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Topic: About Moovl (Read 2200 times) |
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skloopy
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About Moovl
« on: Dec 7th, 2003, 10:12pm » |
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Moovl is awesome! Especially the new animations. But how can we save our own?
ryan
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REAS
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #1 on: Dec 8th, 2003, 12:34am » |
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You'll have to write Ed. I hope if enough people gang up on him, he'll be forced to implement this... 
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| « Last Edit: Dec 8th, 2003, 12:34am by REAS » |
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ed
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #2 on: Dec 8th, 2003, 12:28pm » |
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Thank you!
I agree that enabling anyone who plays with the toy to save their creations is a high priority. The readymade drawings betray the fact that I do already have file I/O sorted [in a ridiculously verbose xml format that ends up being reasonable efficient when zipped]. However the "import" and "export" buttons I've implemented only work when moovl is run as an application as applets aren't allowed out of their security sandbox to do useful things like save and load files from your hard-disk.
So, please do gang up on me, but if the gang could come armed with some ideas or advice I'd be grateful! Are there any examples already out there of web-based P5 work with simple & safe file persistence for multiple users?
I'm torn between seeing if I can launch moovl as a webstart application which would then be allowed to save and open files with the users permission [ http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/ ] which is what we do at http://www.sodaplay.com/constructor/beta/ , OR keep it as an applet and connect it to a servlet that in turn connects to a database on the server [but managing secure user identities is a fiddly faff].
Neither option strikes me as ideal. Since I'll be showing this to young children I can't have an unmoderated public file free-for-all [there could be some pretty nasty moovl made that certainly wouldn't be "classroom facing"!] AND of course I want it to be ridiculously easy to use and launchable from the web.
Please send super obvious simple solution on a postcard.
thank you! x x x
p.s. in the interest of anyone dropping into this thread without having seen moovl on the cover... http://www.soda.co.uk/moovl/index.htm?lovehurts.xml
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| « Last Edit: Dec 8th, 2003, 12:33pm by ed » |
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mrb
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #3 on: Dec 9th, 2003, 1:20am » |
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ed:
moovl is great! about how to save these xml profiles, i would definitely go with some server side solution over permission allowing and file saving -- it could make these solutions much more viewable across a wider audience.
as to how to keep the baddies out, you could try something simple like pass-protecting access to the moovl with the save option, and handle these queries yourself. and you'll still, of course, have to mind the farm...
thnx for sharing, great work.
mike
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Euskadi
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #4 on: Dec 10th, 2003, 2:11am » |
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is the data that needs to be saved small enough to go in a cookie?? does P5 support cookies?? or how about the clipboard?? if you could press the data into the clip and then ask the user to save it in say notepad, then later copy the notepad and have the app suck it back in...
can you see I'm grasping at ways to get settings into the app sans DB??
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| « Last Edit: Dec 10th, 2003, 2:18am by Euskadi » |
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mKoser
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #5 on: Dec 10th, 2003, 10:37am » |
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ed,
saving:
since you are talking about children of rather young ages, passwords, usernames, save-file-menu's and such doesn't seem to fit ... i haven't really thought ths through, but maybe some sort of path-recognition thing could work... i am thinking something like creating your own "signature" and by drawing that signature again, the loading menu appears... ehh, ok, now that i've said i do spot quite alot of problems in there... anyway, just a small idea.
no baddies:
if you plan to go into schools with this, how about making two different databases... one for the web and one for a "secure"-only-to-be-used-for-teaching database... the latter one you could do some heavy moderating on - maybe even categorized as the DBN workshop site ( http://dbn.media.mit.edu/courseware.html ) with a subsite for each workshop (?)
... and the open web one... well, why not just leave it open?
my 2 cents (for now)
Mikkel
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| « Last Edit: Dec 10th, 2003, 10:44am by mKoser » |
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mikkel crone koser | www.beyondthree.com | http://processing.beyondthree.com
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arielm
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #6 on: Dec 10th, 2003, 11:22am » |
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my technical 2 cents too on "saving":
someone mentionned the use of "cookies", but the problem is that they're limited to 2k (or even less) of data per url...
there's an interesting option that combines java/javascript/flash6+:
using the "persistence" capabilities of flash through its "shared object format" (all the data is saved on the local-computer in a safe-way, it's like a mega-cookie that is associated with each url...)
it will probably work on win/ie, and win/moz (less smooth)... concerning macs, i'm not sure (well, maybe on safari, with some luck...)
