Mozilla Popcorn: HTML5 and Web 3D documentary

Mozilla’s Popcorn.js technology has been demonstrated through an interactive documentary "One Millionth Tower" which has been entirely produced in HTML5, WebGL (Web 3D).

Mozilla has announced the launch of Popcorn version 1.0, their HTML5 initiative in the video field. Popcorn is the Popcorn Maker and Popcorn.js environment, a JavaScript framework for the interactivity of HTML5 video’s.

This 1.0 engine has been announced during the Mozilla Festival in London at the same time as the "One Millionth Tower" open source documentary put online at Wired.com. This interactive Web documentary has been produced thanks to the Popcorn technology, with it being entirely in HTML5 with JavaScript libraries.

"Popcorn uses JavaScript to link real-time social media, news feeds, data visualization and other contect directly to online video", states Mozilla so that the obtained result is a "new form of cinema which works like the Web itself".

For the 3D and interactive version, the documentary can be viewed with Firefox or Google Chrome with a graphics card that is capable of handling the WebGL technology (Web 3D). Mozilla explains that Popcorn allows producers to control a 3D environment in WebGL and to add information from Wikipedia, Yahoo’s weather API, Flickr and Google Maps.

It is possible to launch a guided visit of the documentary, or freely browse through the site to see what it has to offer. It is based around ideas put forward by residents of Toronto, Canada, to improve the daily life in their building.

Note: for our test computer, the WebGL was operational with Google Chrome but not Firefox (8.0 beta).