Very clever story telling using HTML and Javascript...

by dclaysmith • 15 years ago

341 28 15 years ago

kungfooey• 15 years ago

Wow. This is fantastic. Clever story, clever execution, clever little surprises in the illustrations. Can't wait to see what else this guy comes up with.

silvestrov• 15 years ago

For each page, you must use the horizontal scrollbar to see see the animation and the rest of the images.

petewailes3• 15 years ago

Totally didn't get this until I started poking around. Assumed the next page links up the top would take me forward, not scrolling right.

Martijn• 15 years ago

I wonder if it matters whether people are using their trackpad. I was using mine and immediately figured it out; maybe it's because scrolling horizontally is trivial with a trackpad?

Klinky• 15 years ago

You can also use the numbered circles at the top to advance to each section of the image. This can also provide a less jerky scrolling than doing it manually.

petewailes3• 15 years ago

So, I've got a question... Whilst this is undeniably cool, can anyone actually anything beyond short children's literature being told this way?

As a more random note, what innovation have people seen/would people like to see in the literature space? How would you tell a novel online?

Discloser: am writing a novel, and reserve the right to totally take any ideas from this and incorporate them. If I do, you'll get a credit in the book.

waterside81• 15 years ago

Maybe comic books and graphic novels, like Watchmen? Just as people subscribe to RSS feeds for news, I don't see why in theory people wouldn't subscribe to a a novel that releases new chapters via some syndication method.

ulisesroche• 15 years ago

You may want to take a look at eliterature.org, for some ideas. I think there is something to be said that visual and interactive novels make up about 70% of game titles released in Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel

An IF novel should do quite well as a mobile App. I've been taking a few stabs in the dark lately, adapting Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" into an IF piece, but haven't had much luck, really.

petewailes3• 15 years ago

Interesting. I'll have a more thorough nose around that later. Cheers!

int3rnaut2• 15 years ago

I honestly can't right now but that doesn't mean there isn't anything beyond stories. Someone mentioned comics--and I think that would be a good idea, but I think the comic industry is past that. Motion comics basically do the exact same thing but in a much more fluid/better way.

Here's an example of a Motion comic (from 2009 too) from Marvel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAUAC0RzMis

MrHoatzin2• 15 years ago

I dunno if I can agree with the "exact same […] but […] much more fluid/better". I think the motion comics came about because some comic exec though they needed to put their wares on Youtube or something like that, whereas I started with faux-3D/parallax as a neat way to show a lot of information in a limited space. My inspiration is pop-up books, theirs is movies/storyboards.

I don't think you can compare them qualitatively as directly as you've done is what I am saying. Their end product is a movie, mine is a website.

kragen• 15 years ago

Delta Thrives: set the controls for the heart of the sun, from 2002, of Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep Comix, was not children's literature and was not particularly short. The original site is, sad to say, long gone, but most of it is preserved at http://e-sheep.sansara.net.ua/www.e-sheep.com/delta/heartoft....

Does that count as "being told this way"?

vacri• 15 years ago

If the context didn't give it away, the phrase "They tried all kinds of things to get them to fuck off" should have indicated that this isn't really directed at children - so the answer is "this literature".

hobolobo• 15 years ago

Well, this is awkward. (Check u/n) I am unable to claim responsibility for this :)

jpdelatorre2• 15 years ago

Looks really cool. This would be an amazing tablet app for children. +1 if there's a voice over option. Although it seems a LOT of work to put together.

zeugma• 15 years ago

If you read the story further, you will see it is not really the children version of the tale.

jpdelatorre2• 15 years ago

I'm referring to the technology/approach he used to present the story and not the actual story.

mambodog• 15 years ago

I am working on something similar to this, though I've implemented a renderer like that of a game, with all visible elements being rendered at 30 fps, foregoing DOM manipulation for writing HTML text directly to innerHTML[1], and culling non-visible elements. This avoids the slight jerkiness that exists when scrolling on the linked page.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RRnyChxijA&t=22m56s

MrHoatzin2• 15 years ago

Another reason for the flicker is that Hobo Lobo doesn't calculate a realtime scroll, it has a repeating 50ms timeout that listens to see if horizontal scroll has happened, and then recalculates all the positioning. I guess I could set it up to fire more often, but I felt 50ms was a good tradeoff of performance vs quality.

inportb• 15 years ago

I really enjoyed the experience!

sigvef• 15 years ago

http://hobolobo.net/what-is-this-thing thinks I'm using Internet Explorer, when in reality I'm using Chrome 14.0.803.0 dev-m.

ineedtosleep• 15 years ago

Microsoft also made something similar to show off IE9's HTML5/CSS3 capabilities. I don't have a link handy, but it should be easy to find.

nerdinexile• 15 years ago

You know what this'd be great for? Narrative puzzles. Imagine if Planetarium (http://www.beholder.co.uk/planetarium/) had had access to this technology.

Very clever story telling using HTML and Javascript...

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