HTML 5 Takes Aim At Flash and Silverlight

snydeq writes "While Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun duke it out with proprietary technologies for implementing multimedia on the Web, HTML 5 has the potential to eat these vendors' lunches, offering Web experiences based on an industry standard. In fact, one expressed goal of the standard is to move the Web away from proprietary technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX. 'It would be a terrible step backward if humanity's major development platform [the Web] was controlled by a single vendor the way that previous platforms such as Windows have been,' says HTML 5 co-editor Ian Hickson, a Google employee. But whether HTML 5 and its Canvas technology will displace proprietary plug-ins 'really depends on what developers do,' says Firefox technical lead Vlad Vukicevic. It also depends on Microsoft, the only company involved in the HTML 5 effort that is both a browser developer and an RIA tool developer. 'That's a big elephant in the room for them because you can imagine the Silverlight team [whose] whole existence is to add [this] functionality in. [But] if Internet Explorer puts it already in there, why do we have Silverlight?' asks Mozilla's Dion Almaer." The RIA guys are quoted as saying they're not worried, because HTML 5 + CSS 3 is 10 years out. Are they just whistling in the dark?

Comments

It's the tools stupid

[QuantumG]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[CountOfJesusChristo]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

I was under the impression that canvas tag was going to allow people to create those kinds of whiz-bang interfaces that are currently done in flash.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[QuantumG]

If by "people" you mean "javascript programmers", yes, it will.

But Flash is popular because artist types can do it.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Tronster]

While I don't agree with how the grandparent phrased it; I'd say it's spot on. Canvas tag or not, the editing tool has to allow artists, hobbiest, etc... to easilly create content and publish to the web for others to see.

Flash's biggest win over Silverlight is:
1) Install base
2) Defacto web animation tool

If enough browser pentration occurs for the install base then the editing tool is the last big hurdle.

My predictions (as a C++, Flash developer):
1. Silverlight takes a larger market share than Flash in 3 years (in 2013)
2. HTML5 overtakes both in 5 years (2015) if a "killer app" for editing comes into existance by 2012.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[nausea_malvarma]

In this day and age, you don't need to know good html in order to make a webpage. We have WYSIWYG editors. So I don't see why we couldn't have an editor for the canvas tag, that would provide artists with a point and click interface like flash does.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[nine-times]

Well, you'd at least need someone to create an editor to make it easy to develop. The company most likely to create such an editor would be Adobe, except that the functionality would compete directly with Flash. Is there any economic motivation for someone else to invest the money in creating a Flash-style editor to compete? Or for Adobe to integrate support for using Flash to create HTML5 interfaces instead of using the Flash format?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[setagllib]

You have to be kidding about Silverlight overtaking Flash. Not only has Silverlight failed to take any notable market share to date, many projects that started with Silverlight have switched to Flash (or even Java and JavaScript).

Even Microsoft Popfly itself is so unpopular you can go for months at a time without hearing about it, and I bet you hadn't heard about it for months until just now.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that the most popular WYSIWYG editors are produced by Adobe and Microsoft.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[setagllib]

The economic motivation is to be able to compete in the new market. If HTML5 is awesome enough to kill Flash, the best Adobe could do is be ready to take part of the new market, even if it's less profitable. If they refuse to do so, and Flash does get killed, they end up with nothing, which is certainly even less profitable.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[jasoncar]

Even Microsoft Popfly itself is so unpopular you can go for months at a time without hearing about it, and I bet you hadn't heard about it for months until just now.

You're right on that one -- hadn't even thought about Popfly for ages until you just mentioned it.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of graphic artists who don't design in Flash. And any decent design company knows doing your whole site in Flash is a joke.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ink]

Amen. I wish more developers would take the time to understand this point. Without an analog to Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash (vector animator/tweening) -- no other technology will succeed. HTML5 is a great _engine_, but that's all it is until we have the tooling to make it actually useful.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[StreetStealth]

What you're not considering are all the other Flash-based sites that don't trade in pointless crap -- the far more subtle ones where you have to take a peek at the context menu just to be sure they aren't actually using some particularly clever JavaScript.

These are the sites that use but don't abuse Flash, and are the best candidates for HTML 5's more lightweight environment. If the designers and developers of these sites can be convinced it's worth migrating from Flash for the decreased overhead, they just might.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[fatalwall]

but can there editors be used from within the web browser embedded into a site so that it can be modified from any computer the owner is working at?
once this is built into the browsers it could be used to created an editor such as this without the need to reverse engineer or license junk

Re:It's the tools stupid

[DragonWriter]

Is there any economic motivation for someone else to invest the money in creating a Flash-style editor to compete?

Sure. Anyone whose determined it is in their interest to support HTML5 + Javascript as an alternative to Flash has an interest in seeing that it gets used, so everyone that has been embracing HTML5 for browsers -- Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera, just to name the browser publishers -- also has an interest in creating tooling to make sure that HTML5 doesn't just sit around unused in favor of Flash and Silverlight.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Captian Spazzz]

What is Popfly? O_o .......... No, I'm serious.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Jane Q. Public]

Actually, it probably would not be too difficult for Adobe to do that, since the control language behind Flash (ActionScript) is very like JavaScript, and in fact ActionScript very nearly became the next official EcmaScript ("JavaScript")! The committee backed off that decision at nearly the last minute.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Upsilonish]

I haven't ever heard about it.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[JobyOne]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

As a professional "graphics artist type" I take a offense at that. What if I were to ask about the computer coders types making the kind of buggy crap they do now with [whatever language you like]?

Don't blame me for the ugly crap made by my less talented brethren and I won't blame you for the unstable, insecure crap made by yours. No-talent assclowns are no-talent assclowns, regardless of profession.

This graphics artist type (full disclosure: I may get paid for design, but my hobby is programming so I'm sort of an odd duck), for one, is very excited at the potential of HTML5. I look forward to a world where I can make animations for the web and embed videos and whatnot without having to muck around with stupid Flash/Silverlight/Java/whatever. I HATE Flash, I HATE Silverlight more, I HATE Java the most, and anything I can't name off the top of my head can go STRAIGHT to hell. I do see where the parent is coming from though. I see a lot of designers building sites in Flash just because they lack the analytical skills to wrap their overdeveloped right hemispheres around using CSS and (X)HTML. To design a website that isn't just pretty, but is actually good takes more than a good creative sense.

These days everyone and their brother and their cat might think they're a web designer, but most of them aren't. They're just some guy with a pirated copy of Photoshop. Rest assured that there are web designers out there who know what they're doing.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Ash Vince]

The economic motivation is to be able to compete in the new market.

Statements like that are only worth anything if you end them with how much the market is worth. Being able to compete in a market worth nothing is also worth nothing.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[fooslacker]

I once heard it called "Flashturbation" and it is completely true. Flash is a plague. Unfortunately it's a plague that is spread because the creative types learned to use Flash early on. Until the creatives are given a tool that is easier or more powerful to use than Flash you'll have to put up with bad interfaces created by people who only care about forcing an experience on the user. The interesting thing to me is that Flash authors have become like the developers of old, completely uninterested in usability because they can't see past their own concerns (technical for devs and visual for creatives).

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Tronster]

Microsoft wins market share, not by innovating, but by making a product, and quickly iterating up-to and past the leader.

