S5 1.1b1
Okay, S5 version 1.1 is now at beta 1 status. In the process, I’ve rearranged the S5 sub-site a bit. The testbed is now in a new location that will let me more easily manage version changes, and also keep test files out of the main directory. The testbed demonstrates, at least right now, various forms of incremental rendering, including both text and image techniques.
There are some changes to note in 1.1b1:
- The controls
divis now a child of the layoutdiv, and is thus no longer structurally confined to the footer. This makes a few things easier, but it does mean any 1.0 themes are likely to get mangled a bit. I decided to do this now in order to minimize disruptions. The structure reference does not reflect this, as it documents v1.0, but will when v1.1 is finalized. I was able to convert the default theme, I18N, and a new theme to handle this new structure without much trouble. - I’ve refactored some of the CSS files to make them more compact. Nothing earth-shaking, but I thought I should mention it.
- The slideshow configuration
metaelements have been renamed todefaultViewandcontrolVis, and have slightly different accepted values, but otherwise do exactly what they’ve done since they were added. - I’ve added an
authaffilmetaelement, with syntax set up to allow multiple authors to be listed. I’m considering making the value format a little more machine-readable, but we’ll see what you all think first. - I fixed the Safari bug where it advanced the slide show when opening an external link. Yay me.
I’m in the process of setting up an archive for ‘official’ S5 versions, so that you’ll still be able to download the S5 1.0 UI folder even when we’re up to 1.725 or whatever. This will be in place for the launch of v1.1. Yes, I hear you: use SourceForge! I’m abstaining for now, because I don’t have time to figure out how to set up a project on their system, let alone how to fix their UI so it isn’t confusing and frustrating. Mine may not be much better right now, but at least mine’s easy for me to fix (and I’ll get to it soon, I promise).
The other major addition I have planned is to create a set of guidelines for theme packaging. For example, every theme should contain a file titled 00_head.txt that contains the head-based elements (links and so forth) that should be used in a presentation file in order to make the theme work. This will make it much easier for presentation authors to use themes without having to understand the ins and outs of the S5 file structure, and for theme authors to only have to package the files they want to change. Hopefully that will make more sense once I write the guidelines.
And finally, you may have noticed that I’ve stopped superscripting the 5 in S5. Practically nobody else was doing it, and it was getting to be a pain even for me to type, so I figured I’d go with the flow. I’ll change the documentation eventually.
So please test out the testbed and let me know if anything goes seriously awry. If anyone wants to try hooking up the 1.1b1 UI files to their own presentation, I’d be interested in hearing the results. Remember, though: make sure your presentation file’s XHTML validates! If you report problems in an invalid presentation, I’m not going to look at it until the validation errors are corrected. That’s because the DOM routines depend on well-formed markup, and it would be futile for me to try to debug any problems caused by invalid markup.
With luck, we’ll only need one or two beta cycles before 1.1 can go final.
28 Responses»
Ole Hansen wrote in to say...
I don’t know the cause, but it seems that links in the testbed do not respond to normal clicks in Firefox 1.0. The external links work, when I use my thumb-button to open a link in another tab.
Eric wrote in to say...
Hm, yes, Ole, you’re right. Actually, it happened because I’m an idiot: the non-external links pointed to slide 11, and there are only 9 slides (plus the title slide) in the testbed now. The problem wasn’t the JS, it was my XHTML. Duh me! It’s fixed now.
Steven Ametjan wrote in to say...
While using the test bed in Firefox 1.0 the system will not let me out. I can’t even type in a new address to leave the text bed because it just reads the enter key press and goes to the next slide. I can’t back out of it either.
Eric wrote in to say...
I’m not seeing the same things, Steven. When the cursor is in the address bar, the enter key does get read as a slide advance, but Firefox then goes to the requested page. I can also hit the “Back” button in the browser to back up to the previous page. Keyboard-based backing also worked for me. This was all tested two minutes ago in FF1.0/OS X.
Lou Rutker wrote in to say...
Hi,. The slide advanced but Drudge did not load (I than tried http://www.johnkerry.com/ assuming that some type of political filter was in place ;) but to no avail). It seems as if the keystroke as trapped by S5 even in the URL bar as Reported earlier by Steve. I assume this is a bug in FF.
On FF 1.0 on Windows (XP) I started the testbed slideshow and than entered http://www.drudgereport.com/ in the URL bar and hit
Lou Rutker wrote in to say...
I meant to say in the URL bar and hit <ENTER> (but the ENTER got filtered out as a tag)
Lou Rutker wrote in to say...
Note, If you have Adblock extension installed in FF the external links will not open unless you rightclick on the external link.
