NN3.0+ or MSIE4.0+ is is required for the player to work...

jsImagePlayer 1.0

by Martin Holecko
September 1996
PRAHA, Czech Republic

[ banana movie | how does it work | known bugs ]
NN3.0+ or MSIE4.0+ is is required for the player to work...

Welcome on the jsImagePlayer homepage!

Why "jsImagePlayer"? Because it deals with numbered images rather than movie files. "js" stands for "javascript".

The script has been written to provide an easy-to-use movie player capable of displaying and controlling sequences of images (movies) inside a webpage without the need of any external players or plugins and thus having no demands on the visitor. Furthemore, javascript functions dealing with images work in NN3.0+ and MSIE4.0+ and therefore platform independence is achieved easily.

Here's an example of the player in action... (Try to press some of the buttons below the picture. BUT wait a little if there is still some downloading activity - the movie has about 300Kb).

  The Banana Movie.
©1996-98 Martin Holečko, Karel Krišta, Martin Cordingley

Something you didn't know about bananas.

Excerption from the "Banana" movie showing the capabilities of the jsImagePlayer in action. 1997 by M.Holecko, M.Cordingley & K.Krista 

Other examples of jsImagePlayer usage:

HOW does it work?
The script first preloads number of images into the Netscape cache. The images are supposed to be named in the format: "imagename#.ext", where:

Some time after the preloading begins, an image saying "please wait, loading movie" is displayed to inform the unpatient user. The image is supposed to be placed in the same directory as the page and is scaled automaticaly to the image width and height set in the script header. The message is replaced by the first frame when the whole sequence is downloaded.

Now you can play the movie (once, loop it or swing it), change its speed, play it reverse, play it frame by frame or jump to the frame you want by typing the number to the input field that shows the current frame number (see the known bug below). Works well both with GIFs and JPEGs. The user interface is nothing special, I know, but that was not the point of the whole thing. A pretty one, with nice graphical controls and everything, should follow. But then I can call it version 1.5, right? :)

The whole script is on the beginning of the page so just grab it if you like it. I commented it quite a lot so it should be easy to undersatnd. Drop me a note if you have questions or a suggestion or you just feel like it.

If you use the script somewhere, please send me the URL. And a link to the original player's page (http://sgi.felk.cvut.cz/~xholecko/player) would make my day completely!

Enjoy! Martin.

KNOWN BUG:
when the page is located on a WWW Server that cannot handle the POST form submit method, pressing Enter after changing the frame number in the little input field causes the page to reload and an alert window to appear. This can be avoided by clicking with the mouse somewhere outside the input field rather than hitting the Enter to jump to the desired frame. If you are not sure what's your www server like, try it! (most should be alright)

(c)1996-98 by Martin Holecko
Number of visitors since Oct 20, 1996: