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Google Maps Creator Takes Browsers To The Limit
An anonymous reader writes "Addressing a crowd of developers in Sydney today, Google Maps creator Lars Rasmussen encouraged them to embrace bleeding edge technology in browser software. He cited the example of how Google Maps can command Internet Explorer to use VML (Vector Markup Language by Microsoft) to display a blue line between geographical points, but use a PNG graphic format and a linear description for the Firefox browser." From the article: "Firstly, the Web allows rapid deployment and there is no software for users to install. It's also much easier to make sure code runs on multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows. The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained."
The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained.
;-)
Isn't that what started the downfall of browsers in the first place? The fact that malicious code could be executed client side by attackers through websites? I have a feeling that either the quote isn't written in its entirety or was modified in some way that changed what Rasmussen originally intended. I really doubt that someone of his level wouldn't acknowledge the dangers in doing what that quote proposes.
"It's quite good," he grudgingly admitted.
Luckily Google came out with it first so Microsoft again looks like the one copying what others are doing - right?
I don't know if I like the idea of taking browsers to the limit when it comes to advertising and pop-ups.
Before people start complaining, it is important to remember that google maps is still at this juncture considered beta. Of course it has some bugs; that's inherent in the "beta" distinction. Surely, though, we ought to be suitably impressed by the progress made by google. Until they came along, we had few real innovators.
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
I think the answer to all of IE's problems is to give it MORE access to my PC.
But the real issue here is "the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained". Thin clients, security, cross-platform compatibility and consistency... these are the driving factors for the new Internet. As more and more people move to W3C standards, etc... Microsoft will lose their strangelhold on the market that has been littered with alternate, proprietary technologies that no one wants and no one really needs (ActiveX, .NET, Microsoft BOB [:)] and join the rest of the world. Microsoft is not going anywhere anytime soon, but they can't grow by being different from the other 10% (and climbing) of the market. The browser may be the great equalizer.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. It ends up being a 3rd company, Google, a non-participant in the browser war who comes along and pushes the envelope. What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market? I think Google's play nice strategy is paying more dividends than MS's destroy all competitor strategy.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
The irritating thing is that, unlike different operating systems, there is no real reason for different browsers to require different ways for doing things. They should all conform to standards. I think all of us instinctively believe this and it creates this mental block that stops us from developing branching code for multiple browsers. We have this 'hope' in the back of our minds that this issue will just go away in the future once everyone gets on the same page. But, it'll probably never happen.
Have you ever asked yourself, Is It Normal?.
The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained.
One thing where MSIE excels over Firefox is exactly providing totally unrestricted access to all the system resources of the client's system, for any website developer/programmer, even without need for confirmation from the user. Although Microsoft swears by God that this feature will be removed from IE7...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
For all the Slash-Love Google gets here, I think it's important to point out that a company whose sole revenue model is advertising is advocating more control of system resources through the browser. I think Google's business model is too often overlooked here.
The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space.
I thought IE gave everyone access to everything on your computer?
yes, his advice is sound, and his work backs it up.
but using bleeding edge technology on browsers is much harder for a lonely coder / small team. how much money / time / man hours do you think google had to get around the fact that ie can use VML and firefox png + a linear description?
...and there is no software for users to install.
Except for, maybe, a web browser?
It doesn't come from browser elves, you know...
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Everybody to the limit, google maps is to the limit...
I said co-ome on fghwgads!
I would rather we waited until IE does everything its supposed to do before moving any further, just yesterday I spent the best part of an hour trying to wrok out why the google maps API was causing my page not to load in IE.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
there is no software for users to install
Um weird, I had to install my operating system, and then I had to install Mozilla. How in the hell is he browsing the web without installing software?
I want to experience the self browsable web!!!!
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
The Cheat is to the limit! Everybody come on fhqwdgads!
How about this -- if I want to run a goddamn virtual machine I'll run a virtual machine. There's gotta be someone out there with a better idea for "application" delivery.
Heh, go tell that to Microsoft with the new "broker" process in Explorer 7. One story below this one.
Removing this "limit" may be a great thing for web developers, but it's also the only thing that keeps us and our computers from being controlled by them.
diegoT
I've just started learning XUL and I'm already wishing that IE supported it. It seems like a fabulous way to build applications. I'm working on a calendar app for my religious community, and although xhtml, css and javascript are mostly good enough, I'm moving it over to XUL because it's better and because I can get access to system resources. I understand the security implications of this, but for my application, there are security implications in the other direction: I don't want community information that might be confidential put on a web server that could possibly be compromised. Instead, the web server will serve the application code, and the calendaring details will be stored locally. (the software is for producing printed calendars, not shared online calendars)
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
to the limit!
No, Vern. They just let him in.
Huh?
I am leaning towards things like Ajax for my future web devel. Look at the way 'Google Sugest' or even the spellcheck in Gmail works; it's feels like it's a desktop app, there's no pausing to download a plugin or anything. Bringing more of a desktop response to web apps is going to be where it's at in the future, and I think Ajax is the one to watch.
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
Well, it's one thing to have "malicious code" executed client-side without any confirmations whatsoever, but it's a whole different thing to have something beneficial executed client-side after (a few) confirmation(s).
Sure, it's dangerous to have such a level of access from a browser to the computer, but heck, if I *really* want to run something that is possible to be run from a browser (with the appropriate plugins, confirmations, etc), then dammit, let me run it.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
And to begin today's Google worship service, please open to page 152 of your hymnal. Let's begin
"Amaaaaazing Google.... is a search engine
That helps a geek like meeeeeeee
Iiiii once was lost, in the interweb
But now you've show the waaay
T'was Sergey who made the Google god
And Larry who helped him ooooout
How precious was that interface
So simple yet so compleeeeeeet
Through many popups, porn and 404's,
We have already brooooowsed
T'was Google that brought us safe thus far
and Google will lead us home.
