascript framework (im not doing flash im afraid) i get stuck - heres something i would like to imitate framework wise - nice collages of video and images - it's supposedly made with popcorn.js - but there are no tutorials, no documentation really - wasn't html5 meant to be a killer blow to flash ?
I wish it was, I just can't see the thing that enables me to create the framework to hang this documentary on - where should i be looking ? i've tried smashing magazine but no joy......
Hi all - i've been documenting a run down housing estate in scotland -its about to be demolished - the subject is great, the content is wonderful - but when i try to put it on board some sort of javascript framework (im not doing flash im afraid) i get stuck - heres something i would like to imitate framework wise - nice collages of video and images - it's supposedly made with popcorn.js - but there are no tutorials, no documentation really - wasn't html5 meant to be a killer blow to flash ?
I wish it was, I just can't see the thing that enables me to create the framework to hang this documentary on - where should i be looking ? i've tried smashing magazine but no joy......
HTML5 is killing flash the same way that the car killed the horse as transportation. It had nothing to do with cars being easier to build than horses (if you already had a couple horses, you cou
D build new ones in your field with no documentation at all!)
JavaScript being challenging has very little bearing on whether it will kill flash or not (flash OS not exactly easy, either). Flash is being superseded because it is slow and battery-intensive on mobile devices, and because it's controlled by a single company that doesn't really have any inventive to make cell phones work well. So google and apple (and even Microsoft) will build something else.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 1:09 PM on June 30, 2012 [2 favorites]
D build new ones in your field with no documentation at all!)
JavaScript being challenging has very little bearing on whether it will kill flash or not (flash OS not exactly easy, either). Flash is being superseded because it is slow and battery-intensive on mobile devices, and because it's controlled by a single company that doesn't really have any inventive to make cell phones work well. So google and apple (and even Microsoft) will build something else.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 1:09 PM on June 30, 2012 [2 favorites]
If you want to build Popcorn presentations/movies without writing JavaScript code, try the graphical Popcorn Maker tool. It's still under development so there aren't many templates available yet, but the current preview version is usable already for simple projects. (And you can always edit the generated code to do more complex stuff.)
posted by mbrubeck at 1:51 AM on July 1, 2012
posted by mbrubeck at 1:51 AM on July 1, 2012
Best answer: If you intend to use any of them seriously, learning some JavaScript (and probably reading up on jquery) would be a good start.
It's not a slideshow like presentation i'm looking for, i've looked up the tutorials (popcorn 101 has been offline, but now seems to be back, the popcorn maker tool is very basic) - i'm meaning the collage like presentation in the question link. There seems to be nothing intuitive floating about.... tbh i've also looked at javascript slideshows and 99% are probably well coded but visually awful.
So basically in terms of html5 the answer is that without anything reasonably intuitive, coders are still basically dictating design styles and content - that's not going to end well.
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:32 AM on July 1, 2012
It's not a slideshow like presentation i'm looking for, i've looked up the tutorials (popcorn 101 has been offline, but now seems to be back, the popcorn maker tool is very basic) - i'm meaning the collage like presentation in the question link. There seems to be nothing intuitive floating about.... tbh i've also looked at javascript slideshows and 99% are probably well coded but visually awful.
So basically in terms of html5 the answer is that without anything reasonably intuitive, coders are still basically dictating design styles and content - that's not going to end well.
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:32 AM on July 1, 2012
That's... an interesting interpretation of the situation.
For nontrivial tasks, javascript/html5 coding is actually quite a bit simpler than Flash actionscript coding (IMHO; I've done quite a bit of both, though demand for Flash work has dropped to zero in the last couple years -- the only flash-related jobs I've gotten lately have been to convert content out of Flash and into HTML5).
If by "intuitive" you mean a GUI-based tool you can dump your content into and it'll output canned effects, you're right that there aren't many of those yet for html5 -- this is both because it's a relatively new and because it honestly doesn't take a terrible amount of time or effort to learn how to build it out yourself (and not be locked into whatever effects the builder of the tool happens to have made for you).
