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DragIt - Web 2.0 User Interface for Digital Media Control
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About
A new breed of user interface, based on Web 2.0 concepts, lets the user intuitively control their digital media.
With DragIt the user can control a home entertainment system remotely from a Web browser (Internet Explorer), by clicking, dragging and dropping icons. For example, dragging a picture icon onto a TV icon will show that picture on the screen. Or dragging a song will start playing it. If run on a tablet PC, the user can control their home entertainment system with the tip of their stylus.
DragIt makes your Web browser a convenient controller for your UPnP Media Server and Media Renderer devices. It is a thin Web client based on the Universal Control Hub architecture. Javascript code is embedded within HTML code, and provides the ability to interact with the web page as if it was a local application. Often, these Web pages are referred to as "Rich Internet Applications" or "Web 2.0".
Screen shot of DragIt (description of figure). The user can point and drag to browse the media server, and have songs, pictures and videos played on their home entertainment system.
Currently, the following features are implemented:
- Browse the media server content
- Play a song or a music album
- Show a picture or run a slide show on the TV screen
- Play a video on the TV screen
Demo Video
A video clip is embedded below, showing a demonstration of DragIt. Depending on your bandwidth, it may take a few minutes to download the video file before you can start watching the video. Please click on the "play" button in the controller field at the bottom of the video. Or set focus on the video, and press <Enter> to start and stop.
DragIt demonstration video
Use
this link to open the video in QuickTime player.
Alternate formats are available for download:
- Download zip file with low-resolution video files (17 MB, see instructions below)
- Download zip file with high-resolution video files (48 MB, see instructions below)
Download instructions for zip files: Download the zip file locally on your computer, and extract its content into a new directory (e.g. c:\dragit). Then double-click (or select and press <Enter>) on the file "dragit.mov" (high-res) or "dragit-web.mov" (low-res). You need to have either Quicktime or RealPlayer installed on your computer. If you want to play the video with captions, start Quicktime on your local computer and open the file "dragit.qt.smil" (high-res) or "dragit-web.qt.smil" (low-res) through the "File" menu in Quicktime.
Quick Facts
- Project status: Version 4.0 beta
- Publisher: Trace Center
- Team: Gottfried Zimmermann (lead), Parikshit Thakur & team
- Download:
- Separate zip file with source code: SourceForge project "traceurcsdk", package "DragIt"
- Deployed files included in UCHj/UCHe: SourceForge project "traceurcsdk", package "UCHj" / "UCHe"
- Installation notes
- The release notes contain a list of new features, known limitations and known bugs.
- License Agreement and list of third-party licenses used
- Contact: Please provide feedback and report new bugs and problems to zimmer@trace.wisc.edu.
Acknowledgement
The creation of the underlying software was funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), US Department of Education under grants H133E980008, and H133E990006; the National Science Foundation (NSF) via the Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI); and gifts from Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
See also
Last update: Gottfried Zimmermann, 2008-09-01