No, Mozilla has not radically changed directions and switched to making snacks instead. Popcorn Maker is an open source web application for creating interactive experiences driven by web video. While web video has
been around for a long time, earlier via plug-ins, and now directly in the browser, it has mostly always been a static asset. It is usually embedded, and isolated in a page without interacting with the rest of the contents of the page. While you can view a video embedded in the browser, there is usually nothing web video offers that makes it better than video played in a traditional player. It does not offer the remixiability and interactivity of other web content. Popcorn Maker is an attempt to rectify that, and make video a full interactive part of the web, because that is what the web is capable of. Popcorn Maker is based on Mozilla’s Popcorn.js library which forms the basis for its interactive abilities. With Popcorn Maker it is possible to combine web video with other forms of web media such as text, maps, images and other kinds of widgets. Popcorn Maker projects take one video, and allow you to overlay it with all forms of content, images, text, pop-ups, or even Wikipedia articles, Twitter feeds or Google maps. Additionally one can add actions such as looping, skipping or pausing video. The end result is something that is more than just a video, but an proper interactive experience. The user interface is also quite familiar, with a multi-layered time-line, and drag drop support for adding content. These projects can also be saved online, embedded onto other pages, and remixed by others, which after all is the spirit of the web. To make this possible Mozilla has extended the features of Popcorn.js quite a bit, and will be releasing Popcorn.js 1.4 with all the new features soon. The server itself is node.js based, and called Cornfield. All of this is of course open source, and can be run locally or hosted on your own server instead of using Mozilla’s instance. Popcorn.js itself allows developers to build interactive experiences based around video, so you can have an entire page respond to how a video is playing, and trigger changed in the page as it reaches different parts of the video. More information about Popcorn Maker is available at the following links:
