9
edits
Changes
→Introduction
Games delivery requires fast, highly graphical, interactive, multimedia environment. To accomplish this, games delivered on a web page, have traditionally required some sort of browser plug-in. However due to security concerns and general wariness about plug-ins, delivering content/games in this manner is a barrier to access for some users. Furthermore, browser plug-ins are not available on browsers for all platforms. Even Flash, which is one of the most ubiquitous visual interactive environments, is not available for every browser. The HTML5 <canvas> element, standardized in ...(find citation) allows the programmatic delivery of graphics on a web page without plug-ins. With its inclusion in the soon to be released IE 9, the <canvas> element now represents a means to deliver rich graphical content in all the major browsers.
The typical way to draw on the canvas is to use JavaScript. However for artists, educators, and other people less familiar with JavaScript, learning to do this can be a barrier to entry. The Processing language introduced by Ben Fry and Casey Reas is a simple and elegant language for data visualization that is already used by artists, educators as well as commercial media to deliver rich graphical content called sketches. There is a large body of work around the world which is being developed using Processing. However, Processing was developed in Java and thus delivering Processing sketches on a web page required that the user install a Java plugin. Furthermore the sketches themselves are self contained items as opposed to being part of a web page. That is, the elements of the Document Object Model (DOM) of a webpage can not interact with it or vice versa. Thus, that while it is was possible to deliver visual content it would be difficult a sketch via a Java applet, the web page served as a medium of delivery as opposed to create Processing sketches to take full advantage being part of modern web services such as flickr, twitter etcthe game.
Processing.js is an open source, cross browser JavaScript port of the Processing language. It uses the canvas element for rendering and does not require any plug-ins. However, Processing.js is more than just a Processing parser written in JavaScript. It also enables the embedding of other web technologies into Processing sketchesand vice versa. This extension will allow allows not only the rendering of sketches without the use of plug-ins but also the ability for a new set Processing sketch to make use of visualizations previously not possibleweb technologies to create games. Processing.js seamlessly integrates web technologies with the processing language to provide a framework for multimedia web applicationsgames.
==Background==