Eli Sarver wrote in to say...
I am seeing the same back button issue on my end. FF1.0/Win2k
Eric wrote in to say...
Sorry, guys, but I’m simply not seeing those problems on my Mac copy of Firefox, so either this is a Windows-based problem or we’re just doing something differently. If anyone on Windows can figure out what’s going on and fix it, great; otherwise, it’ll just have to be the way things are. (And if someone manages to demonstrate that it’s an FF bug, then it should definitely be reported.) Meanwhile, I think there’s no further need for reports along those lines unless they contain information new to the discussion.
Mike wrote in to say...
Eric, you are using XHTML but not closing your img tags, is there a reason for this or just an oversight?
Eric wrote in to say...
Oversight, Mike. Thanks for pointing it out!
Mario De Zutter wrote in to say...
Is this slideshow intended for websites or projection?
Because if i use many images there is a long loadingtime.
Tom Carlson wrote in to say...
I’m using FireFox 1.0 on Windows XP Prof and am not having any problems exiting the slideshow. If I type a URL into the address bar and hit Enter, it works for me that same as for Eric. The slide advances and then the requested page loads, but often after a delay of 5-6 seconds. I can also back out of the presentation just fine.
Lou Rutker wrote in to say...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=272861
Lou wrote in to say...
As I posted in the bug report, I traced it to the Adblock extension.
Leung WC wrote in to say...
I think it’ll be a good idea to publish a program to convert s5 1.0 files to s5 1.1 files. Maybe a XSLT service in the web.
clint wrote in to say...
all works fine here on panther/ff 1.0, this is such a great project, nice work as usual eric….
Jeff McDonald wrote in to say...
Very Nice! Works perfectly on M$/Firefox I’m putting together a presentation right now with it. The extra templates seem to be down temporarily on the yatil.de site though, probably too popular for their own good.
Antonio Bueno wrote in to say...
Mmmm. Something doesn’t work. To be more precise, 75% of the theme links (http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/themes/) :P
BTW, there’s another thing that doesn’t work. This one probably my fault. My Opera at the office doesn’t “catch” the style sheet while my laptop one (same XP and browser versions everywhere) does it. Any idea of what I’m doing wrong?
Other than that, thanks a lot for S5. I’m working on moving to it most of my slides. It’s a real pleasure to just need a decent browser to show them.
Antonio Bueno wrote in to say...
Note to self: Read ALL the comments before adding mine :P
Julien Wajsberg wrote in to say...
I found a bug using S5 version 1.0 with IE6SP1.
I have a table with “border-collapse: collapse” and “border: black solid 1px”. The borders show up on all pages … until I display the actual slide where this table is !
It works as expected if I remove “border-collapse: collapse”.
I didn’t have time to fix this, neither to try 1.1b1, sorry :/
Scott Andrews wrote in to say...
Is there a reason why with the default theme in pretty.css the ‘.slide h1′ selector sets the background color? This puts a bounding box around the header so you can’t see the nautilus background image. I realize this then makes some of the headers difficult to read against the background image. Should the background image be softened instead?
I would not pretend to be a graphic artist, just looks better by my eye.
Great work
Kalu wrote in to say...
Would it be some day possible to take the gas out of the microsoft economic engine of which powerpoint is an important wheel.
Doing my masters in economics everytime i think of the economic
in-efficiencies that monopoly creates, I also think of the oppurtunities of economic efficiency if either the government or the turn of technology can break this microsofts monopoly.
JcB wrote in to say...
Is there any way to put Mathml in an S5 presentation ? I tried it, but Mathml rendering seems to need application/xhtml+xml type (at least on Firefox & co.), which in turn breaks Javascript : no more slides :(
Am I missing something ? I may leave an example somewhere, if necessary.
Thanks anyway for that nice piece of “not-really-software-but”
Aaron Gustafson wrote in to say...
I have a presenation I just gave at the WOW CMS and Web Services Workshop available online if anyone’s interested. I originally did it in 1.0 and just did an upgraded version in 1.1b1:
It worked great and I love the new features in 1.1b1 (they were just what I was wanting when making the presentation in 1.0).
Todd A wrote in to say...
I just stumbled across your product S5 and have a comment, (aside from it is a great idea). I am on Windows 2000, and tried out the sample S5 page in Opera 7.54. It appears to be gracefully degraded. Is this expected with this version of Opera on Win 2000? Just curious. It works just dandy though in FF 1.0 and IE 6 on my machine.
I can’t replicate the bugs mentioned above.
Todd A wrote in to say...
Nevermind my last comment. I see how the slide show works in Opera (duh) F11.
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