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It's
Alive! is an ActiveText-based application for creating
and editing dynamic and interactive text documents. Its functionality
is best summarized as the mutant offspring of a text editor
and Adobe AfterEffects. The user can enter, edit and lay out
text as usual. Unlike a text editor, however, which requires
her to constantly move from text to pull-down menu and back
to adjust basic visual characteristics such as font, size
and color, It's Alive! gives the user continuously
variable controls which provide continuous feedback. By using
pie menus instead of standard drop-down or palette menus,
the user can do all of this without ever having to move away
from the target text.
The true
fun in It's Alive!, though, lies in the fact that the
user can apply dynamic and interactive behaviors to the text,
in real-time, as easily as she can change the font. If she
wants some text to wander aimlessly around the screen, she
selects the target text, picks "wander" from the menu, and
off it goes. If she wants the text to pulse when the mouse
is passed over it, she selects "pulse" from the menu. The
text will then pulse in reaction to the mouse's proximity
as it wanders around the screen. In this way behaviors can
be layered on top of one another, at the level of an individual
letter, a word or an entire passage. This provides a fluid
way in which to create visually and dynamically rich texts.
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