Introducing Storyteller, a longform theme
Sourcefabric is working on an answer to the interactive format commonly known as longform or ‘Snow Fall’. Done properly, longform storytelling is gripping, memorable journalism that serves the needs of newsrooms and readers alike. We’re calling our longform theme ‘Storyteller.’
For anyone not familiar with the original New York Times story 'Snow Fall' and the trends it started, the format is something between a standard news article, a book, an album, a film --- and at the same time completely different.
As you can imagine, it's quite a nebulous brief. Making a Newscoop plugin that touches upon all of these points, yet is generic enough to be used by anyone, is daunting to say the least. But these challenges are what get us up in the morning, sometimes as early as the crack of 10 a.m.
As with any web development project based so firmly in front-end technologies, we're starting with a static page which incorporates all of the major features which we hope to encompass with version one of Storyteller. The long-term view is to increase the capabilities of the theme later as we identify new use cases and necessary additions to longform article creation.
This week, we've focussed our attentions on the following:
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A nice, clean uncluttered layout
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Fullscreen background images for titles
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Fullscreen background video for titles
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Fullscreen background images with descriptive titles and text for slideshows
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Fullscreen background video with descriptive titles text
By the end of the week we should be ready to start moving on to the more exciting interactive elements which we're planning for the next phase of development. We’ll keep you posted on developments. For now, here's a peek at the work in progress.