From terrig at ssec.wisc.edu  Tue Mar  1 16:22:46 2005
From: terrig at ssec.wisc.edu (Terri Gregory)
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:22:46 -0600
Subject: online animations
Message-ID: <4224F946.2000008@ssec.wisc.edu>

SSEC (where I work) http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/  is developing a Web-based 
display of imagery which will consist of a series of animations, all 
pretty large. Each animation is made of .gif or .jpg images, so they're 
not as huge as computer-generated imagery would be. And we'll have a 
decent-sized server to push the imagery. The display is being developed 
first for our lobby--big screen, plasma display, high resolution--could 
be pretty darned nifty, we hope.

We find that when individuals access the display via the Web, our 
computers regularly crash.

We seek other places that have tried to do this, whether successfully or 
not. We haven't seen anything as ambitious as this on the Web. I'm 
thinking someone probably has, perhaps on an Intranet. Though maybe not; 
seems we regularly are on the bleeding edge. We presented imagery on the 
Gopher in the 80s, for goodness sake.

Have any of you seen any place that has pushed multiple animations using 
the Web? It doesn't matter to us whether the subject matter is 
scientific or not. Video doesn't count. These are multiple java animations.

The only examples I have are on our Web site 
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/  but here people select what animations 
they want to look at, the same animations aren't shown over and over.

Feel free to send this hither and yon.  Bill and I can answer relevant 
questions.

Terri

-- 
Terri Gregory, Public Information Coordinator
Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison

phone: (608) 263-3373
fax: (608) 262-5974
email: terri.gregory at ssec.wisc.edu

"Judge yourself not by your accomplishments, but by the happiness of the people around you."
--Jerry Zucker, UW-Madison commencement address, 2003




From terrig at ssec.wisc.edu  Fri Mar  4 15:40:36 2005
From: terrig at ssec.wisc.edu (Terri Gregory)
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:40:36 -0600
Subject: online animations
Message-ID: <4228E3E4.6040700@ssec.wisc.edu>

Regarding my message on our developing Web-based display, our Webmaster 
has this to add:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: online animations
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:14:35 -0600
From: Bill Bellon <bill.bellon at ssec.wisc.edu>
To: STC Science SIG <stcscsig-l at lists.stc.org>
CC: Terri Gregory <terrig at ssec.wisc.edu>,  Bill Bellon 
<billb at ssec.wisc.edu>, Tom Achtor <tom.achtor at ssec.wisc.edu>,  tom 
whittaker <tom.whittaker at ssec.wisc.edu>
References: <4224F946.2000008 at ssec.wisc.edu>

Hi,
  Just some clarification on what Terri sent.

WHAT WE HAVE DEVELOPED
----------------------
What we have developed so
far is a client-side application (JavaScript based) that can loop over a 
series of
static and real-time Animations and Images, preloading only the
next Animation/Image as needed.  Real-time images are updated as needed 
in the loop so
that image freshness is maintained.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICS
-------------------
Specifically, this is a client-pull model that uses JavaScript to loop 
over a series
of Animations (which are composed of separate images, rather than an
MPEG or something like that) and single Images.  The JavaScript application
(run via a web page in a browser) reads a series of XML data files on 
the server
at the beginning of each loop to determine the URL of the indvidual images
comprising the Animations and static Images in the loop, their order, 
dwell rate,
width/height and so on.  It then displays the first Image/Animation and 
while
that is being displayed, it preloads (via JavaScript) the image(s) for 
the next
Image/Animation, and so on.  Ultimately, we wish to develop a desktop 
version
of this that allows the user to not only switch between a set of 
pre-defined loops,
but to also configure their own custom loops to display on their desktop.

PROBLEMS
--------------------
So far, what we are seeing is that how the browser handles this and 
whether it
can run for a long period of time is highly variable and most likely 
dependent
on the particular browser, OS, the amount of RAM on the computer, the 
way the browser
is configured and so on.  At least for the lobby version of this 
application, which
admittedly, is displaying a fairly large number of large images (1366x700).

QUESTIONS
--------------------
So, our question to you is, have you see anything like this.  
Alternatively, do you
have any suggestions / recommendations on an alternate way to develop 
something like this.
We are still early enough into this project that we are open to 
considering other solutions besides
JavaScript (i.e. java applet or application, server-push, ...).

Anyway, thank you for your time!

Bill

-- 
Bill Bellon
Space Science & Engineering Center
(608) 263-6726
bill.bellon at ssec.wisc.edu

-- 
Terri Gregory, Public Information Coordinator
Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison

phone: (608) 263-3373
fax: (608) 262-5974
email: terri.gregory at ssec.wisc.edu

"Judge yourself not by your accomplishments, but by the happiness of the people around you."
--Jerry Zucker, UW-Madison commencement address, 2003