Git & Processing: For new HTML5 Javascript-powered games, animations & all around madcap sweetness, Processing.js animation framework, GitHub, and JSON/XML/AJAX spells mega awesome

Need to throw a batch of links out there. I had a pretty good idea about how to apply some stuff using this kind of tech. The whole thing has just evolved since last November, from local applications into the web. Processing is a language for a lot of cool things including visualizations, but now has been turned into an insane JavaScript web-based interpreter.

All in all it means you can make wild animations and complex things that previously only seemed doable with Java, Flash or perhaps SIlverlight. With this it all runs in JavaScript and modern browsers basically, including the iPhone and Androidz.

On the server side, the basics are easy. You can put a call to a Processing Sketch into the body fields of a drupal or wordpress CMS, just need to make sure the file locations are good/accessible.

More complexified options are what I'm checking out now. AJAX JSON type maneuvers, when the processing sketch retrieves more arrays of flowing data, would be the most excellent thang to have.

Let's look at a frickin awesome chart of how open source developers collaborate day-to-day on creating Processing.JS using GitHub.com:

The processing-js Network - GitHub as seen from one fork. Processing.JS is almost at 1.2 and i figure the almost done code has to be in here somewhere.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Screen shot 2011-03-27 at 3.08.22 PM.png

This is a time chart - 25 - 26 -27 are days. As you can easily see something fruitful, if mysterious is happening here.

Each person has different branches going on; branches are used like parts of the code dedicated to working out certain features. The different people can 'merge' between different branches by 'pulling'. The long hex code with Andor is a unique commit signature, which helps trace the chain back so that merges from totally different chains can all get joined back together, undone or etc. this is like advancing to a wiki user interface from emailing Word files back and forth...

GIT IT NOW:Git is a relatively new and mostly unknown version control software, becoming popular with coders now. It can work for code or digital documents - making repositories you can revert to earlier states, branch/fork, etc. It's a vast improvement over the old standard, CVS, which links your local code to a certain remote repository. Git lets you pull in code from any remote place, so people can work off different forks. Git was developed by Torvalds and other peeps in order to work on the Linux kernel more awesomely.

Git has taken a lot of the programming world by storm and GitHub.com is an excellent 'social coding' setup with a ton of clever people on it. The whole Drupal community benefits now from a team effort that switched all the Drupal community coding platform over into Git. There was awesome Drupalcon Chicago training on Git too, those vids are online conveniently. Git Reference

You have interesting sounding collaboratives from hotsh's Profile - GitHub (hackers of the severed hand) posting a neat ostatus microblogging ruby thing. Also steveklabnik/derp - GitHub"Lets you herp all of your Strings with a to_derp method." Achievements! Explore, learn about Git and make some forks of your own!

Anyway this is all neat stuff - please check it all oot as I can think of a lot of people who could make neat stuff with processing and/or git. There are other hosting services with Git now too including Beanstalk — Secure, Private Subversion and Git Hosting and Codebase - Git hosting, Mercurial hosting & Subversion hosting with complete project management. etcetc.

More links about new ninja Javascript, Processing and JSON / AJAX etc:

Intro quick explanation: Images, Animation and Interactions With Processing.js | W3Avenue: Processing.jsis a port of theProcessing Visualization Language, and allows you to program images, animation, and interactions for the web without using Flash or Java applets. Processing.js uses JavaScript to draw shapes and manipulate images on the HTML5 Canvas element.

Processing.js Blog

dhodgin/processing-js - GitHub - main filez

this is badass includes JSON/AJAX awesomesauce: Processing.js pomax tutorial

Rotating and translating with Processing | ProDevTips - programming tutorials

Drawing lines with Processing | ProDevTips - programming tutorials

JSON the official site, WTF is it? Have goodies with jQuery.getJSON() – jQuery API. these could load the sketch.

you can hack out and not use the init() script, for a more subtle loading/loop: #1186 Enabling lazy loading for sketches - Processing.js - processing-js

JQuery HowTo: Display loading GIF image while loading through AJAX

Getting started with Processing.js - JavaScript tutorial - LYNDA pay tutorial

some newbie XML questions - Processing.js | Google Groups - newb parsing 101

jquery - Better event-based redraw() of Processing.js when using noLoop() - Stack Overflow

Loading JSON, rendering text and using the Processing JS API | ProDevTips - programming tutorials