Monday, July 21, 2014

Improving DSpace Presentation: Video Player and Document Viewer / BookReader

One of the fun goals for DSpace that we have at Longsight, is to make using DSpace a great experience. We've got some more ground to cover, but today we have a BookReader and a Video Player to demonstrate.


The BookReader for DSpace uses the Internet Archive BookReader player to present scanned pages of a book in a format that looks like a book. Put the image of the left page on the left side, and the right page on the right side, and when you turn the page, they change both pages. Simple idea, and when executed properly, it makes the content look much nicer.



An example of this BookReader can be found at: https://trydspace.longsight.com/handle/123456789/77#page/1/mode/2up



The Video Player for DSpace uses flash, and plays the video right in your browser. It is not a true streaming solution, but rather, makes use of progressive download, so you can play what has been downloaded, but you won't be able to skip ahead in the video beyond what has been downloaded.

You can view an example of the video player at: https://trydspace.longsight.com/handle/123456789/68



Longsight provides Hosting, Support, and custom development solutions for DSpace, the Digital Repository / Digital Asset Management system for libraries and institutions.