(X)HTML / CSS / JS Slideshow [BETA]
Eric A. Meyer
Operatic Origins
- Opera introduces OperaShow, a projection-mode style sheet handling technology
- Allows a single (X)HTML document to be turned into a PowerPoint-like slide show
- Adding screen and print style sheets allows for multi-medium views of a single document
- Highly efficient, but highly browser centric...
Expanding The Field
- When Opera 7.5 for OS X came out, the banner ads persisted in projection mode
- Tantek Çelik created a JavaScript-driven slide show technique that worked on multiple browsers
- Unfortunately, it required each slide to be ID'ed ahead of time, making additions and rearrangement difficult
- Navigation was only linear; no way to jump to an arbitrary slide
- There was also no facility to "switch off' the slide show styles short of killing all CSS
- Motive and opportunity combined to point the way...
Where We Are Now
- This slide show technique builds on Tantek's original scripts and ideas
- Each slide is enclosed in a classed
div; IDs are dynamically assigned by script
- Navigation menu is automatically built at run time
- A "slide style" toggle function now exists
How It Works
- To move back and forth: click on the "arrows" or use accesskeys "Z" (back) and "X" (forward) or use Page Up and Page Down
- To toggle the slide styles: click on the toggle button (to the left of the arrows) or use accesskey "T"
- To invoke the navigation menu: mouse into the lower right corner of the slide (below the arrows) or use Up and Down Arrows ( Right to jump to the Dia, Left to close the List )
The Advantages
- With one file, you get a slide show, a printable outline, and a screen presentation
- Files are incredibly lightweight and compress easily
- Thanks to their semantic (X)HTML, slideshow files are also highly accessible
- New slide themes can be created simply by writing new style sheets
Known Problems
- IE/Win:
- The footer height/navigation menu placement is non-deterministic, and a horizontal scrollbar appears even though there should be none
- IE/Mac:
- The navigation menu doesn't show up, and even if you make it visible, it's a complete wreck
- The style toggle button doesn't work
Opera may continue to rely on OperaShow (not yet in place; requires fixing any Opera problems)
- does work now more or less in Opera, Firefox and ie on the same way ( updated by aleto ).
Assistance Appreciated
- Do you have a fix for any of the problems listed? Please share it!
- Credit for assistance will be included in the JS and CSS files as appropriate
- The slide system will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license, so you must be willing to accept those terms
- In other words: if you submit a contribution, you are agreeing to abide by and place your contributions under the CC license mentioned above
In Summary
- With minimal scripting, we can recreate and improve upon a (currently) browser-specific technology
- The scripting still needs some work, as does the style
- Once the problems are resolved, we'll have a very flexible and lightweight slide show system available for anyone to use
- Help out if you can!