Adobe has more baggage to deal with (e.g., http://blogs.adobe.com/rgalvan/2009/06/feature_feedback.html ) which hurts the speed they can push ahead with new features. I've tried Silverlight 1 and 2; both show promise but neither seemed as mature as Flash CS3. Now CS4 is out as-is Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 compared to 2 offers many times newer features than what Flash CS4 offered over CS3.

For example, I'd love an integrated code editor in Flash with decent editing, syntax highlighting, and intellisense capabilities; I've been waiting for this since MX2004. Silverlight 3 now has a built-in code editor, I wonder how well it stacks up to what Adobe offers.

Overall I'm glad Silverlight exists as it will push Adobe to keep making Flash a better technology, but historically Microsoft has come out on top. It took Microsoft 6 years from IE1.0 to make this happen in the browser marked ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers ) With 3D it took Microsoft until 6 years, from DirectX 1.0 to DirectX 8.1, to overtake OpenGL in the AAA PC gaming market.

Unless there is a shake-up in Microsoft I predict it will happen with this RIA tech too.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ClosedSource]

He was asking for economic motivations. What financial benefit will Google, Apple, Mozilla, or Opera gain from using HTML5 + Javascript as an alternative to Flash?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ClosedSource]

People can debate about politically correct or incorrect use of Flash, but if the sites you don't like were done over in HTML5 by the same designers, you'd still conclude that they suck. Most people getting their panties in a twist over Flash aren't really concerned about design, they just don't like proprietary tools.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[DragonWriter]

He was asking for economic motivations.

For-profit, publicly-traded corporations like Google or Apple rarely have any other kinds of motivations. (Mozilla is, of course, a different story; but if they have a motivation to put money behind HTML5, they have a motivation to put money into getting it used, whether or not it is an economic motivation.)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[jbengt]

MS would probably be willing to make that editor, at least as long as they think Silverlight will stay well behind Flash in adoption. They would appreciate it as a Flash killer as well as an opportunity to later embrace and extend.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[jasoncar]

What is Popfly? O_o .......... No, I'm serious.

http://www.popfly.com/

Microsoft Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, games, Web pages, and applications.

It looked briefly interesting to me about a year ago. I have no idea what the current state of it is.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[iluvcapra]

Well, you'd at least need someone to create an editor to make it easy to develop.

Cappucino Web Framework, though it's designed to work exactly like Mac OS X/Objective-C/Cocoa, so there's some mindshare issues, but its built on Javascript, and you use Apple's Interface Builder to create interfaces for it.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[shutdown -p now]

Most people getting their panties in a twist over Flash aren't really concerned about design, they just don't like proprietary tools.

I don't care much about proprietary tools, but I do not like it when I cannot select the text on the page, or when my mouse wheel suddenly won't work for scrolling - the latter especially is something I see too often on Flash-based sites.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 is more than just the canvas tag. There's plenty of sites that currently use flash to play audio or video files that could use HTML5 instead. Google already has an HTML5 prototype for YouTube and once YouTube paves the way, other online video sites will follow.

HTML5 may not kill flash, but it doesn't have to to be successful.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Fallen Seraph]

Independence from Adobe for one. Right now, without Flash, Youtube does not work, period, end of story. That's why they're experimenting with the HTML5 video tag, so that Adobe won't be able to screw them over one day if they feel like it. Granted the likelihood of that happening is slim to none, the potential threat is enough for them to try as hard as possible to push for open standards. This is exemplified by things like the mobile web. While Opera pushes their mobile browser hard, mobile browsers as a whole are limited by Adobe's watered down FlashLite deployments, which makes rich media for mobile browsers nearly impossible using anything but javascript (which is still limited).

Not to mention the fact that it enhances the user experience. If you can just get a browser, with no plugins required, that's much easier for users to deal with.

And on a final note, have most of the people arguing that Flash is "easier for designers to use" actually used Flash? Doing anything really interesting in Flash requires using Actionscript, and Actionscript 2 is basically a javascript clone, while Actionscript 3 is more similar to Java. I learned actionscript 2 before I learned javascript, and the total time to go from one to the other was about 10 minutes (how long it took to learn the new constants, global variables, and proper DOM manipulation).

The fact is, if the web is to continue to grow, it MUST shirk Adobe and Microsoft's proprietary plugins for open standards. Not only do they often run better (Flash can be amazingly bloated, just look at Hulu's standalone Adobe Air app), but they give us more options and possibilities as well.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ClosedSource]

"For-profit, publicly-traded corporations like Google or Apple rarely have any other kinds of motivations."

The fact that companies rarely have non-financial motivations may be interesting but it has nothing to do with the question I asked.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ClosedSource]

Do you think poor work will disappear if people switch from Flash to HTML5?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[CarpetShark]

You talk like Amaya isn't the ultimate web development environment ;)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[shutdown -p now]

No idea, since I don't know enough about HTML5 to judge if it's easier to screw things up when using it, or harder. I do like Silverlight though, as it seems to work pretty well where it's used - but I hate the way it renders text at small font sizes.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[RonGHolmes]

These tools look like they will fit the bill perfectly. http://objective-j.org/

Re:It's the tools stupid

[setagllib]

If this is a market that will replace Flash, it will be worth at least as much to Adobe. Competing against more players on more equal footing (open standards) will require Adobe to drive down costs and innovate more, and that benefits everyone. That's the whole point of free market capitalism, and I highly doubt Adobe is stubborn enough not to join in.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[RobNich]

I don't see why it would be less profitable. They don't charge for the Flash client, only for the authoring tools.

Even if Silverlight were to take over, as long as Adobe makes a decent tool for creating Silverlight projects, they'll make close to the same amount. Although come to think of it, they may lose some sales only because they don't "own" the technology in consumers' eyes, and many consumers would buy Microsoft if they could anyway.

But since HTML5 is not owned by a company, it puts Adobe on equal footing with any other company making an editor. Consumers would be able to choose their editor, and Adobe has a well-established footing in the market. If they just changed their product to output HTML5 instead of or in addition to a swf file, they'll keep their strangehold on the editor market.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[hedwards]

There's that, but Adobe like Macromedia before them has been dickish in the way that they handled it. The development tools are what makes them money, but they've done a poor job of making the player available beyond 32bit OSes. And if you're wanting something other than Mac, Win or Linux, you're basically completely screwed as far as Adobe is concerned.

Right now the only way that I can see youtube is either by booting into Windows or running Firefox in Wine. That's completely unacceptable for a de facto web standard. Not to mention the tendency of the official plug ins to crash frequently and the tendency of idiot customers to demand Flash only sites.

And don't get me started on shockwave, it was a couple of steps worse.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[fooslacker]

Not really my point. My point was that you won't see a switch from Flash to something more standard until the tools are easier that Flash and allow for the same level of design freedom. I just don't like bad designs so I couldn't help but rant on it a bit.

Now to your point about design still sucking. While I take your point and bad design is still bad design your tools influence your design and Flash unfortunately encourages poor usability and breaks basic browser functions due to its embedded nature. Additionally since it focuses entirely on the visual design it often is used by people who know every little about usability and technical design. Additionally it has historically limited integration options and been a pain in the rear for developers attempting to interact with it and a middle tier. So at the most general level you're correct bad design can't be fixed by tool choice but tool choice does influence design and a bad tool can screw up a good design by imposing limitations.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[hedwards]

Not really, that way I'd get to make that determination. As it is, I don't get to see the content at all without jumping through a number of hoops. As long as I have to boot Windows, run Firefox in wine or similar effort I'll be greatly restricted in which sites I do get to use.