Google has promised more to me
Like gmail, maps and blogs.
They own all of our web dayayata
But Google "does no evil"
When we've been browsing for ten hours
and don't know how to thinnnnnnk
we'll log onto Slashdot again
to hear more about Goooooogle."
-- Pastor Google
"Slashdot -- Serving freethinkers since never"
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Isn't that what started the downfall of browsers in the first place? The fact that malicious code could be executed client side by attackers through websites?
Define "downfall". Web usage isn't exactly declining, malicious code or no.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
"This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future, although he thinks the simplicity of the current Web browsing experience needs to be maintained."
How much functionality and use do we expect to extract from the casual web browser? Current and the near future.
Internet Explorer has shown us how "bottleneck" can improve or hamper the web browsing and/or overall desktop experience.
i don't post often [check out my posting history] buuut...now correct me [i.e. liberally mod me down] if i don't *get* it but considering the hubris over the amount of phds google've wrangled in, it's slightly surprising & disappointing that some of the brightest foax in the industry amount to coding slick webapps. granted, gmail's swell, as is google map et al, but i woulda thunk, back when i was still 'thunkin', that they'd be liable to throw more than this outta that campus.
/. story about its internet agents]. it's foray into webapps are just that, forays, most of which remain in beta. skip the discussion that google's beta is better than other's production releases because my point is that while they're certainly polishing the hell outta everything, what they're doing *isn't* by any stretch - here's the word again - revolutionary. javascript, ajax, whatever you wanna call it [really, whatever you call it since i'm not a programmer] isn't the most complex whatchamacallit & if that's all phds can put together in a considerable number of years, i gotta wonder if soon we won't be reading of google's downfall, much as we did of altavista & co, and we continue to do of yahoo.
again, i don't mean to be cynical, but i am, so i'll continue. let's surmise. gather an assload of postgrads in a room & figure you'll end up with something truly revolutionary [let's skip the discussion that nothing's truly revolutionary because that implies extinction of its predecessor & is instead, as werner von braun sez, transformation]. ibm seems to have fun creating groundbreaking shtuff [blue gene, the z9 mainframe]. bash sun all you like but solaris 10 is a sys admin's dream, with several features any server operating system should be proud to have. hell, apple's osx is a workstation's dream with its clean melding of a beautiful ui to a solid base. i'll stop the examples at those 3 because they're sufficiently high profile & they're what spring to my mind in my line o' work.
now let's take google. foax, i'm gonna hafta call shenanigans here. with all its bravado & sheer resources, the best google has done is search. and don't get me wrong, it's certainly better at it than anyone currently. but let's put down the kool-aid for a moment & consider; google's search algorithm is just that, a single algorithm which is supplemented by *people* [see: previous
and before you throw their clustered linux system in my inconsiderate face, seeing as how we know very little about how it actually works i've skipped over it on purpose because it's not a revolutionary google product if no one else gets to use it. good night & dank oo.
your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs...i see through you - another dead hero
Support for IE7 is already broken? ;)
If you "embrace bleeding edge technology", don't come crying when you get cut by it. Bleeding edge technology tends to mean just that, it is not as reliable as traditional technology.
...", however, your customers probably won't get your point, when "the rest of the web", "just works."
When your application crashes 20% of your customer's browsers, you can of course say, "But that's not my problem. They should have upgraded to the latest version of the browser, and
As they are a major player on the interwebs, they can hugely affect which browser people choose to use. If they would only not bother supporting any goofy IE-only browser code and stick with standards, people would be be switching to complaint browsers very quickly. Thanks again for you the great browser, firefox team!
Meh.
What Google needs is a better 'browser' platform for building web-based applications. So, Google will simply build this new broswer with an associated new protocol (http improvement). It will be released with a fully open specification and Apache module (or apache replacement) so that web developers can quickly build content for the new browser.
.NET (all of which will be effectively deprecated), the new Gbrowser and Gprotocol will provide a means for better client-server model development.
The main improvement over the broswer/http world will be that it will support web-based applications development. Instead of relying on javascript, XMLHttpRequest, or even Java applets and
Everyone who downloads the new Gbroswer will have access to an exploding universe of new content that blows away today's page-based and clunky javascripted offerings.
--
AC to avoid NDA annoyances
/. daily google article quota filled.
He may be refering to increases in bandwidth and computing power lessening the need for local storage and memory.. think thin client but over a much longer distance. Defainatly possible given enough bandwidth.
It would be nice if they supported SVG. Sure its not native in most browsers yet, but its on its way and in the meantime there is Adobe's SVG plugin. Opera has support, Firefox should have it by 1.5 and KHTML has it in the works.
SVG is a W3C approved standard. Adobe has more marketing oriented description of the technology.
Other than Microsoft is anyone else using VML?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
is that why the map never prints correctly in firefox? (I can't be the only one who's noticed this)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
IE already has this "install on demand" where a user has to confirm to allow a certain application to be installed via the browser.
The problem is though, many clueless users click the thing that makes it go away (cause they were promised something good before they clicked a link) which is the accept option. (certainly on pages which are persisting and force a page-reload until the user confirms) Allowing things to be installed which rather shouldn't be allowed.
A confirmationbox wont ever prompt you "Would you want to allow us to take over your system and do bad things with your PC?" "yes" - "no"
(many users would hit the "yes" if they were told they'd get a nice game in place for it, or that MSN will send 0.01$ to a sick child somewhere in a place unknown if they click the "yes" option.)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
He said downfall of browsers, not web usage. However, he did use the word a bit generally. Let's just say that code being able to run on a person's hard drive (in other words, locally) has the potential for very Bad Things to happen. Additionally, its increasing prevalence on the internet is what makes it seem like a "downfall."
blog & fiction: jd87
I really doubt that someone of his level wouldn't acknowledge the dangers in doing what that quote proposes.
