Building an open source SlideShare.net clone

I always had this nascent idea which got some fuel today during some conversations & am sharing it with you all since I can no longer bring the idea to fruition. :( If you can make it work, please do let me know. Also, acknowledging my inputs will of course be most welcome. :) I could even help you develop it if you decide to build FLOSS based on this idea! :D

Ok, without much further ado, here's the idea - Why can we not have an open source clone for slideshare.net kind of site? It would serve pretty well for enterprise use, especially for knowledge sharing/management.

So what does it take to build such a site with very basic features? Nothing fancy, just the bare minimum? My thoughts:

• The Converter - We need a means to convert the uploaded PowerPoint and/or Impress presentations to flash format.
• The Player - A flash based player with the basic controls (buttons) for next, previous, first, last, goto slide #, autoplay & fullscreen.
• The Site - This would have an option to upload presentations & show the converted flash files via the player. Also, it should provide the "social" functionalities of allowing users to comment, favourite, share/recommend, rate, download the presentations.

Now lets see how we could achieve these using FLOSS options.

The Converter
We would need a software that could convert the major presentation file formats - ppt, ppts, pptx, odp - to the flash file format - swf. This can easily be achieved through OpenOffice.org. :) Yes, go to the export option in OpenOffice.org and you will find Macromedia Flash as one of the formats to export a presentation into. So just get OO.o installed on your machine that will do the conversion. If you want it to be on a Linux server and not a desktop, fret not, you can install the openoffice.org headless version that doesn't require a GUI (X server) to run! More details on how to achieve this is demonstrated on this excellent blog for openoffice.org tips & tricks - OpenOffice.org Ninja. There, the biggest hurdle is gone. ;)

The Player
The default conversion by OO.o provides us with a basic functional SWF file albeit which can only go to next slide in a loop (just click on the slides). The other options to go back, etc. are not available by default.

We could either use the default SWF created by OO.o, which would be the easiest option or you might have to work on either the code of OO.o or some other means to create a custom player. :(

Here too FLOSS offers means to edit the generated SWF files - just head over to http://www.swftools.org/. Here there are many SWF related tools, including PDF2SWF, which would now increase our input formats to PDF too. :D

Simply use the steps given in this page to use a custom viewer to generate the SWF file using swfcombine!

They even give some instructions for creating your own viewer:

If you know about Flash, and you want to substitute SimpleViewer from above with something more sophisticated, follow these rules:

1. There has to be some rectangle (Movieclip, whatever... ) in your Viewer, named "viewport". (This name is used to reference the object when using swfcombine for merging it with the converted pdfs)

2. Browsing buttons next to the rectangle (which turn pages in the shown pdf) should trigger some Actionsscript events, like

SetTarget "viewport"
NextFrame
SetTarget ""

to set the frame in the to-be-replaced rectangle. (It will be replaced with a MovieClip, therefore a SetTarget is neccessary)

It's important that the Target Name ist "viewport", not "/viewport", as the Movie will get inserted into a Movieclip.

Now, that the most cumbersome parts (for me) are done with, lets head over to the relatively easy (to conceptualise) part.

The Site
The site can be built on your choice of poison language & database. :) LAMP or Ruby or anything else is really a matter of your own choice & preferences. I will leave this to you. :) Jsut remember that you would need to make it "social" enough for allowing the users to converse and the rest will depend upon the uptake of the app in your target population. :)

If you decide to build a FLOSS conversion helper codes, player & site, just let me know. :)