Re: animated images in js

["M.K.Kwong" <kwong@mcs.anl.gov>]

On Fri, 5 Jan 1996, Andrew wrote:

>> I have some hidden pages that I would like others to test out for me...
>> ....
>> http://www.c2.org/~andreww/javascript/test/1/frame.html

Andrew, I tried it out and was very impressed by your clever ideas.

I believe, however,  that the ultimate way for authoring animation
must come from adding more capabilities to js (javascript).

The two foremost items in my wishlist are:

	(since I just join this group, I don't know if someone else 
	has already expressed similar ideas):

        Both of these are available in JAVA but not in js.

1. Concurrency
   ^^^^^^^^^^^

I would like to be able to have the image-animation (i.e. the laughing
head in Andrew's page) running by itself (instead of having to move
the mouse over it and jiggling it) in an infinite loop WHILE the user
can still do other things, like clicking a button in another form or
choosing links in other parts of the window, or even clicking on the
animated-image itself to perform something.

2. Applet-like Area for doodling
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Right now, outside a form, js is static (i.e. script commands are 
sequentially executed and then action halts), and inside a form (or a
frame as Andrew has achieved), a user has only limited ways to achieve
dynamic effects, like changing texts in a text field.

My wish item is to be able to specify and create an area of arbitrary
size, independent of any form.  Inside the area, one can draw lines, 
rectangles, circles, text, bitmap images (from gif and whatnot),
and can also handle events, like mouse click, get cursor position,
mouse drag, etc. etc.

It sounds like I am asking for the whole of JAVA applet capability
to be present in js.  But that is the beauty of applets and why there's
all these excitement over JAVA.  If js can provide at least a subset
of applet capabilities, that will be great.

***********************************************

I absolutely go for the philosophy of script languages like js.

!!!   JAVA and js complements each other.

JAVA is excellent for writing professional-grade production-quality
gigantic-scale software.  

But many people have great ideas for medium projects that can be much
better served by script languages like js.  js can help with rapid 
prototyping, testing, and implementing such medium projects.  (Who
knows, may be one day such a project can be picked up by others who 
will expand it into a gigantic project, to be recoded in JAVA.)
Many with such great ideas could have been intimated by JAVA, and 
what a loss if these ideas get smothered.

Some extremely successful stories are: C and PERL, X-window programming
and Tcl.

If anyone agrees, let's all wish that js can grow to be even more 
JAVA-capable.


M.K. Kwong  kwong@mcs.anl.gov
Mathematics and Computer Science
Argonne National Laboratory