Being a Debian user who doesn’t want to install KDE, I am left with the gecko rendering engines in Firefox, Epiphany, and Kazekahase. In all three browsers, S5 makes my browser crawl. Slide transitions can take up to 10 seconds (this is on a very speedy system), and the browsers are just generally uncooperative.

Does anyone have the same problem? Is there an easy solution, or does someone know of a way to debug this?

Indeed, it is a bit shorter, but I guess I’ve just never gotten accustomed to it. I’m willing to be convinced to change it, though :D.

-ryan

Why would you prefer object literal syntax over prototype syntax?

There’s actually no prototype syntax. The question is if you build the prototype object at once or step-by-step. And just loot at the example, all in one is shorter. The compactness is the major reason for JSON‘s appeal, thus it’s also fashion.

from another post from Eric he states:

One known problem is that when Firefox displays an S5 show using the text/xml or text/xhtml+xml MIME types, which is necessary for slide shows that incorporate things like MathML and SVG, things break because innerHTML ceases to be supported. I have a proposed fix submitted by an S5 user, but did not get it into 1.2a1. I plan to correct this before reaching the first beta release.

I wonder, as someone already has a patch for it, it should definitely be integrated into S5′s main trunk. :)

There’s already a repository set up at http://hg.s5project.org/ . I’ve chosen to use Mercurial, as it seems to do very well for distributed, open source development.

@Dao-

Why would you prefer object literal syntax over prototype syntax?

I’m not an expert javascript programmer, and I know a lot of experts prefer the object literal syntax (I know by reading their code), but I don’t quite get it. Is it just fashion?

“why not use the prototype object for properties”

I dunno, I guess I hadn’t gotten to that.

@rui-

The standard answer is “write a patch”. Or, at least, describe to me what needs to be done to make it work.

-ryan

The feature I really really am somehow desperate to have in S5 is the ability to use SVGs natively embbeded into my presentation. I just hate converting my vector-based diagrams into a png and not having them fit into my screen/projector resolution… Oh, and some MathML too.

So my question is, when does S5 will be based on pure XHTML (as in strict) ?

Anyway, good work Eric!

Frankly speaking, I do like the code

Good point.

Now I don’t know what I was actually looking at, but it made use of prototyping. I thought this would become the next version.

I don’t think that wrapping the functions and variables you have (basically objects sitting in the window object) into a S5 object would slow things down. It would make S5 act more like a library, e.g. without interfering with other JS stuff that could be used in a presentation.

With the new site, the door is wide open. All that remains is to walk through it.

Yes, I’ll probably do that, later.

Frankly speaking, I do like the code, but then I wrote it. I’m old school, and I like global functions because they make sense to me and they work. Still, I will admit that S5 isn’t object-oriented for two primary reasons:

1. Programmers I know well and trust implicitly have told me that OO code can often be monstrously slow, whereas the kind of code I wrote can be faster. Please note that I do not claim both observations are always true in all cases on all computers for all languages. I’m just passing along a general observation from people who know way more about programming than I do. Then again, the one OO version of S5 I did find time to play with seemed pig-slow.
2. I don’t know how to write good OO code. I don’t even really know how to write my own OO code. Never have. So sue me.

That said, if others want to “clean up” the code, that’s always been an option. When it comes to the S5Project.org repository, though, I will very strongly advocate keeping any OO conversions of S5 to a separate branch of the code until they can be definitively shown to be equal or better to the original non-OO code in terms of speed.

Of course, for that to happen, someone(s) will have to invest the time and expertise to do the conversion and show that it yields superior performance for the user. With the new site, the door is wide open. All that remains is to walk through it.

this.slides; — doesn’t do anything unless you assign something. But anyway, why not use the prototype object for properties, too?

element.nodeName == 'BODY' — won’t work in XHTML.

In general, that’s not very practical:

S5.prototype.foo1 = function() {};
S5.prototype.foo2 = function() {};
S5.prototype.foo3 = function() {};

Instead I would suggest:

S5.prototype = {
foo1 : function() {},
foo2 : function() {},
foo3 : function() {}
}

I know I was looking at pre-alpha code. I also know this whole S5Project.org idea is about contributing rather than ranting in your comments section. I just don’t have more time right now, so that’s it …