/snowfall

Example of a hand-crafted snowfall/scrollytelling page in order to learn how to achieve that: http://snowfall.ddjdach.de

Primary LanguageHTMLMIT LicenseMIT

How to Snowfall

This is the code of http://snowfall.ddjdach.de It is a lively example of a hand-crafted snowfall/scrollytelling page in order to learn how to achieve that.

First things first

Find an appropriate story. Without the story, no storytelling will help you.

How to start?

Decide, whether to start from scratch or using any content management system. That is, you could ...

  • "code" it manually (if you know some HTML); that's how http://snowfall.ddjdach.de was made
  • host WordPress and use an appropriate WordPress theme (by searching themes for "one page", "parallax", or "scroll")
  • rent a WordPress blog and use an appropriate WordPress theme (that sometimes costs a little)
  • host or rent any other one-page scrolling system (most of them charge you a little bit)

How to make it beautiful?

Implement pre-existing libraries for your HTML, CSS, and beautify them by implementing some JavaScript as well. They are very easy to install and normally only require you to (1) download them, (2) copy some files onto your server, (3) copy one or two lines of code into your code (just real copy&paste), and sometimes (4) set some configuration (all well-documented).

Some libraries to look at (all of the are open-source and free of any charge):

But there are more. Just search for them using your daily language, such as "beautiful scroll bar" and you'll find plenty of results saying something with jQuery (everything these days is "with jQuery") -- these are the things you are looking for.

Or ask. The German mailing list of data journalists at http://ddjdach.de for instance.