It was someone of his level who was responsible for the design deicisions that made ActiveX and Universal Plug & Play interconnective to the internet in the default installs of Windows. How is Microsoft really that different from Google?
The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space. This is a bottleneck the engineer sees being removed in future...
A Google browser could completly remove this problem. Since it would only allow this control to come from Google itself, security would be maintained.
Next Google takes over the world. I for one, welcome our google browser overlords...
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
...was supposed to have been Java's big selling point. Now it seems we are relying on the browsers to do everything Java just really isn't working for.
The idea of a safe sandbox for powerful web delivered code to work within falls apart when you realize that the average user is a complete dim bulb when it comes to system administration and security. They just don't know what to do to limit what code.
Now if the web world ever came up with a simple point and click interaction method and clear concise and simple instructions as to how to stop rogue sandbox code from eating resources and what to do with it to limit it for security's sake, it would definitely help sys admins, but it still would not make enough of a dent in the denseness of the average user.
Too bad, because Google is right as to what web apps of this sort need for power on the client side.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Don't tell me you have never heard of Advertising Deficiency Syndrome.
And think of all of those poor advertisers, with starving children at home to feed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Check http://svg.org/
I hate to say it but google maps isn't really that usefull for the real estate business. What I really want is to be able to plunk a section, township, range grid on the thing then map out survey calls. Lets me see things that the survey (especially an older one) might not have shown, such as somebody running a d&mn road through the middle of the thing. (Something that the lawyer needs to know to write title insurance).
Don't mean to insult your vocabulary, but are you sure that's the word you meant? ;)
As long as its done with the necessary permissions, it should be fine.
But if you sing it backwards, at half-speed, you hear the hidden message "Use Internet Explorer 7!"
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I followed your link.
Anyway, at least they are trying to do positive PR work instead of suing and/or issuing takedown notices to your ISP.
Not that I would go there after reading what I read.
Nothing wrong with a good virtual machine. In fact, I'd suggest that Java content distributed as an applet or application via Java Web Start is in fact "a better idea for application delivery". Nice and cross platform, and quite performant to boot. :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just tried Google maps in IE for the first time after seeing this, and IE's redraw is WAY faster than Firefox's, and it's zoom in/out function is also better. If you havn't compared go try it now.
I had no idea.
-manno
Web usage isn't exactly declining, malicious code or no.
You're confusing two completely different things here. Web usage != browsers. Please don't fall into the Microsoft marketing ploy that equates "The Web" with "The Browser". They aren't the same.
Isn't that what started the downfall of browsers in the first place?
People are becoming increasingly annoyed by the increasing problems associated with client side scripts. They might not be aware of what's causing the problem but they do know one exists.
Google Maps crashes my Windows 98se PC using IE 6.0 everytime. I can use it for a very short time, then the browser locks up and I can't even kill the process. Then other system functions start to lock up. Eventually, the only thing I can do is hit the power button because it won't even let me shut down. Yeah, well tested code Google! Just what I would expect from visiting a web site, NOT! Start testing on older versions since there are still a lot of them still out there.
Posts have often joked about Google becoming more like an OS, but is it more likely that OSes will become more like Google?
Moving services away from being PC-based to being web-based would solve a number of piracy issues for companies. It would also allow them to "rent" their products, instead of selling them.
Can you imagine the gleam in Gates' eye at the thought of getting 25c every time someone uses Word?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
http://www.nsorg.com/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=1354&Itemid=35
If i started building websites using entirely cutting edge javascript API's, then the website would probably not be index in search engines correctly.
AFAIK the googlebot (or any other search engine spider) does not interpret the outcome of javascript. So important information may not be search engine listed.
Using techniques like ajax/flash, may be good for the user experience, but if nobody can even find your website, it's about as handy as a back pocket in a singlet. hmm.. or maybe thats want google wants, forcing my customers to PAY to be listed. Oh well when that happens, I will quite happily go find (and recommend) an alternative search engine.
I think there is a distinction here between two different things. I don't think he means it's a bad thing that browser code can't access your HD, etc. I think he's saying it's a limiting factor in developing web apps, and that's a downside to consider.
Dark Reflection
Let's face it. Browser based applications suck compared to well written rich clients. Having to bend backwards for even the most simple thing that would take minutes to accomplish in a regular environment. Somebody needs to think up a better application model than what we're currently using.
Let's take a look of some of the most common things people are trying to accomplish using HTML today.
-News and blogs.
Using an rss reader is the way to go here.
-Banking
A rich client is definately the way to go here. Sadly I've never come across a bank that offers this.
-Forums
This needs to be standardized. I like the idea of having a rich client, much like an rss reader, for browsing my favorite forums. And before you ask. Yes I've heard about usenet. It's horribly dated and nobody seems to care about it anymore.
Actually I can't think of single application I wouldn't rather have a custom rich client for.
...Some of us have limited staff, deadlines, and a budget to deal with. Frankly, the additional R&D time it requires to stay on the bleeding edge can be problematic. Also, my clients are NOT bleeding edge... So if my code only works on bleeding-edge systems, I've got a problem.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Alternatively, modify the VRML plugin to allow slapping bitmaps onto the polygons produced. You now have a pseudo-3D map that gives you a much clearer idea of relative heights and actual appearance.
Are there any other ways of doing this? Sure! Google could publish the specs for a new tag for drawing lines. >hr< already exists, so line-drawing code is already present. Google could add a tag >ar< which is just like >hr< but it would have four attributes - xloc, yloc (both expressed as either pixels or % of the image, starting from the top left corner), angle (expressed in degrees) and length (expressed in pixels or % of maximum length of a line with that start and angle).