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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ed
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #8 on: Dec 11th, 2003, 10:14am » |
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that fat flash cookie workaround is ingeneous indeed, but somehow I wouldn't trust a solution that involves two different plugins relying on each other to be around. This stuff is headed towards primary school classrooms so needs to be a robust single click kindof experience.
I've got a bee in my bonnet about java webstart at the moment, and am very excited to discover this morning that under java 1.4 it can to my suprise launch fullscreen apps and control screen resolution. Here's an example I just googled...
https://mu.dev.java.net/
I usually detest fullscreen fascism for web graphic design [I like to be in control of my desktop and am perfectly capable of maximising a window myself if I want to thank you very much], however for putting this in the hands of younger children I think it might be essential to isolate the interaction from all the distracting clutter of the desktop gui [and after all, these days the close boxes in both MacOsX and XP look just like lovely tempting tastey sweeties, yummm]. I need to keep reminding myself that moovl is not designed for nearly grown-ups like me!
Sooo, I think I'm leaning towards the webstart app option [has anyone else launched a p5 project using jnlp [java network launching protocol, which webstart is sun's implementation of] before?]. I'll then have the file and network access freedom to make some sort of sketchbook gui myself that might be local or on the network, not decided which yet 
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ed
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #9 on: Dec 11th, 2003, 10:21am » |
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p.s. mKoser I love your signature doodle authentication idea, it's wild! And I just happen to know a reasearcher that's big on internet based signature authentication, but I think integrating that would be a whole other project!
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| « Last Edit: Dec 11th, 2003, 10:22am by ed » |
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skloopy
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #10 on: Dec 11th, 2003, 10:40am » |
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webstart sounds like a good idea, but i tried to run that fullscreen app from Safari and when it changed the screen resolution, it screwed up all of my window sizes and locations, and all of my photoshop palettes..
I know that kids prolly won't be using photoshop, but it's still annoying when it screws up your prefs..
..sucks cuz i was thinking i might use that for something too.. 
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| « Last Edit: Dec 11th, 2003, 10:43am by skloopy » |
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ed
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #11 on: Dec 11th, 2003, 5:33pm » |
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on Dec 11th, 2003, 10:40am, scloopy wrote:webstart sounds like a good idea, but i tried to run that fullscreen app from Safari and when it changed the screen resolution, it screwed up all of my window sizes and locations, and all of my photoshop palettes..
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eek, sorreeeeee. that desktop hijaking resolution changing trick is suprisingly agressive for java isn't it! It's not very web design friendly but could be perfect for my aspirations to put interactive creative play back where it belongs in tiny hands!
But now I'm thinking how am I going to make P5 work in this context. In particular can a P5 application get resize events and rebuild its graphics buffer appropriately Or am I straying beyond P5's indended computational sketch remit with my funny fullscreen ways
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REAS
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #12 on: Dec 16th, 2003, 7:07pm » |
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As far as I know, we intend Processing to run full-screen as an application, but not for web.
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ed
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #13 on: Jan 6th, 2004, 7:58pm » |
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As a stop-gap measure I've implemented a rather cheeky way of doing some kind of server free persistence. I've simply "signed" the jar file as exported by p5. If you're running the sun java VM (1.2 or later I think) it should now ask you if you "trust Ed Burton" (!). OK, so that may sound a little risky (especially as it then goes on to explain that Soda is a untrusted organisation (unrusted meaning only that we've not coughed up any money to pay for a digital signature yet)), but I assure you that on this occasion all your trust will allow is the appearance of "import" and "export" buttons on moovl that can save and load moovl models in xml format to your very own file system.
So, I invite all and sundry to have a play safe in the knowledge that you can now save your creations if you become emotionally attached to them. Feel free to spam me with any such marvelous models you create; I'd love to see them. Hopefully if you launch moovl in the Microsoft VM or your security is otherwise incompatible with jar signing then the import/export buttons should simply not appear but moovl will continue to function as normal...
http://www.soda.co.uk/moovl/index.htm?bouncy.xml
(...now with added and already outdated seasonal greetings)
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| « Last Edit: Jan 6th, 2004, 7:59pm by ed » |
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REAS
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Re: About Moovl
« Reply #14 on: Jan 7th, 2004, 7:21am » |
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Would you be willing to have two copies of Moovl on the server, the default not being signed and therefore more compatible and then linking to the signed applet if people want to import and export? I worried about the signature impeding people from looking at your work.
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