The fact that it's mostly crap that shouldn't be Flash in the first place is a secondary issue. And largely irrelevant if I can't see it. Broken is broken is broken; if Adobe doesn't want to provide proper viewers to everybody that wants it, then they shouldn't be allowed to have a standard.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[cheesybagel]

Microsoft has tried to replace the PDF format several times in the past and failed.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[peipas]

Actually, I just heard about Popfly yesterday, after I went to Microsoft's Visual Studio Express website to recommend their free development tools to my (and I risk my credibility by mentioning her) girlfriend in response to her interest in becoming a programmer. But it kind of supports your point that I only just heard of it. For that matter, non-developers won't hear about Visual Studio regularly either.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[indi0144]

And any decent design company DOES his main corporate site in full Flash and maybe a Joomla or good old HTML/css/js alternative site for the user with low bandwidth and the SEO. When you're looking for a design company, you want to see, errrm, humm, DESIGN! something out of ordinary, interactivity and creativity and sorry, CSS and js is not enough for that. Why don't we just move the web to PDF and be done wit it? please? Pixel perfect 100% compatible site in less than 1 day oh noes!

--
Cue web code.."designers" that don't know how to embed flash and video on a PDF file or that is more friendly to OCR and screen readers oh oh oh and printing.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that google would whole heartedly back this and work on creating some sort of front end tool. While it isn't exactly google's expertise to write design applications, money definitely motivates.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[indi0144]

Shhhhh don't talk like that in a site made for and by coders, "everyone" know that coding it's faster and more appealing to the clients than that incompatible mess that is Flash, all the hacks needed for flash to work in IE6, the horror!

No seriously, if you're going to flame Flash developers for some asstards making turd sites.. well I guess we can Flame ALL the coders in the world just because Java exist, even if you make assembly, you should be a retard because of the pain that is Java.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[bonze]

Apple has a powerful motivation to replace Flash: Flash on the Macintosh is an abomination which can't display videos properly on the latest hardware while soaking up 70% of the CPU, while on Windows it runs just fine on 400MHz machines. And with the release of Flash 10... performance got worse!

Google "Macintosh Flash Performance", or just view this thread on Adobe's web site: Flash Player: Poor performance on Mac OS X: "The bug in our internal review is titled: 'Mac OS video decoding is ~5 times more CPU intensive than Windows' ".

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ibbie]

but can there editors be used from within the web browser embedded into a site so that it can be modified from any computer the owner is working at?

Sure. Just use Javascript + *Pick/build your favorite CMS app*, and voila. HTML 5, while having more capability, is still HTML.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Ilgaz]

I will (or would) take Silverlight serious if they release 64/32bit plugins AND design tools for Linux, OS X (PPC too!), Symbian, Google thing, FreeBSD.

Not that one coded by that MS trojan. The real thing, with ALL codecs, ALL functionality, releases in sync.

They have to code the design tool, plug into XCode on OS X, plug into Adobe tools, plug into Quicktime and guarantee there will be never, ever any missing updates for any of these non Microsoft operating systems.

That is what Flash is or will be. Adobe actually experiments with a single Flash platform for anything you can imagine. Flash Lite 3 already does lots of desktop Flash functionality and soon, there won't be "Flash Lite", there will be only Flash.

Flash is not that bulky Netscape to kill with same methods. It is one of the most successful applications in computer history, even ATM machines run it right now. Did MS really dream something else? I actually feel ashamed for them since there is no Silverlight for Windows Mobile yet while Symbian owners enjoy youtube videos.

HTML5 can't overtake anything unless they spare time figuring out the reasons why that graphics/UI designer chooses Flash for that specific task, why he/she pays that money to Adobe, why Youtube has become successful etc. They must face the reality. The reality isn't "stupid designer chooses evil proprietary tech". You lose right when you call your "potential customer" as stupid person.

I fail to understand why Java, especially after that really brave GPL move is still called proprietary anyway. Isn't poor thing hit enough with FUD and misinformation, abuse?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously! When the hell is Adobe going to get off their ass and offer video acceleration. I should have to use a duo core processor to render a video at full screen. It's just ridiculous. I mean I can take a computer from 2001 and get decent video play back for near HD quality clips while hulu is just terrible on a fairly decent machine. While I am no fan of Microsoft, Silverlight and this HTML5 coming over the horizon, is just what Adobe needs to give them a real kick in the ass. Adobe is acting like Microsoft did in regards to IE when they were the top dog and didn't give a fuck. I am really surprised that they even have a player on Linux but it still runs like shit.

With that said, Google's motivation for HTML5 is vendor independence and being able to reach more of the market that won't use Flash or can't (iphone) while creating a rich multimedia experience. Plus you might realize that most browser crashes and issues with memory/slowness is caused by that damn Flash plugin.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Far more important than all that is that a big enough majority of web users won't be using a browser capable of rendering it for DECADES. I still have a significant percentage of visitors using IE6. That's from the year 2001 AD.

God I wish someone would find the IT people responsible for those deployments and rape them with a fireplace poker.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[rainhill]

You have to be kidding about Silverlight overtaking Flash..

Wait until everyone and their pets switched to win7 and silverlight is an "inseperably" embedded into it.

Netscape, Real Media was killed this way.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Just Some Guy]

What is Popfly?

A guaranteed out?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[dgatwood]

And heinously buggy. Most of the crashes I've seen in Safari have Flash in the backtrace (and usually Flash_EnforceLocalSecurity()). Some flash sites crash browsers with such ease and regularity that it borders on painful to visit them at all---particularly some of those flash games that display random flash ads before you can play them. Those crash Safari and FireFox about 50% of the time.

From a quick skim of the 'net, I see reports that it is not only the #1 cause of crashes in Safari, but also in FireFox (both on the Mac and in Linux). It is probably the #1 cause of IE and FireFox crashes on Windows, too, if I were guessing. To describe Flash as an abomination is an insult to abominations.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Randle_Revar]

>As a professional "graphics artist type" I take a offense at that. What if I were to ask about the computer coders types making the kind of buggy crap they do now with [whatever language you like]?

Well, if it was useless, poorly coded and I was inflicting it on other people, I would be ashamed - except I don't see why I would put it out there in the first place.

http://www.karenkaram.co.uk/index2.html
http://www.raspini.gr/
http://www.rockhall.com/rockimmortal/home.html

Stuff like this has no reason to exist. The first two have maybe a slight excuse, because they are the sites of designers or something and they want their sites to reflect their real-world bad taste. But the last one is absolutely gratuitous as well as awful.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[rattaroaz]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

So what you are saying is that Flash will be relegated to pointless crap, and HTML 5, though less commonly used, will be less crap and more useful? I'm ok with that. I'm not interested in seeing HTML 5 crap. More interested in seeing HTML useful stuff.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

But you'd still need to make two bits of horrible buggy rubbish, one for the Flash/Silverlight enabled browsers, and one for the HTML5 browsers. I can't see HTML 5 taking over from the plugins any time soon. Plus, because the HTML5 is built in to the browser, updates will be slower, and there might be compatibility issues with older HTML capable browsers... it'll be the browser wars all over again......
 

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hucko]

Y've never heard of the doc format? Sure it is technically inferior but I'm sure more people use it than pdf. I'm still trying to convince my plebes that if the wish to share information, they should use pdf. They just complain that they don't understand what PDFCreator is. :s So I repeat myself, yet again.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Lennie]

editor embedded in the browser ?L You mean Mozilla Bespin project ?:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/02/introducing-bespin/
http://www.vimeo.com/4183124

Re:It's the tools stupid

[mrboyd]

Every use of flash is an abuse. Since I'm using flashblock every site that requires flash is broken for me (and I enjoy that). Particularly the clever one who use 1x1 flash in a hidden div to do whatever the hell it is they need a 1x1 flash for.