This is where Google's muscle comes in. Google could publish a set of tags for making Google easier or more powerful, and most browser writers WILL implement them. Microsoft, to avoid losing people to other browsers, and Mozilla/Firefox because people will be filing bug reports on it until they do.
The W3C - and Microsoft - have forgotten the lessons learned over HTML 3.1. He who provides the content commands the tags.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ajax is not new. There are plenty of folks that were doing "Ajax" before it was called "Ajax". Google being one of them. Ajax is just a buzzword.
No. Many users never become un-stupid. I don't say "smarter", because many of the stupidest users are smart people - doctors, lawyers, etc - that feel they shouldn't *have* to learn, and often take a point of pride that they haven't learned it and instead can command someone else to fix it.
Much like many people, for whatever reason, take pride in the fact that they never conquered math.
The world in general will remain stupid; you have to code around it.
If they're so good, why won't maps.google.com work with the new PSP browser? Huh?
rewriting history since 2109
The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space.
Internet Explorer does!
Brothers and sisters,
It has come to my attention that we have apostates and infidels in our midst. I brought you this fine hymn to lift your spirits. I got two "Amens!" from the crowd. And things were going well. Then, two vicious anti-Googles came along and interrupted our fine service.
The cowards used dastardly methods called the "overrated mod". You see, these coward won't come up to you face-to-face and speak evil about Google-the-beloved. They will only hide behind a curtain where no one can correct their wrong thinking.
Let us pray for these heretics. Pray that they will stop using MSN. Pray that they will stop with Ask Jeeves! and other false gods. Pray that they see the light. Or else eternal darkness will overcome them all. Only Google can save them.
And pray that Google comes out with that micropayment service they've been woring on. I need funds to support my ministry. In the meantime, please postal mail me checks to:
P.O. Box 2436
Ministry of Google Love
Los Angeles, California 93501
--Pastor Google
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I have a web-app that's IE only since it has VRML. I could use SVG for Firefox nightlies, but the public Firefox build doesn't support it, so that's a no go. And no, I'm not going to use flash.
You're doing it now, you're taking those browsers to the LIMIT! Does anyone read headlines? That just sounds funny.
Actually, I think he's referring to the fact that browsers won't allow webpages to take full advantage of a machine's resources yet. Essentially, he wants to write complex scripts that can be processed on the client side rather than the server side. There's nothing dangerous about this if the browser implements the script interpretation correctly. However, who might want their browser to be hogging up all their resources so that they can't alt-tab real fast when the guardian figure comes around, I couldn't say.
Examples? Java using JNI and Perl using XS, and others, usually mean extending using C or C++. We know those languages can be used in OS specific ways, preventing cross-os compatibility. But because the languages, Java, Perl and so forth, are not bad to write extensions in w/o using C or C++, we have these HUGE cross platform libraries.
Parrott will be promising for languages like Perl, ruby, python and others, but that is a seperate point. Using every nuance of a language will mean alienating other people.
Its been out for 5 years. Its not new. Came out with IE 5.0.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
This "blame the user" mentality is a major factor in why so much software sucks. Whatever the system, if most users of that system do the wrong thing, it's the SYSTEM's fault!
Like it or not, computer users' environment is one where they are asked repeatedly to confirm things unnecessarily. Probably hundreds of times a day for some. Of course uers will stop reading the messages and just click OK, that's the rational thing to do.
To steal a formula from the US defense secretary, we need to design systems to work for the users we have, not the users we would like to have.
What's a sig?
Acutally NASA was first to come out with this as a part of their World Wind / Land Sat. Open Source application (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/). World Wind is much more advanced than googlemaps (don't get me wrong I love googlemaps) as it uses many different datasources. Some features of World Wind include a 3D Engine, Blue Marble,Landsat 7,SRTM, MODIS,Globe and Landmark set. And if you don't like how World Wind works - well then download the source and change it.
I'd never actually tried google maps in IE before, but it's actually better than google maps in Firefox; The zoom is interactive, and the route is drawn much quicker in IE as well.
I'd always assumed that it was the same for both browsers.
it is one thing for Google to start exploiting little-known features in a browser, that has a cascading effect, and they have a sphere of influence greater than most. If the average Joen does it - well, who knows, that feature may just get left out on the next revision. Not to mention the time it takes to learn and implement, granted that is what makes IT fun .. but the day osomething goes unsupported and you are either stuck with users that rely on something or have to reinvent the wheel - well you are fvcked
You're just the do-it-yourself type. :)
My Mac didn't require me to install my operating system or Safari! Remember, he said there is no software that *users* need to install.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Now I'm not completely against the idea of using some sort of file writing, but I think it's going to have to be of the most restricted degree. No writing to the registry, no writing to any sort of system directory, perhaps restricted simply to XML and plain text. Even then, I would imagine that unless the programmers are exceedingly cautious, holes would end up in the code. Something like that would have to be done with the greatest care, and at this point, considering the flaws that are on browsers already, I don't know if I want them to have the native ability to write to my filesystem.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
With regards to:
;-)"
"Luckily Google came out with it first so Microsoft again looks like the one copying what others are doing - right?
This statement has some notion of fallacy to it. Microsoft invented and first implemented the non-posting Asychronous JavaScript HTTP request that makes Google Maps possible. It has been there since IE 3 and was used extensively in creating a rich client interface for Outlook.
Yes, Microsoft did copy the map GUI concept from Google, but they built the tools necessary to do it. Second, MapPoint as a service has been around for years, far longer than any other web mapping application, so in reality, they were one of the first to have this mapping concept.
