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Processing Visualization Language Ported To Javascript

Posted by kdawson on from the time-to-buy-stock-in-noscript dept.

Manfre writes "On his birthday, John Resig (creator of jQuery) has given a present to developers by releasing Processing.js. This is a Javascript port of the Processing Visualization Language and a first step towards Javascript being a rival to Flash for online graphics content. His blog post contains an excellent writeup with many demos."

3 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Second Step by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a Javascript port of the Processing Visualization Language and a first step towards Javascript being a rival to Flash for online graphics content.

    Second step, actually. Apple and the WHATWG took the first step by introducing the Canvas API to the HTML 5 spec. That gave web developers the ability to do Flash-like content. This language is the second step, in that it gives programmers a standard framework from which to create impressive animations.

    Kudos to Mr. Resig on a job well done! I can't wait to play around with this project more. :-)
    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Flash is just Adobe Javascript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Flash itself uses a dialect of ECMAScript (the common parent language of Javascript and ActionScript). So your assertion that Javascript engines were not written to do this is flat out wrong.

    All this shows is just how terrible most browser's Javascript engines really are. Notice, modern browsers do considerably better on these demos than older ones, mainly because so much of the web has shifted to using Javascript and dynamic content, such that JS becomes a limiting factor in usability. Once JS engines have caught up to ActionScript in speed, what more use do we have for Flash? We already have Mozilla working to make use of the Tamarin byte-code engine, which will turn JS from being a slow, interpreted language into being a byte-code compiled language (speed on the order of modern scripting languages such as Python/Ruby and to some extent Java/C#).

    So sorry, Javascript is the right tool for the job. It's the only tool for the job as far as Open Standards are concerned.

  3. Re:Rival?! by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article submitter has clearly never actually used the HTML canvas object.

    Oh? I have, and I don't disagree. Of course, I've USED Flash quite a bit too, so I know how God-aweful slow that platform was up until version 9. ;-)

    There's no way in HELL canvas & javascript together could ever approach the render and execution performance of Flash.

    Why not? Flash == Software renderer. Canvas == Software renderer. Actionscript == ECMAScript engine. Javascript == ECMAScript engine. I'm not seeing the issue.

    Hell, once FireFox is on the Tamarin engine, the two platforms will be practically the same!
    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade