Sparkart Produces Groundbreaking New Website for The Killers: Unveiled today at Microsoft's "Beauty of the Web" Event Launching IE9
Online, September 16, 2010 (Newswire.com) - OAKLAND -- Sparkart Group, Inc., an Oakland-based full-service independent digital agency, has developed and designed an innovative new website for multi-platinum alternative rock band The Killers. The new website, www.thekillersmusic.com, is one of the first full artist websites to utilize HTML5 throughout the site to achieve a faster, cleaner and overall improved web experience for users. It launched this morning at 10AM PT as Microsoft showcased the site during its "Beauty of the Web" event marking its highly anticipated beta release of Internet Explorer 9, touting a "more beautiful web" experience.
"The Killers site uses some of the best capabilities of HTML5 including CSS3, SVG, and Canvas," commented Naveen Jain, Sparkart's CEO/President. He added, "It's a great example of how we can use these technologies to create a rich web experience."
The Killers' website chronicles the band's career, and offers users a seamless browsing experience of the band's music and video content. The site is based on a photo realistic, digitally matte painted 360 degree panorama inspired by the desert surrounding the bands hometown of Las Vegas. The website takes advantage of HTML5 across the site's landscape and internal sections:
· The video section uses HTML5 to display high resolution and scalable videos without using third-party plug-ins. The page utilizes parallax animation across several planes to create a more realistic feeling of movement in the environment.
· The site's top level navigation is built using Canvas. Users pan across the site in both left/right directions. Panning accelerates the closer to the edge of the canvas the users' mouse moves.
· Sparkart used SVG to build the Tour section, which allows the user to zoom in/out and pan around the globe to view past tour dates by location. The use of SVG also maintains the high quality resolution of the page regardless of how closely the user is zoomed in. SVG was also used to create a "Journey" mode to illustrate the band's tour routing from city to city starting in 2004.
Jain also remarked, "HTML5 is fantastic because it enables our team to develop sites that work on most major browsers without investing significant time in compatibility testing. We normally spend up to half our time on testing our projects on the major browsers. For The Killers project, we invested a fraction of that. "
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About Sparkart Group, Inc.:
Founded in 1999 and based near Silicon Valley in Oakland, California, Sparkart is the leading independent interactive technology firm which helps music artists and entertainment brands promote awareness, manage and create revenue streams, and design and produce Web sites enabled by Sparkart's proprietary Clique Tools software. A powerful, creative-friendly platform, Clique Tools is designed to support functionality, such as social networking features, e-commerce, and content management. The company's clients include Jason Aldean, Brooks & Dunn, Janet Jackson, The Killers, Bravado, and UFC, among many others. Sparkart's music clients alone have sold nearly half a billion records. For additional information, visit www.sparkart.com.
Sparkart media contact:
Jim Havey, jhavey@jimhaveypr.com