If I care for your flash content I'll make the extra effort to click on the "play" button. There is just no way anyone will decide when a clever flash animated menu will run and hog my browser. If your site requires so much flash that I have to click ten different flash element to get basic navigation (<a href= damnit!!) it's usually a sure indication the site suck and the content in on par with the web designer mad skillz.

So far the only decent use of flash I've seen are video and some games. flashy ads and flash 'app' with their non-selectable text, non-standard navigation scheme and crappy load time makes me want to flail the website owner.

And that's too bad because Flex could be a great platform if the compiler was not so slow you want to kill someone every time you're launching your project.

HTML5? sure! bring it on! If it's going to be the new flash I just hope I can block it.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Max Littlemore]

I was thinking the same thing about editors, maybe they would have to roll dream weaver and flash into the same beast, but they could definitely maintain the dominant position in the editor market.

Also, TFA talks about conflict within MS because they have the browser team and the silverlight team, but I don't see why silverlight can't be rolled into the browser as the ie10 implementation of the canvas tag. Surely Silverlight is capable of providing everything that html5 canvas does plus more. (not that I have seen silverlight in action, but still)

Fom that point of view, it is the perfect oportunity to embrace, extend and extinguish that I would have expected Microsoft to jump at. I am very surprised they are not supporting it. Ooops. maybe I should have kept that thought to myself...

By reading this post you acknowledge that the above paragraph is entirely my idea and if you do produce a product that subverts html5 by adding additional features to the canvas or any other html5 element, you will compensate me with your entire business. Yep, you sign the whole lot over to me. Yes I'm looking at you MS

Re:It's the tools stupid

[WillKemp]

Flash is always pointless crap - unless it's a video (e.g., youtube). In my experience, the quality of a company is inversely proportional to the size of the holes that flashblock leaves in its web site.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Lennie]

From Wikipedia: "In Windows 7 [betas] the Silverlight webbrowser plugin is not installed automatically but is an optionally downloadable update through Windows update." Not sure about the release version. But then again flash isn't installed either, but visiting the first website (in this case MSN, default homepage) will show a: download/install flash plugin thing.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Lennie]

And now ActionScript isn't the original ActionScript anymore.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Right now, without Flash, Youtube does not work, period, end of story.

Except on the iPhone :-)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[gmack]

1x1 flash is for permanent cookies. Browsers have all sorts of cookie controls and max cookie storage times whitelists and blacklists flash doesn't. Any site can set a cookie and cookies in flash never go away unless you go to a special adobe site that allows you to browse your flash cookies and delete some or all of them.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[WillKemp]

Graphics is graphics, no matter what the medium is. What i hate about flash is the time it takes to load and to grind and clunk its way into action. That's rarely an issue with small areas of flash on a mainly html page, but the bigger it is the worse the problem. But it is mostly pointless. At the good end, it barely makes any more impact than a static image would and at the bad end it may be ok the first time, but it quickly becomes intensely irritating when you have to go to a site several times.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Lennie]

OK, I now know what you mean, you want WYSIWYG for animation stuff.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, YouTube works decently with Gnash. youtube-dl allows you to download the video without going through the Flash crap so you can view it with mplayer or whatever your favorite video player is.

With that said, I would much rather just have an HTML5 video and view videos in-browser without a hassle.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe HAS screwed people over. SWF Upload was a well established flash project that used the flash player to do uploads with progress bars. Adobe unilaterally decided to remove the functionality that project requires from Flash 10 costing hundreds of developers thousands of dollars in lost time while they hastily patched up their products for angry clients who's sites broke when they upgraded to Flash 10.

Anyone who trusts Adobe not to do this again is a deluded fool. Adobe cannot be trusted.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[FooBarWidget]

"You have to be kidding about Silverlight overtaking Flash. Not only has Silverlight failed to take any notable market share to date, many projects that started with Silverlight have switched to Flash (or even Java and JavaScript)."

You've got to be kidding about Silverlight failing to take any notable market share to date. I've already seen a few national (Dutch) broadcasting channels using Silverlight on their website for streaming their TV programs, and not offering the content in any other format. It's only been a short while since Silverlight 1 was released, but most of these sites are already using Silverlight 2.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to a world where I can make animations for the web and embed videos and whatnot without having to muck around with stupid Flash/Silverlight/Java/whatever. I HATE Flash, I HATE Silverlight more, I HATE Java the most, and anything I can't name off the top of my head can go STRAIGHT to hell. I do see where the parent is coming from though. I see a lot of designers building sites in Flash just because they lack the analytical skills to wrap their overdeveloped right hemispheres around using CSS and (X)HTML. To design a website that isn't just pretty, but is actually good takes more than a good creative sense.

Good thing you maintain you credibility in there. You're a 'hobby programmer', accuse us of generalizing your kind, yet manage to somehow HATE Java the most, which has nothing to do with this at all. Furthermore you acknowledge the guy's comment as a valid one where Flash is apparently only useful for pointless artists crap. Good going!

Re:It's the tools stupid

[mrrudge]

FDT ? - http://fdt.powerflasher.com/
Flex ( now Flash ) Builder - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/

They both include all the features you requested, debuggers, svn integration ... I do a lot of commercial AS3, and haven't opened the Flash IDE for a good while.

HTHs

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

ActionScript 3 is not more similar to Java - it's still javascript.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Bert64]

Flash, and to an even greater extent Silverlight are proprietary technologies controlled by someone else... It is never in the best interest of a company to promote someone else's proprietary technology and have their own products dependent on it, that's putting their fate in the hands of a potential competitor.

The financial benefit of an open standard, in this case HTML5, comes from the fact it's an open standard and therefore they are in the same boat as everyone else. With a proprietary tech, you are at the mercy of the owner of that technology and will always be several steps behind and seen as a second rate supplier.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[AppleOSuX]

Have you ever tried Visual Studio? Seriously, if you give Silverlight dev in Visual Studio an honest try, you'll be spoiled and won't want to go back.

The programming language alone is worth the switch. It's soooo much more capable than Actionscript and the runtime lets you do advanced things like threading. You can also use the same language to build your own web services.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[colinrichardday]

They just complain that they don't understand what PDFCreator is. :s

pdflatex foo.tex

Re:It's the tools stupid

[X0563511]

Hrm, thats funny. Flash is all script as well.

Oh, right. There's this thing called a WYSIWYG editor. Like Adobe's own Flash studio.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[X0563511]

DOC and PDF are apples and oranges. PDF doesn't try to be DOC, it tries to be a Portable Document Format, and tends to succeed quite well at that.

DOC files are just MS Word memory dumps. (or at least they were for the longest time)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Xest]

"Netscape, Real Media was killed this way."

Or it could just be that both of them were impressively crap.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[johny42]

Oh yes, the year of the HTML 5 desktop is coming!

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Moridin42]

Not for the Mets...

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Rhaban]

Right now, without Flash, Youtube does not work, period, end of story.