I think the idea of "copying" is invalid; everyone copies everyone and improves on it. Remember, "Stand on the Shoulders of Giants." Yesterday, Microsoft was Google's Giant, and today Google is Microsoft's Giant. Hopefully, if this keeps flip-flopping, we'll see better and better software.
Oh, really? So, why does Google Maps work not-at-all on Safari or IdiotExploder for Mac OS X?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
He cited the example of how Google Maps can command Internet Explorer to use VML (Vector Markup Language by Microsoft) to display a blue line between geographical points, but use a PNG graphic format and a linear description for the Firefox browser."
:D
SO THATS WHY the blue line won't print in Exploder, but will when I use firefox. Thanks slashdot!
-lo
ActiveX provides just that- it's like running a program on your computer... and the best part is, VB made them, so any grade-A idiot could start executing filesystem functions!
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Isn't that what started the downfall of browsers in the first place?
I thought it was unbridled enthusiasm that led to browsers downfall.
You see garcia, Bill was a simple country boy. You might say a cockeyed optimist who got himself mixed up in the high stakes game of world diplomacy and international intrigue.
It really depends on the type of user IMO.
I've developed quite some professional software packages. The users to-be are involved in the process as they will have to work with the system. You just don't want them to lose time and get frustrated cause your software doesn't feel intuitive or has unnecessary confirmations or steps to have a simple action done. (which action might occur quite frequent in a day. It starts as a small frustration and eventually they HATE the thing, yet are forced to keep using it cause it has cost alot to design. Which could've been just a simple placement of a button or some 20 extra lines of code for you.)
But mostly they KNOW what they want and how they want it... And are willing to read through your manual to in the end work more efficient and save resources.
Joe doesn't seem to be willing for that. The "target user" and their desires is as well a more illusive subject when it comes to internet applications which are going to be used by millions or billions.
The whole "security"-aspect as well has spawn these applications which try to dumb down terminology, in an attempt to have Joe decide on complex actions to who the concept of that action in completely lost.
My tutor taught me; "If you design software, always take in account that a user will do everything he or she can do wrong, but never make them feel they're mothered by your application. Mother them without them knowing.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Finally, someone who "Gets It"(TM)
... is that you?
IE? Who cares? If Microsoft doesn't follow suit, it's one more nail in their shiteware's coffin.
SVG and VML both seem to be XML applications. Can an XSLT filter usefully convert an SVG image to a VML image? Or is there too much of an impedance mismatch between the two image formats' display models?
It seems that VML never became a W3C recommendation, as it was superseded by SVG. MSIE only supports VML because it's a Microsoft Office format. As far as I know, there are no plans to support SVG natively in MSIE.
Perhaps it is possible to get MSIE to support a simple subset of SVG by first transforming it into VML. Since both formats are based on XML, perhaps it could even be done on the client side using XSLT. Has anyone tried this? It could be packaged as part of IE7 (the Dean Edwards hack, not the next version of MSIE)?
If such a hack were accomplished, it could spark the development of some nifty SVG-based applications. With Opera, Mozilla/Firefox and Safari all supporting SVG natively (now or in the near future), and MSIE supporting it via VML, it would be possible to reach a wide audience without any plugins!
I don't know where to go to check if this is on the roadmap or not
Try Google. mozilla svg + I'm Feeling Lucky = Mozilla SVG Project. From the page:
He doesn't get it. The whole point of HTML is to keep the web site at arm's length from the user's machine. The browser is an interface, not a platform.
Microsoft, Netscape, and Sun have all tried (incompatibly) to make the browser a "platform". We've suffered through Active-X controls, the Netscape plug-in platform, and client side Java. What we got were adware, spyware, and new attack vectors. Now, most firewalls block that stuff.
We may need more expressive power in HTML, but it should be descriptive, not programmable. That's the strength of HTML. You can do more than run it. You can index it, reformat it for another medium, translate it to another language, and simplify it for small devices. Try doing that with a Java applet or a Flash file.
JavaScript is as far as site-driven programmability of the browser should go. There's hostile JavaScript, but the browser can usually contain the attack.
If he was quoted properly, that practically means that turning the browser into a kernel facing the Internet.
Given that the kernel on a computer aren't bug free, I'd like to keep my browser doing its intended job, browsing, thank you.
SVG elements are exposed to the DOM
Not by Adobe's plug-in, because at the time Adobe's plug-in was last updated, there weren't enough frozen Mozilla APIs for Adobe to use.
I have been mucking around with the Hibachi web server {yes, the IOCCC version; it's not perfect, sure, but the "current" version is non-free*} and it works really well. Basically, I have a small CGI-enabled HTTP server on localhost, with access to some of the local filesystem; and a big CGI-enabled HTTP server on the remote end. Using surprisingly few cunning stunts {basically a cookie to allow the big server to look up the port number of the little server, which I decided to have as a per-user variable}, I can have the remote webserver embed content served up from localhost into a frameset or iframe. I can also use a local CGI script {on the local Hibachi server} that pulls in image data over a HTTP connection {from the remote Apache server}, mungs it and displays it in an ordinary <img /> tag. The browser could not care less what host served it up. The image can be static: all the processing is done at my end. Since the slowest part is usually getting the data from the server to the client, this is quite efficient.
It also ought to be possible to prefetch links while the user is busy reading, which would make dialup connections seem a bit faster.
It doesn't quite meet the "zero install" ideal, because it is necessary to compile Hibachi once and start it on login. I may have to write my own web server in Perl -- hence no compiling, and Perl is installed on almost every system.
* {Hibachi 2 is offered on a usage-only licence; the IOCCC-winning version is in the Public Domain. I am not quite sure how this can work, as it is my understanding that all derivative works of a work already in the Public Domain must also be in the Public Domain. But maybe the non-Free version was a derivative of a still-copyrighted predecessor of the PD version.}
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Will be good thing for Google as they will be able to bring advanced standard vector on Mozilla as well !