Popcorn.js, as far as I can tell from the documentation, is designed for slideshows and controlling videos, which is why I assumed that was what you were trying to accomplish.
I'm not sure which part of the flash sample you linked to is the "collage like presentation" you wnat -- do you mean the opening menu made of 'windows' which expand a bit and get colorized on mouseover? If so, that would be very simple to build with only minimal use of javascript (you'd attach a script to each window's mouseover event which would animate the resize and fade in the colored version of the photo -- fairly simple in jQuery. In some browsers you wouldn't even need javascript, but could do it all with css transitions.
If instead you're referring to the pseudo-panoramas inside each 'room' -- that looks like it was a pretty slick piece of coding: it's not a plain old QTVR-like panorama, as there's some parallax between the individual photos, so I suspect they went ahead and did all the math to position those images in 3D space and are rotating the view on mouse drags. I would be rather surprised if you found a simple or "intuitive" way to accomplish that effect easily in any programming environment, flash or html5 or otherwise.
coders are still basically dictating design styles and content
Well, you know what? There's a reason this is a profession; good design work takes skill and expertise, in both aesthetics and coding skill. You can buy or borrow a pre-made template and live with its limitations, or you can hire someone who has the skill and expertise to build something to your specification, or you can buckle down and learn the skills necessary to build it yourself. Those are pretty much the choices. That was true for Flash, it's true for HTML5, and it'll be true for whatever the next thing is as well.
posted by ook at 10:51 AM on July 1, 2012
For nontrivial tasks, javascript/html5 coding is actually quite a bit simpler than Flash actionscript coding (IMHO; I've done quite a bit of both, though demand for Flash work has dropped to zero in the last couple years -- the only flash-related jobs I've gotten lately have been to convert content out of Flash and into HTML5).
If by "intuitive" you mean a GUI-based tool you can dump your content into and it'll output canned effects, you're right that there aren't many of those yet for html5 -- this is both because it's a relatively new and because it honestly doesn't take a terrible amount of time or effort to learn how to build it out yourself (and not be locked into whatever effects the builder of the tool happens to have made for you).
Popcorn.js, as far as I can tell from the documentation, is designed for slideshows and controlling videos, which is why I assumed that was what you were trying to accomplish.
I'm not sure which part of the flash sample you linked to is the "collage like presentation" you wnat -- do you mean the opening menu made of 'windows' which expand a bit and get colorized on mouseover? If so, that would be very simple to build with only minimal use of javascript (you'd attach a script to each window's mouseover event which would animate the resize and fade in the colored version of the photo -- fairly simple in jQuery. In some browsers you wouldn't even need javascript, but could do it all with css transitions.
If instead you're referring to the pseudo-panoramas inside each 'room' -- that looks like it was a pretty slick piece of coding: it's not a plain old QTVR-like panorama, as there's some parallax between the individual photos, so I suspect they went ahead and did all the math to position those images in 3D space and are rotating the view on mouse drags. I would be rather surprised if you found a simple or "intuitive" way to accomplish that effect easily in any programming environment, flash or html5 or otherwise.
coders are still basically dictating design styles and content
Well, you know what? There's a reason this is a profession; good design work takes skill and expertise, in both aesthetics and coding skill. You can buy or borrow a pre-made template and live with its limitations, or you can hire someone who has the skill and expertise to build something to your specification, or you can buckle down and learn the skills necessary to build it yourself. Those are pretty much the choices. That was true for Flash, it's true for HTML5, and it'll be true for whatever the next thing is as well.
posted by ook at 10:51 AM on July 1, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
There are many other frameworks and such for sideshow-like presentations. If you intend to use any of them seriously, learning some JavaScript (and probably reading up on jquery) would be a good start.
Wasn't html5 meant to be a killer blow to flash?
It was.
posted by ook at 11:00 AM on June 30, 2012 [1 favorite]