Except on the iPhone :-)

And android phones.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[msormune]

But you can block Flash, so you won't see it. Can you block HTML 5?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio is a dog. Try Flexbuilder instead, it's based on Eclipse.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[smoker2]

You don't have to go to an Adobe site. Under linux you can find the cookies at ~/.macromedia
Browse any directories below that and files with the .sol extension are cookies. Delete away. If you really want to, just delete all the cookies :

rm -Rf ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/*
rm -Rf ~/.macromedia/Macromedia/*

In windows they are stored under C:\documents and settings\Local User name\Application Data\Macromedia\

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

...That's false. The only reason you believe Microsoft wins is because the only time you hear about the software is when it's won a battle. Nobody talks about the new stuff that slowly fades away.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Frontpage and Expression Web isn't WYSIWYG, it's WYSIWTF.
Visual Studio for other uses (C++/C#) is kind of neat though.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the developers shouldn't have relied on exploiting a security hole

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The surest sign that a) someone isn't a real coder and b) they are just plain full of shit. Where did the Java remark come from? Was anyone really talking about Java. I bet you've never used Java and just bad mouth it because some C++ nerd likes making life more uncomfortable for themselves. You go back to your QuickBasic 4.5 while the rest of us grown ups go to work and make real money ok?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks man... first grin of the day :)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Xest]

"These are the sites that use but don't abuse Flash, and are the best candidates for HTML 5's more lightweight environment. If the designers and developers of these sites can be convinced it's worth migrating from Flash for the decreased overhead, they just might."

Or they can just use Javascript and/or CSS already without needing to wait for HTML5.

The thing is they don't, but then that goes back to the original point in this thread - it's the tools.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[arethuza]

For a personal project recently I started using Silverlight for exactly the reasons you mention - I also wanted to support Flash as well so I did some work to check that the overall approach worked (I want to support Java and Canvas as well eventually).

To my surprise I found that I actually rather like ActionScript 3 and the Flex/Flash libraries - so much so that I have now made the primary version in Flex as this is what people actually have and I prefer the approach to Graphics programming in Flex to Silverlight.

YMMV

Re:It's the tools stupid

[arethuza]

I've only been developing in ActionScript 3 for a few months - but I think it is a lot closer to Java than JavaScript is.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[loufoque]

Independence from Adobe for one. Right now, without Flash, Youtube does not work, period, end of story

It doesn't really work with Flash either.
Fullscreen is slow, it's as if it was CPU scaling, the video goes out of sync from time to time, it crashes often, it uses my CPU to the maximum to do virtually nothing and causes my laptop to be so hot it runs the fan to the max.

At least, that's how Flash works on Linux. It seems it works as badly on Mac OS X, too.

The more important reason to ditch Flash is to make to the god damn thing work properly, such that you can really watch videos decently which would stop making youtube nothing more than a toy.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Ant P.]

If it's going to be the new flash I just hope I can block it.

The annoying bits of HTML 5 are just plain Javascript, and there's already a million and one tools to do that. I haven't seen a good whitelist one unfortunately.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, nice to know that the average IQ of people with mod points is still somewhat below that of your average pineapple.

Perhaps if people would take their heads out of their asses for a bit, they'd see that the parent post is right.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is excellent for designers and it pretty much the animator's tool of choice. You only really need to start scripting if you want interactive elements or lots of nested animation.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

not if your luis castillo

Re:It's the tools stupid

[jonbryce]

They've also failed in financial software (vs Intuit in the US and Sage in the rest of the world) and in games.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[chrish]

Silverlight (and Flash, for that matter) don't even seem to have 64-bit plugins for Windows, what makes you think they'll show up any time soon for OS X and/or Linux? 64-bit XP has been around for how long and there's no plugin for 64-bit IE? Come on...

If HTML5 browsers come in 64-bit flavours and uptake on 64-bit Windows 7 is good (with Snow Leopard "all" Macs will be 64-bit; on Windows, you'll want 64-bit so you can actually use the 4GB so many machines have installed now), HTML5 might "win" by default... it'll be the only one that works on 64-bit browsers.

The only "64" associated with Silverlight 3 betas is H.264 support.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[relguj9]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

Last time I checked, a large portion of successful web developers are, make that have to be, good graphics artists. It's not pointless if it's what the customer wants, it gets you a contract and makes you money.

So yes, HTML 5 will need all of the features and be at least as easy to use as Flash. The ease of use may just come from development tools.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Ginger Unicorn]

it's a good job you specified "AD" as I may have been confused by the ambiguity and perhaps thought that internet explorer 6 was first released in the middle of the fucking bronze age

Re:It's the tools stupid

[rgviza]

And in microsoft's case, produce code that looks like **** in browsers besides IE. WYSIWYG editors generally produce crap html.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[JobyOne]

Way to ignore the paragraph directly after the one you quoted. I would argue that Java has *everything* to do with this, remember the stupid Java applets that Frontpage used to make rollovers out of? It was atrocious, you used to be unable to browse the web without Java.

Nobody (that I remember) made a fuss about Flash "killing" Java applets when it came out.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[JobyOne]

Amen to that. Good graphics work is good, bad graphics work is bad, regardless of the medium. The same can be said for file size optimization.

At my current job I came in to find people happily oblivious, building promotional headers for the website in Flash, with zero thought towards file sizes. They had the navigation built into these animations, which sometimes topped a megabyte. It was a mess, and will continue to be until I get my new version of the site layout pushed through the executives, but I'm going to be dropping the file size of each page by a couple orders of magnitude. I've also edited the content down from 1000+ pages to less than 30.

I've also showed them a few things about optimizing files and we're making progress. I've also tried to explain what file types compress what types of images best, so that we can get our static image bloat under control. That one isn't going quite so well.

Now the only problem is that it has to ultimately maintained by a different group, who uses .NET, and the WYSIWYG Visual Studio editor (ick! why are they even using it? I dunno) is a little squirrelly about PNGs, and the people who will be maintaining it don't trust the CSS to make things work. They're resisting the fact that they can flow things onto the page now instead of making a zillion absolutely positioned DIVs (ARG!).

Re:It's the tools stupid

[JobyOne]

Way to ignore the sentence following the quote. We're talking about each other's peers here, not each other. Every profession has its fair share of asshats. I'll even go out on a limb and admit that mine has more than its share of asshats.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hurricane78]

I haven't heard of it at all. And, being a Linux user, I also see no point in checking it out. :)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hurricane78]

Considering Sage, I think even Microsoft would have done a better job, than the giant pieces of crap that they deliver.

I remember one year that felt like 3, where we had to repair the database twice a day, because that thing could not handle more than 5 clients at the same time.
I also remember building external extension tools. A Sage guy even offered me a job at the CeBit (for a joke of a pay), as a developer, because of those tools. I declined.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[YAN3D]

You had me at computer types making the kind of buggy crap and lost me at HATE flash and anything I can't name off the top of my head can go STRAIGHT to hell.

Do you hate flash and similar technologies that much? I guess that means you hate all the web video you get to watch for free daily? You must also hate google analytics and google street view? Do you hate that many sites allow you to embed their flash applications into your site?

The point is, Flash has it's place and can play nicely with HTML websites.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[RingDev]

Moonlight is the open source Linux version.

-Rick

Re:It's the tools stupid

[mcgrew]

In this day and age, you don't need to know good html in order to make a webpage. We have WYSIWYG editors.

I have never see a well written web page that developed by any of these editors. The code they produce ranges from ugly to incomprehensible, and almost always waste bandwidth.

HTML ain't rocket science. It's a very easy to learn and use. Javascript is a bt more of a challenge, but it's easily learnable by any nerd worth his salt. It's also way overused imo.