Yeah, but do those browsers run Linux?
Quoting from TFA:
Developers:"If you go beyond the least common denominator you're guaranteed to multiply your costs."
Lars is probably so smart he can increase his costs by log(N_browsers) instead of N_browsers^p, but his company has access to google dollars.
Were I funding development, I'd push to increase the least common denominator.
Say, by advocating that large corporate customers and governments
"Provided by the management for your protection."
if you go to example.com and see no popup but a lot of nice coded hacks on your browser to make their service more productive, then you go to freeexamplesgratis.com and see the same hacks used to open popups. you just waste some 8 hours closing them and never come back to free..com, they die, their advertisers has to pay for the non-intrusive ad model from the polite example.com wich you uses exclusively now. everyone happy.
...now, about spam...
what's so damn boring about intrusive ads and popups. close them, close the site that opened them and never come back.
is it so dificult?
Hey, has anyone else noticed that occasionally Google results will have their links wrapped in some form of redirect script, so they can track your clicks? Did they announce this and I missed it? It seems to happen at random: two separate searches of identical search terms result in identical results, except one search has 'true' links and the other has clicktracking links.
;)
In theory, I suppose, aggregate link tracking could help refine an expert system's ability to troubleshoot, assuming they track the right people
But otherwise, I find it a bit unsavory to be honest. Less than good, though not technically evil I suppose.
Try selling a box that doesn't do what the user wants. See how many customers you have left. Unless you're a huge monopoly you won't get very far.
I love Google maps and I like what you can do with AJAX- but the fundamental problem with most browser based scripting technologies is that they're best at rending text. Don't get me wrong, anything that makes a webpage more responsive than the -click- load -click- is a step in the right direction.
Flash has earned a bad rep among programmers because it's often used for @#$?%! annoying and obtrusive ads and unnecessary web... page ... intros... that... just...- swoosha- won't... stop. On behalf of Flash developers everywhere, I would like to apologize for every 'punch the monkey' banner ad out there. But if it's used for browser rending of information being streamed over an XML socket (and no, you don't have to send XML over the connection- it's just a socket) it kicks *ss. it's scripting language, Actionscript is dead easy to learn. If you're used to Java, you can pick it up in a few days. And I'm sorry, but SVG doesn't even come close to touching it. I don't think that it will survive the Adobe/Macromedia merger.
My only beef with Flash is the vector rending pipeline. You get alpha for free but try overlaying a few transparent vectors and... performance... chugs. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the bitmap caching (you need the Flash 8 beta player to see bitmap caching in action) in the upcoming Flash 8 addresses this problem. The demo's I've seen look promising.
Check out Grant Skinner's or Yugo Nakamura work and if you want a great example of what you can do with real-time data in Flash- check out www.dentsu.com. What you see is the real-time position of all 30-some elevators in dentsu's corporate headquarters.
Disclaimer: I am currently a Flash Developer. If you want to see my work- it's at bodog.net. It's free online multiplayer poker and yes, those are real people playing. You can see the two technologies playing nicely together- the lobby was done using AJAX technology and the actual game tables are in Flash. Try refreshing the game table if you want an example of Flash using server-based persistance.
Having developed all kinds of web apps since '96 for the exact reasons given in the article (simply the most convenient platform for distributed applications) I have learned that "that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space" is not the most limiting aspect of web app development.
The most limiting aspect comes from one of the web's strengths, that it's based on a very simple request-response protocol. This means that you can't update the browser from the server. Instead of the server sending an event to the browser when something needs to change in the user interface, the UI needs to regularly ask the server if anything has changed. The consequence is the irritating, frequent page updates in web chats and similar applications, and "unnecessary" consumption of bandwidth.
This is why you need to use Java or Flash for more advanced applications. Then you can do pretty much anything, but the client also gets a whole lot thicker, and you can't use the web UI API shared by all browsers (form widgets, basically), which is one of the reasons web apps are so convenient to make.
I'm not saying this is something that should be "fixed," the request-response protocol is generally a good thing (and very unlikely to change anyway). I'm just saying that this is the big difference between designing web apps and desktop applications.
Movable images - on a computer. Hot damn! What will they come up with next!?! I love web interfaces!
It appears you have a very different user population than I do.
What's a sig?
good thing he's got a decent job with google, cause the guy sure can't time trial worth a darn. Two crashes and four bike changes? ouch.
Really I think that you mean the the Internet is not the same as the Web, which is basicly true. Well really the Internet is greater than the Web), the Web is a subset of the Internet.
While MS has it's issues, I don't think that they have any confusion about the basic facts of the internet. Do you have any 'facts' to back your assertion up, or is it a simple Karma whore to the 'aways hate MS crowd'.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
"It's also much easier to make sure code runs on multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows."
Uhhhh... actually now it requires testing multiple browsers on multiple platforms. So rather than having 3 configurations for a distributed app (Win, Mac, Linux), you might have 10 (Win/IE, Mozilla/Linux, Opera/Windows, etc).
Yeah right, it always takes several minuttes when someone has done something clever with google damn maps *grrr* (presumably javascript doing some crap)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
that feel they shouldn't *have* to learn, and often take a point of pride that they haven't learned it and instead can command someone else to fix it.
I don't think the majority of people act spiteful or proud about their lack of knowledge. I believe such behavior is mostly a defense mechanism that some use because learning something (such as computers or math) just doesn't come naturally to them for whatever reason, and so they've focused on other things in their lives and rationalize their failures away to preserve their egos.
