About two years ago, I started seriously playing around with the GIF file format, teasing it apart to see what was inside, and what could be built from it. Along the way I learned about and built upon a huge range of new Web technologies, like Typed Arrays, the Web Audio API, Web Components, the Blob API, Web Sockets, GLSL Shaders, as well as gigs and gigs of GIFs from all over the internet. I managed to build the software I had always dreamed of - making a stream of GIFs a perfectly synchronised visual accompaniment to live music.
Once it was working, I realised that the software wasn't the whole story. For it to be really useful to people, it needed to be tactile. Buy a device, take it out of the box, plug it in and have everything just. work. But that would mean rewriting everything, and giving up on the Web as a platform. Wouldn't it?
This is a story about taking an idea off the internet and into your hands. About being a front-end developer used to gobs of CPU power & more RAM than you know what to do with, to suddenly caring about everything from the CPU instruction set to whether you can get a good waterproof casing. About wanting the Web you love, with all its flexibility, openness & possibility, on a product of your very own.[]()
Speaker Bio
Glen Maddern is an independent web developer from Melbourne, Australia, with a career spanning everything from traffic simulation to deconstructing the GIF file format in JavaScript. He believes there's no more exciting place for technology than the expanding reach and capability of the browser, and loves meeting similarly enthusiastic folks from around the world. He's the creator of <x-gif> (the best web component ever) and an organiser of CSSConf AU.
Embedding the Modern Web
The story you'd like to tell
About two years ago, I started seriously playing around with the GIF file format, teasing it apart to see what was inside, and what could be built from it. Along the way I learned about and built upon a huge range of new Web technologies, like Typed Arrays, the Web Audio API, Web Components, the Blob API, Web Sockets, GLSL Shaders, as well as gigs and gigs of GIFs from all over the internet. I managed to build the software I had always dreamed of - making a stream of GIFs a perfectly synchronised visual accompaniment to live music.
Once it was working, I realised that the software wasn't the whole story. For it to be really useful to people, it needed to be tactile. Buy a device, take it out of the box, plug it in and have everything just. work. But that would mean rewriting everything, and giving up on the Web as a platform. Wouldn't it?
This is a story about taking an idea off the internet and into your hands. About being a front-end developer used to gobs of CPU power & more RAM than you know what to do with, to suddenly caring about everything from the CPU instruction set to whether you can get a good waterproof casing. About wanting the Web you love, with all its flexibility, openness & possibility, on a product of your very own.[]()
Speaker Bio
Glen Maddern is an independent web developer from Melbourne, Australia, with a career spanning everything from traffic simulation to deconstructing the GIF file format in JavaScript. He believes there's no more exciting place for technology than the expanding reach and capability of the browser, and loves meeting similarly enthusiastic folks from around the world. He's the creator of <x-gif> (the best web component ever) and an organiser of CSSConf AU.