I got modded flamebait yesterday for saying this, but it's my honest opinion - if you can't learn HTML, hire someone who knows HTML. My favorite Microsoft web editor is notepad, my least favorite Microsoft web editor is Front Page, which almost always inserts proprietary Microsoft stuff in you page needlessly.

HTML is a hell of a lot easier to learn than design principles are.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[aclarke]

Yes, DOC and PDF are not the same thing. However ... do you work in a corporate environment? Over the last 6 months, how many Microsoft Word documents have you been emailed or referred to? How many PDFs? If your clients and colleagues work more with PDF than DOC, you are definitely in the minority.

One of my main clients provides a document management system for a specific industry. Looking over the documents shared by dozens of companies using this tool, Microsoft Word documents are shared significantly more than PDF, despite being clearly the wrong format to use in this instance. IT people often try to convince users to use PDF instead of DOC but for the average end user they don't understand or care about the issues with DOC. Additionally converting to PDF from Microsoft Word in Microsoft Windows requires extra steps so why go through the effort when the payoff doesn't directly affect you personally?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[djheru]

For example, I'd love an integrated code editor in Flash with decent editing, syntax highlighting, and intellisense capabilities;

Yes, it's called Flex Builder/Flash Builder

Re:It's the tools stupid

[mcgrew]

PDF is a printed document format that tries to pretend to be more. The Doc format is a word processing format. They share no similarities at all.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[gbjbaanb]

I'd be worried about silverlight if v3 delivers what it promised - GUI apps that work on both desktop and web platforms. If this is true, then WPF is a dead technology too. At the moment MS doesn't really care about obsoleting recent technologies (look at Linq2SQL) so they might just go ahead and dive this forward - if all the desktop devs suddenly start writing silverlight code, MS definitely has a chance of supplanting flash as the de-facto animation gui on the web.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[mcgrew]

Mets? Don't you mean the Cubs? Thos losers haven't won the World Series since 1908! At least your team wins once ion a while.

What does a Cardinal fan have in common with a Cubs fan? Both hate the Mets.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[mcgrew]

(<a href= damnit!!)

That's one of my pet peeves - using javascript for s simple link (flash is worse). It annoys me, because when I see an interesting link I always open it in a new tab or window, and the javascript links just won't work unless you click them.

The worst thing about web design is designers who design to impress people with their l33t 5k1LLz instead of designing with the audience in mind. Like you said, <a href="link">link</a>.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[shaitand]

But would we want to... WYSIWYG editors produce output that is total garbage and would make anyone who actually knows html/javascript/etc cringe. In fact it is so bad that you can't update and modify the site by hand after that, either you load up the editor again (and it better be the same editor if you want the same result) or its dramatically easier to recode it from scratch.

I've seen pagemaker sites with single pages that were 2mb of just html/css.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[shaitand]

generally? Have you ever seen coherent output from a wysiwyg editor? When I encounter the stuff I generally find it faster and easier to rewrite the page from scratch than to make even minor changes to the existing garbage.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[shaitand]

pdf is a media independent display language masquerading as a printed document format. It was created primarily for marketing purposes, it is embedded postscript and does nothing of note that postscript didn't already do.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[DragonWriter]

The fact that companies rarely have non-financial motivations may be interesting but it has nothing to do with the question I asked.

It is directly relevant in pointing out that their motivation for pursuing HTML5 in the browser as an RIA platform, which they are manifestly currently doing, is almost certainly an economic motivation, whether or not the exact nature of that motivation is apparent (and, of course, it is apparent in both cases: Apple doesn't want Microsoft's OS dominance combined with reliance on proprietary RIA platforms to result in Apple's offerings being marginalized because RIA platform vendors don't focus on Apple's desktop and mobile platforms, Google doesn't want content walled off in proprietary forms that its search engine and mashup tools can't get at: the entire Google business model relies on the accessibility of other's content on the internet to its various tools, which web standards enhance and proprietary platforms detract from.)

Since whatever motivation either has to push HTML5 in the browser as an RIA platform alternative also a motivation to see HTML5 actually get used by content providers, and since that is itself a motiation to see that authoring tools get built, they have such an economic motivation. Which is the answer to your question.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it's not built into Flash, you can load your actionscript into Flex Builder for code completion, refactoring and syntax highlighting. Of course, now you're running two apps instead of just one, I guess it depends on the size of your code-base.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[nude_noot]

And Windows Mobile phones, and Blackberry phones...

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Moridin42]

I'm not a Mets fan.. but a couple days ago, the Mets (second baseman?) dropped an easy pop fly from Alex Rodriguez. Think they would've won, too. Instead, the Yankees won. So.. popfly isn't a guaranteed out. Although the Cubs outfielder's two errors a few days ago was pretty special too.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[sjames]

Even Microsoft Popfly itself is so unpopular you can go for months at a time without hearing about it...

Let's hope reality can catch it for the 3rd out.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Tronster]

Good point, I didn't mention editors outside of the IDE as my gripe is that the editor in the Flash IDE has been neglected for years.

It's because of this I use FlashDevelop for all my Actionscript (both AS2 and AS3). I have a copy of Flex Builder and for non Flex based projects it is cumbersome. Perhaps it's just the integration with Eclipse but it doesn't have a snappy response to interaction like FlashDevelop. It does still have wins for debugging and SVN, although the FlashDevelop plug-in community is close to both of these.

I haven't wanted to try FDT after one of their salesmen spammed the e-mails of those on the FlashDevelop forums about trying their product.

These days I only pull open the Flash IDE if I need to work with my artist's assets.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

microsoft has tried to replace pdfs and failed. they tried to replace the ipod and failed. they are trying to replace google with bing and are failing. they tried to replace flash and are failing.

they are always trying to play catch up and end up producing an inferior product. how can you make something worse when you are playing copycat?

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Tronster]

You are right, like any successful company, Microsoft doesn't boast its losses. Regardless of what PR they shout, Microsoft has a history of "winning" software battles with their profits, stocks, and assets providing substance behind this claim. Until recently Microsoft have had quite a good track record.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Tronster]

I am aware of these tools outside of the Flash IDE; please see my response to AppleOSuX for details.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[atamido]

I never cease to be amazed at how terrible the back end of Intuit's Quicken software is. There are so many freely available multi-user database solutions out there, and they haven't bothered to switch to one of them after decades of development? Truly amazing.

I work for a government agency that uses a common government financial package. The software uses a COBOL database, and requires that all users have full access to a Windows share where all of the files are kept. I'm just waiting for the day when an disgruntled employee goes in and deletes all of the files, wiping out all transactions for the day.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I make pointless, buggy crap, you insensitive clod!

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a decent code editor for Flash content try Flex Builder 3. Actionscript3 is very familiar to anybody who knows Java, C++ or C# or something like that. Even javascript would suffice. I think Flash is the most mature platform for Rich Internet Applications. And you can build something meaningful with actionscript besides pointless animations and sort-of whiz-bang effects.
If you care even remotely about User Interface I think Flex is a good choice (or do it in javascript instead, (it's your choice)).

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

When IE 6 is still around the HTML 5 will not break through. And IE6 will be still around for at least 10 years from now. There are so many applications now who depends that IE6 is their target browser and it would be too expensive to make a new system. So these old applications may be around for longer than people would like to understand.
HTML 4 has been around 10 years from now - and if I would predict boldly about the future we all would be coding in HTML 4 50 years in the future - in the freaking and fucking year 2059!!!!!
Some things that works don't need to be changed won't change. Look at COBOL!!!

