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The GC RAS researchers have developed software for interactive multimedia publications of lectures and other scientific and educational content. In contrast to the well-known projects in this area (in the first place we should mention SciVee project, funded by the US National Science Foundation, River Valley Technologies website and the Elsevier publishing project Article of the Future), we focused on the use of the most advanced web technologies. Publication of lectures, especially educational, which also include presentations at scientific conferences, makes sense insofar as the user has the opportunity not only to see and hear, but also to have an option of a personal control over interactive content, and the lecture itself operates not only with static slides, but also with other dynamic objects, including interactive ones.
We have developed technology of preparation of interactive lectures in Adobe Flash format in order to incorporate, along with the static slides, the following objects:
The lecture program is written in ActiveScript, version 3.0. Input of all parameters, including JavaScript cuepoints, is done through a set of XML files. Examples of lectures built using the developed technology are published in Russian Journal of Earth Sciences (http://rjes.wdcb.ru/isr/index.html).
To prepare initial description of a lecture with complex structure and, accordingly, a large number of different elements can be quite a time-consuming task. To simplify it the GC RAS researchers have developed the concept of Flash Editor. [GC RAS Report – 2015, in press], which provides XML files generating in interactive mode. Alpha version of this editor (QPeditor-NN) is itself a Flash object which contains a set of tools used for editing of input .swf file. Editor runs inside Adobe Flash Player not lower than version 10.
Along with the Flash technology we studied a possibility of constructing lecture records with the above parameters based on HTML5, including such powerful tool like canvas, as well as JavaScript and CSS. This solution has a number of undoubted advantages over solutions using Flash technology. First of all we are talking about the possibility of inclusion in a lecture virtually any types of HTML5 fragments, for example, JavaScript-driven animations, canvas-based animations, video clips, interactive maps such as Google Maps etc. As we know, Flash allows the inclusion of highly truncated HTML fragments. It is also important that in order to create HTML5 lecture one does not need any commercial software, to view and work with the lecture any modern browser of the Big Five (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari) can be used.
To build the demo lecture in HTML5 a set of input data for the lecture of P. Kabat previously published in Flash format [Kabat, 2012], was used. The result is shown on GC RAS electronic publications website (http://eos.wdcb.ru/html5/lecture/elx_lect.html).