The purpose of these standards is to develop a means for deploying Javascript programs in an automated fashion.AbstractJavascript games and applications have been gaining ground in the areas traditionally held by Adobe Flash programs. Thanks to the open standards upon which these programs are based, these gains have been good for consumers on the whole, However, a problem arises when Javascript programs attempt to compete in areas where the program may not be hosted by the author.
A common example of this issue is web gaming. The vast majority of web games are hosted by sites like NewGrounds, Armor Games, MiniClip, and Kongregate. These sites are able to operate in a mostly automated fashion thanks to the design of the Flash SWF format. SWFs can be deployed as flat files, then included in any page. Sophisticated web apps can extract useful information like the natural size of the movie, the frame rate, and other information that smooths automated deployments.
The down side to this technology is that the format is effectively closed to prying eyes. Special tools are required to manage these movies. Just generating an SWF file requires that the user purchase $600 worth of software. Free and Open replacements do exist, but these programs are very difficult to use and often produce output that differs in subtle yet important ways from the official tool chain.
Javascript has the reverse problem. The code is very open, but deployment is a difficult and manual process. The only semi-standard solution to date is to deploy a Javascript program as if it were a complete website. Usually this implies a ZIP file being transfered to the destination host, then extracted into its own directory. While this solution works, it offers no integration with the hosting site. The site knows nothing about the program save for the location it was extracted to. This makes the task of automated deployment a difficult one.
Thus the goal of this project is to develop a set of standards by which Javascript games and applications can be deployed in an automated fashion with a high degree of website integration. The standard must cover packaging, meta-data, deployment, and instantiation. The standards must recognize that JS programs can be integrated through a variety of methods. Above all, these standards must make feasible to create automated deployment tools. Wherever possible, example deployment tools should be created.
Definitions
StandardsPackagingThe means by which Javascript Meta-DataThe configuration read by the deployment DS-1: IFrameThe legacy deployment specification for DS-2: IntegrationSpecification for programs that wish to Contributors
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