Case in point: My dad has a PhD (my point is, he's a relatively intelligent guy) but after 20 years of computer use, still hasn't really wrapped his head around such a simple idea as logical directory structure. Try getting something useful done in a Windows environment when you don't really understand this elementary concept. He still mostly relies on 'Recently opened documents' type lists to pull up the latest doc he's working on, and if that list gets deleted, he'll fumble around for quite a while before finding what he's looking for -- incidentally programs like Google Desktop are literally MADE for his type. He isn't necessarily proud of his lack of computer knowledge, but then again, you don't see him even attempting to learn or better understand this concept, after two decades!
Take your browser to the limit
Take your browser to the limit
I said, come on, Fhqwhgads!
steampunk web design
ROBOT: Come on, Fhqwhgads.
STRONG BAD: I said come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Everybody to the limit
Everybody to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Everybody to the limit
Who's that? It's to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
Come on Fhqwhgads
I see you jockin' me
Tryin' to play like
You know me
I'm like come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Everybody to the limit
The Cheat is to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
I said ooh ah Fhqwhgads
I said ooh ah Fhqwhgads
Who's that fh-huh-hoo-huga-wha
I said who is that Fhqwhgads
I don't know who it is
But it probably is Fhqwhgads
I asked my friend Joe
I asked my friend Jake
They said it was Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
I said come on Fhqwhgads
Who's-a to the limit?
C'est me! I'm to the limit
Everybody come on Fhqwhgads
Man, Fhqwhgads
You're just making yourself look worse, y'know
I mean, everybody's just gonna feel sorry for ya
I mean, I do.
"It's Dot Com!"
If most users of a systems do the wrong thing, I could see how you could blame bad design. The problem is that with viruses and the like, it is almost always been the minority of users that make the mistakes. So, just because Mrs. Johnson doesn't know that the program that says grandkids_pics is really Trojan the working environment is at fault?? Of course not. A designer (programmer, developer, whatever) can only realistically aim to design a system that the majority of people will understand and use successfully. There will always be stupid and ignorant people. About your second paragraph: If a program asks you a million times to confirm something, that's bad design by the devloper, if you stop reading the confirmations, that's a bad decision by the user.
Funny, my customers have been demanding native OS clients to replace the web apps they're using because the web apps are way too slow, and cost them tons of money to operate.
cat
For me - it's totally useless unless I want to find streets in the UK or USA. Anywhere ELSE in the world is just a dry empty desert.
I do enjoy looking at interesting places with the satellite, and even that is virtually useless, and will be even more useless when our fascist censors start blacking out more "interesting
places" like Area 51, north Korea, and Wash DC which they are already blacking out the details of the roofs of most government buildings...
But if I want to get the street map of Berlin in Germany, or any other place in Europe, forget it.
Do you have any 'facts' to back your assertion up, or is it a simple Karma whore to the 'aways hate MS crowd'.
Umm, I don't need to karma whore to the "always hate MS crowd".
I just karma whore to everyone.
I too followed the link- That blonde lady must be the waitress: She is large. Large and mean looking. That large blonde lady in the picture does not look like someone I would keep food away from... I'd worry about her eating me! Rarrrggghhh! Was she the waitress that was so mean to you? That is funny that you are posting the waitesses picture for us all to see. She is large. HeHe. At DaVinci's Pizzam the wings jerk you!
Firstly, the Web allows rapid deployment and there is no software for users to install. It's also much easier to make sure code runs on multiple browsers compared with multiple operating systems like Mac OS X and Windows. The downside is that browsers don't give programmers full access to a computer's resources such as memory, process power and hard disk space.
It sounds just like Java, except for the third one. That's an upside, not a downside. Talk about malicious code!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. [...] What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market?
Netscape and Sun were mumbling were loudly about how all applications would be delivered through the browser and how that would make the OS irrelevant. Microsoft does not want the OS to be irrelevant or a commodity because Windows is one of its two lone cash crops.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
I didn't know they were still giving out PhD's in things like Rhetoric, Philosophy, and The Alchemy Arts.
8-)
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Right, many != majority. I said many. Many others are stupid, feel bad about it, but do nothing to better themselves as well. Outcome is the same.
When you come across the people that are proud, it's infuriating. "I'm not one of those nerd types, just fix it.. and do it right this time!"
These are the same type of people that yell at the mechanic when their brakes keep wearing out, yet they refuse to change their driving patterns.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
World Wind is great but requires a client download. Thus it should be compared to Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/), not browser-based Google Maps.
Yes, I love SVG and have written some nifty applications with it, and I wish it won against Flash, but it didn't. But flash is already installed on 95% of all computers, and SVG doesn't come anywhere near that.
It's so sad that there is no other standard way to draw a diagonal line on the computer's display, except for Flash. But that's the way it is.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
But it's a moot point, because Flash kicked SVG's ass in the market, and now that Adobe has bought Macromedia, SVG is dead.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
What are these Fasteroids, anyway???
The goal of Fasteroids is to help the space ship blast away the asteroids. But its real purpose is to compare the selection speeds and error rates of directional "pie menus" versus traditional "linear menus". The actual point of the game is to give you a fun and fair way to test drive and compare pie menus and linear menus for yourself.
When you click the left button in the black space, a pie menu or a linear menu will pop up. You should select the bright yellow item with four stars, and it will fire four blasts, which will help destroy the asteroids. But if you select any of the other items, that is considered an error, so it will only fire one blast.
The menu style changes every round. Some rounds, the menu will be a pie menu, and other rounds it will be a linear menu. Some rounds, the menu items will be randomized, and other rounds they will be constant.
If you would like to share your results, please press the "Send Statistics to PieMenu.com" button, and your selection times and error rates will be reported to PieMenu.com. It will show the overall results and how you results compare. Don't worry -- it doesn't send any personal information, just the details of the measurements summarized in the table, including the selection count and time for each test type, menu type and menu item.