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Fallen Seraph]

Native SVG animation is something which already works in Opera and which Firefox is working on implementing as well. As someone who's worked with both Flash and SVG animations, SVG is WAY easier in my opinion to work with, and one it becomes more prevalent, you can be that there will be software released for anyone who's too lazy to learn the ridiculously simple code syntax.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[master811]

Frontpage - maybe, but the latest versions of Expression Web is miles better and EASILY comparable to Dreamweaver.

Until you've actually used it, keep quiet!

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true about not hearing about popfly for months. I could have sworn I heard something about it closing down within the last 45 days or so. :)

Oh. And I love Silverlight. It's the coolest name in existence. It's so flashy! :)

Re:It's the tools stupid

[skarphace]

but can there editors be used from within the web browser embedded into a site so that it can be modified from any computer the owner is working at? once this is built into the browsers it could be used to created an editor such as this without the need to reverse engineer or license junk

This was actually Berners-Lee's original intent. If I recall, the first browser he built specifically had this functionality. However, the uptake wasn't that good when Mosiac came out and it kind of fell into an obscure thought(until wikis).

Re:It's the tools stupid

[DragonWriter]

But since HTML5 is not owned by a company, it puts Adobe on equal footing with any other company making an editor.

Which puts them behind compared to their situation with regard to Flash, where no one is on equal footing.

If they just changed their product to output HTML5 instead of or in addition to a swf file, they'll keep their strangehold on the editor market.

Sure, but someone will leverage HTML5 itself to build "good enough" editors that, while they won't eliminate the market for commercial editors, will shrink it greatly. And since its a web standard where browser vendors will usually control the implementation, rather than a proprietary standard where Adobe will control the implementation, Adobe won't be able to keep it a moving target to move the goalposts the way they could if someone tried something similar with Flash.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Strake]

We have WYSIWYG editors.

Edit with (vi, emacs, other visual editor); browse in source mode. WYSIWYG.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

delete flash cookies with the BetterPrivacy firefox extension

Re:It's the tools stupid

[RobNich]

My guess is that anyone that's willing to use a "good enough" editor is not currently using the Adobe suite, or if they are, didn't pay for it. Most developers are going to continue to use the tool they've been using, and they're only teaching the Adobe tools in school.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hucko]

They share the ability to relay patterns we confuse with data. You (and myself, despite my initial wording) understand what when and where various formats should be used.

'Correcting' me on the definitions of the formats doesn't change that the purpose of both formats is to relay information via a method of display. Doc is meant to be printed, yet looks terrible on screen and on paper. PDF is meant to be a structured format supposedly looks the same no matter where it is displayed. To end users they do the same job, display information, and one sometimes looks better than the other.

Of course if you print from a doc to a pdf it will look crap still, which is what my users are doing.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hucko]

My users have a managed environment and I'm not supposed to be doing the managing or training, just the support. (IMHO no one is doing the former two, it is assumed to have already been done.) We are given PDFCreator in addition to MS Office.

Unfortunately, I've yet to see people be convinced of the benefits of using Tex/Latex over word processors. Even Lyx is too much for them. No no maths or physics professors here :)

If anyone knows of a simple latex generator that works similar to Office with doc compatibility on WinXP, I'd be grateful for the info. lmgfy gets lyx and kile.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hucko]

You said it so well! I'll add that using Word to eventually print to pdf is a oxymoron anyway.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Hucko]

That is what I thought was happening, but everyone (that aren't using docs for this) seem to print to pdf rather than ps. Why don't we just use a ps viewer? (I don't because my users don't know what to make of a .pdf let alone a .ps

Re:It's the tools stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight is far superior and if you think is hasn't taken a bite out or Flash, then you are living under a rock!
The developer tools destroy anything Adobe offers also!

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ckaminski]

No. Microsoft "buys" marketshare by buying startups with mediocre technology, putting some fresh face on it, and selling it at a loss, subsidized by their huge Office/OS cash-cow.

No one else can compete with that recipe.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[ckaminski]

Go ahead and send that .doc to a publishing house or printer. You'll get it rejected faster than you can blink.

Microsoft has tried and failed at DTP - Word is great for interoffice memos and kitchen recipes. At nearly everything else, it fails.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[John Dowdell]

"Granted the likelihood of that happening is slim to none..."

Thanks, for that.... ;-)

jd/adobe

Re:It's the tools stupid

[John Dowdell]

I'm confused by that argument, in this situation... Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and more are all frequently used in web development. Can you clarify...?

tx, jd/adobe

Re:It's the tools stupid

[X0563511]

How many DOCs have I received? None. I've received one excel spreadsheet, for that matter.

PDFs get swapped around, but not terribly often.

I'm a tech. We work with scripts, text, and markup. If we need to distribute it, it goes on the webserver or wiki, and the link gets passed around. There is very few data that NEEDS to be in a static format, and for those PDFs do a damn good job.

Re:It's the tools stupid

[slashfrog.leg]

So what? Once a fail always a fail? Maybe they succeed this time. *hope they won't*

Re:It's the tools stupid

[JobyOne]

Not exactly. On a bad day I would say I HATE my car. The fact of the matter is that I love my car dearly, but I hate the way I'm constrained in using it by crappy urban planning and having to share the experience with all the idiot assclowns who share the road with me.

Similarly I say that I hate Flash/whatever. I don't really hate the tools, I just hate the way I'm forced to interact with them, and the way they are not utilized to their full potential by crappy conflicting interest and poor communication. When I think of the hoops I have to jump through to make a Flash file that's got an appropriate file size and is actually useful (just because some bureaucrat insists that everything bounce around like a Jack Russel fucking Terrier), and the way I am daily offended by other people using it badly. It's actually a lot like my commute.

By the way, the day I wrote that post had, in fact been a bad day for me and Flash. I had spent all day cleaning up SEO/ease-of-maintenance issues caused by its misuse. Add in a few run-ins with IE6 and some other issues stemming from poor implementation of standard practices and you've got a recipe for HATING Flash...especially when it's used for the primary navigation, in files that often run around a megabyte.

Total nonsense

[WaywardGeek]

Just because I can embed video and sound doesn't make my HTML pages the equivalent of flash. More importantly, Microsoft has "announced" intension to support HTML 5, but there's exactly zero movement so far from the market leader, and a long history of similar unfulfilled promises. Until Microsoft says HTML 5 is the next big thing, it isn't. Sorry, I know it sucks.

Re:Total nonsense

[zoips]

And draw with .

Re:Total nonsense

[bonch]

When they talk about embedding video, they're referring to Flash-based video sites like YouTube. Think a little.

HTML5 will press forward with or without Microsoft. YouTube already has an HTML5 demo, and as a site owned by Google, they will embrace the new technology. In the meantime, Firefox continues to gain in the market, and Apple has a little thing called the iPhone that has a "real" browser.

Re:Total nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd stop for a second to remove your head from between Ballmer's legs, you'd notice that Microsoft's monopoly on the browser market has long crumbled and they're constantly losing market share. Microsoft's power to blatantly ignore standards and have everyone have to grudgingly follow behind is but a mere shadow of what it once was, and it doesn't look like they'll be regaining such a position any time soon, if ever.

Re:Total nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey I prefer the new web technology out there. No coding, no plugins, nothing. Just twist a couple of knobs and you are done! We can call it "etch a sketch".

