Seneca student project has real-world implications.
Anna Sobiepanek recently graduated with a bachelor of software development from Seneca.
Photo/COURTESY
It beats slaving over a thesis only a professor will read.
Students from Seneca College's School for Computer Studies program were recently tapped by Mozilla Corporation, marketer of the world's second most-used Internet browser Firefox, to develop a new technology making it easier for browsers to display graphical information without requiring the use of Adobe's Flash application.
"It was very different than what we're used to," said Anna Sobiepanek, 27, who recently graduated with a bachelor of software development from Seneca. "As students, we're usually working with groups of other students on projects that will never see the light of day. With this we got to work obviously with Mozilla, but we also got to work with other contributors that came from around the world."
Sobiepanek was one of about 10 Seneca students asked by Mozilla to create some graphical two- and three-dimensional features using the java computing language, Processing.js, and ensure the Firefox browser was fast enough to handle the new technology. The language was developed at MIT, but its full capabilities can only be realized now after recent advances in modern browsers which are based on the HTML5 standard for the World Wide Web (WWW), she explained.
"I've been amazed by what Seneca students have done with Processing.js 1.0 over the past year," said Mark Surman, executive director of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation in a press release. "They've built a huge and important bridge between the open web and world of electronic art and design."
The project was built into Seneca's curriculum, allowing students to work on the initiative over two semesters and then be hired full-time for the summer to finish it up. A new crop of Seneca students is now working on a processing.js 1.1 release, said Sobiepanek.
"Trying (software) code out, writing a function and then exposing it to the world and getting feedback - from all types of, you know from novice javascript developers to professional developers - telling you what you can do to improve functionality and speed, that wouldn't happen in the classroom," she said.
Rendering images directly in the browser using processing.js offers two main benefits over Flash animations, Sobiepnaek outlined. The first is that such graphics are open source, meaning other developers can view, learn and improve on the source code. The second is the computer user doesn't have to download the Flash plug-in to their browser. Apple's mobile devices also don't support Flash, but Processing.js will work on them, she added.