And What are Pie Menus???
Pie Menus are a naturally efficient user interface technique: directional selection of pie slice shaped targets. The cursor starts out in the center of the pie, so all targets are large, nearby, and in different directions. Fitts' Law explains the advantages of pie menus, relating fast selection speed and low error rate to large target size and small distance. Pie menus are easy for novice users, who just follow the directions, and efficient for experienced users, who can quickly "mouse ahead" once they know the way.
To learn more about pie menus, please visit Pie Menu Central!
For the complete credits, as well as some swell entertainment, please don't forget to read the fine print.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The whole point of SVG and VML are that they are dynamic scriptable graphics formats, not just that they're represented by XML. Like Flash, you can use them to write user interfaces and games and data driven interactive graphical displays of dynamic XML documents.
It's impossible to automatically convert dynamic SVG or VML documents that use JavaScript, which covers most interesting uses of those technologies. Otherwise you might as well be using GIF.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Using AJAX with JavaScript and Dynamic HTML is like repeatedly hitting your head against a cement wall, because it doesn't solve any of the inconsistencies between browsers, so you have to deal with them directly, and drastically limit what you can do, and resort to horrible kludges and work-arounds to accomplish the simplest things (like drawing diagonal lines), so the quality of your application drastically suffers across all platforms.
AJAX: I'm impressed that your dog can talk, but I rather not listen to it sing christmas carols.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The funniest thing ever on the Onion was about the guy who always bragged about not owning a TV
The problem with Mozilla is that the big-mouthed over-optimistic software "evangelists" convinced Adobe to use a half-baked plug-in API that Mozilla decided to chang just before they released Mozilla 1.0. The Mozilla programmers should have changed the GUID of the interface when they changed the API, but they didn't obey the terms of the software contract they agreed to by using XP/COM, so the Mozilla programmers screwed Adobe and SVG.
The result is that Adobe's SVG plug-in used to work fine, but now it crashes Mozilla, which would not have happened if Mozilla programmers stuck to their own rules and used XP/COM the way it was intended to be used (to prevent just this from happening). Adobe will never trust Mozilla evangelism again after that episode. Anyway, SVG is dead because Adobe bought Macromedia.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Sometimes it is the users fault.
If run a program that is sent as an email atachment how is that the systems fault?
I mean really where does the chain of blame end?
Is it the users fault for doing something stupid?
Is it the application programmer's fault because the allowed the end user to do something stupid.
Is it the developer tool vendor for allowing the developer to allow the end user to do something stupid?
Is it the the OS developer for allowing the developer tool vendor to write a tool that allows the application programmer to write a program that allows the end user to do something stupid?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The drive to Ft William.
Heeland coos on the isle of skye.
--Hi. I'm in Portland and it's raining. This appears to be a permanent condition.
>summon entity=zombie|spyware|virus|trojan|RIAA target=window/frame< - some users seem to want this sort of crap on their machine, so provide a mechanism to do it! Remember, supply and demand.
>DMCA< - causes all links to sound or video files, no matter how innocent, to be redirected to a copy of the funeral march or a clip of a horrified scream from a horror flick at random. Also causes HTTP header information to be passed to the RIAA, MPAA or the nearest Mafia family, depending on location and price.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The OS developer. Someone, somewhere along the line, should have realized that one application rarely has the need to overwrite data created by another application. In fact, if you think about it, very few apps need to know that other apps exist. Common APIs exist for handling functionality that many apps need (TAPI, MAPI, OpenGL, etc) but how often does Mozilla need to overwrite Photoshop files?
We really need to sandbox everything. Steel sandboxes that simple email worms can't penetrate. There's no reason why everything needs to run in one shared space (even with memory and file protection, everything is still partly visible). This extends to inter-app protection. Why doesn't each firefox tab run separately and just dock into the display window with some form of IPC?
So really, the burden should be on platform developers. OSes, Browsers (especially like Firefox that are trying to be an application delivery system), and the like.
Heh. I don't own a TV either. :P
I keep bragging about it all the time!
Yet, watch the news online and download Simpsons and Southpark episode for my cartoon-shot
Thanks for the suggestion! We're planning to hit the Isle of Skye, and now we have something specific to see there.
Do you mean this Fort William?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You asked how often does Firefox have to over write a Photoshop file? Every time you download one from the web.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
(At time I wrote this, Director ruled and Flash didn't exist yet, so the limit number 48 was a dig at Macromedia's bold move of increasing the number of layers that Director supported from 24 to 48.)
-Don
BSML: Bull Shit Markup Language
Bull Shit Markup Language is designed to meet the needs of commerce, advertising, and blatant self promotion on the World Wide Web.
New BSML Markup Tags
CRONKITE Extension
This tag marks authoritative text that the reader should believe without question.
SALE Extension
This tag marks advertisements for products that are on sale. The browser will do everything it can to bring this to the attention of the user.
COLORMAP Extension
This tag allows the html writer complete control over the user's colormap. It supports writing RGB values into the system colormap, plus all the usual crowd pleasers like rotating, flashing, fading and degaussing, as well as changing screen depth and resolution.
BLINK Extension
The blinking text tag has been extended to apply to client side image maps, so image regions as well as individual pixels can now be blinked arbitrarily. The RAINBOW parameter allow you to specify a sequence of up to 48 colors or image texture maps to apply to the blinking text in sequence.
The FREQ and PHASE parameters allow you to precisely control the frequence and phase of blinking text. Browsers using Apple's QuickBlink technology or MicroSoft's TrueFlicker can support up to 65536 independently blinking items per page.
Java applets can be downloaded into the individual blinkers, to blink text and graphics in arbitrarily programmable patterns.
See the Las Vegas and Times Square home pages for some excellent examples.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com