(and IMHO we might see the end of Flash when HTML6 comes out. I highly doubt this will kill it. True how many times have we heard "this will be the end of Flash" before?)

Re:Total nonsense

[sreid]

don't forget chrome

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

Microsoft's share in browsers is sagging. Every web developer in the world wants IE6 to die a quick but painful death. IE7 is better. But look at the (literal) acid test: The Acid3 score for Safari 4 is 100/100. The Acid3 score for Internet Explorer 8 is 21/100. Not very impressive.

I believe that just about all Web developers, with the possible exception of those working in .NET, would rather that Microsoft just stopped supplying browsers altogether.

Re:Total nonsense

[man_of_mr_e]

Acid 3 is, unfortunately, heavily dependent upon CSS3 functionality, which isn't officially standard yet and could change. So claiming that Acid3 is some kind of test only tests if you're compliant with drafts.

Re:Total nonsense

[ClosedSource]

Microsoft's so-called monopoly on the browser market may have crumbled, but if you look closely you'll find that the crumbs still have a much bigger market share then any competitor.

Re:Total nonsense

[ClosedSource]

Actually when Netscape was dead, Firefox and Opera had barely started, and Chrome and Safari weren't even a twinkle in Google's and Apple's eyes, web developers had it the easiest - ignore standards and just do it IE's way. Adding browsers just makes things more complicated and standards won't eliminate the need to test your site on each browser.

Re:Total nonsense

[JohnBailey]

If you'd stop for a second to remove your head from between Ballmer's legs, you'd notice that Microsoft's monopoly on the browser market has long crumbled and they're constantly losing market share. Microsoft's power to blatantly ignore standards and have everyone have to grudgingly follow behind is but a mere shadow of what it once was, and it doesn't look like they'll be regaining such a position any time soon, if ever.

Which is why a Silverlight plugin for Firefox exists. IE is headed to live on a farm with a nice family right now.. So unless they can pull off Silverlight and a few other things that get Windows specific stuff commonly used on the net, in a few years time, expect IE to be abandoned again. Microsoft may not be able to instantly deliver 90%+ install base of any codec or media playing system any more, but they can still do enough to bugger the net up for the rest of us given enough time. And they can afford to throw money at such things for much longer than most companies outside open source.

Re:Total nonsense

[jonwil]

Also, Microsoft has not (as far as I know) announced what audio and video formats they would support in HTML5. Its a good bet that they will support Windows Media and would only support alternatives (i.e. MPEG) if they need to in order for to work. They would never support OGG or Theora (because those formats just wont gain any traction in the commercial world)

Re:Total nonsense

[shutdown -p now]

If you'd stop for a second to remove your head from between Ballmer's legs, you'd notice that Microsoft's monopoly on the browser market has long crumbled and they're constantly losing market share. Microsoft's power to blatantly ignore standards and have everyone have to grudgingly follow behind is but a mere shadow of what it once was, and it doesn't look like they'll be regaining such a position any time soon, if ever.

If it were a question of Microsoft trying to force a new proprietary technology, then your assessment would be correct - IE no longer has sufficient market share to do that unilaterally. However, it still has more than enough to block the introduction of any new standards by someone else. If it doesn't run for 60% of the target audience, who in a sane mind is going to use it? And even if you do a straightforward extrapolation of the present trend of decreasing IE market share (which might not be a smart idea to do), let's say it has 30% in 10 years - that is still enough to be a blocker.

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

Sorry, but this is part of what I do for a living, and standards compliance means a great deal. It makes a huge difference.

The more compliant the browsers are, the less work I have to do. As long as my code is also standards-compliant, the less cross-browser testing is necessary. This is so huge I don't really know how to emphasize it.

Right now we have to test our site under IE6, IE7, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari in both Windows XP and Vista. We have to test IE6, IE7, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari in both XP and Vista running in a VM on a Mac. We have to test FireFox, Chrome, and Safari under OS X. (Opera has not had a sufficient piece of our customer share.)

Now, unless I have miscounted, that is 23 browser tests we have to do for each update of our site. You think that's fun? And all because of different levels of standards compliance.

It will get somewhat easier when IE6 dies its glorious painful death (which could not be too soon for me), because that is the browser that is LEAST compliant of them all, and which requires more tests than any other. Though IE7 is no picnic.

Re:Total nonsense

[Colonel Korn]

When they talk about embedding video, they're referring to Flash-based video sites like YouTube. Think a little.

HTML5 will press forward with or without Microsoft. YouTube already has an HTML5 demo, and as a site owned by Google, they will embrace the new technology. In the meantime, Firefox continues to gain in the market, and Apple has a little thing called the iPhone that has a "real" browser.

The iPhone version of Safari will probably be very late to the html5 table. Supporting anything other than basic text and images isn't in the iPhone's strategy - instead Apple focuses on selling little programs from their app store to do what you normally would see on web pages for $0.99.

Re:Total nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

With worldwide IE market-share now down to 65% (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/06/may-2009-browser-stats-rivals-chip-away-at-ie.ars
  I don't think you can say that the world is waiting any longer for Microsoft's word on the matter.

When IE usage is below 50%, are you still going to say that Microsoft's endorsement is necessary?

Re:Total nonsense

[Lehk228]

Safari and chrome use the same rendering engine, in addition the functioning of firefox, chrome, and safari shouldn't differ on xp, vista and OSX. also Vista comes with IE 7 not 6, and IE 7 shouldn't be different on XP and vista so your 23 tests could reasonably be trimmed down to XP with IE 6, Vista with IE 7 then firefox and safari on OSX

I just saved you a lot of time turning your 23 tests into 4 tests. if you want to you could even cut vista out of your web tests by doing IE 6 and IE 7 in XP but IE doesn't coexist with other versions of itself so you don't save much except the cost of a vista license.

Re:Total nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, like it or not, a lot of computers are only allowed to have IE installed by the company's IT department.

Re:Total nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Compliance itself means nothing. Every version of Java ever released was 100% compliant, yet you still have to test your Java apps with every combination of OS and JVM. Why? Because all those little bugs and implementation details matter more than you realize.

dom

Re:Total nonsense

[savuporo]

Dude, you are not testing on any portable/mobile/embedded browser at all ? Like Sony PSP or Nintendo Wii, Nokia n800, Opera Mobile or Fennec ? You have it easy ... Because on PC i can likely switch a browser if i have issues , but on an embedded-ish / portable device i cant, and thats where most websites fail.

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

Shouldn't is not the same as doesn't. You saved me no time, because you are ignoring the places where everything should be the same, but isn't.

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

Nope. It's not part of the site business model, nor a significant issue for our customer base. The portable would have to fully support JavaScript + Ajax, as well as Flash, and other technologies, and (1) there are not many that meet the necessary criteria, and (2) our site covers rather a niche market and there is little reason to access it from a handheld.

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

I am not trying to be snide... let me clarify.

For just one simple example: Windows XP, in a VM running on a Mac, does not use quite the exact font that Windows XP runs natively. So IE6, IE7, FireFox, and Safari will sometimes render differently than they will natively. Take a DIV full of text, for example. If you set its size as fixed, because the renderer is using a subtly different font, the text will wrap at different places and you will have a different number of lines of text. "No big deal," you say? It can be, depending on what is surrounding that box if text.

"... firefox, chrome, and safari shouldn't differ on xp, vista and OSX ..."

You are right. They shouldn't. But THEY DO.

Re:Total nonsense

[Kensai7]

If you'd stop for a second to remove your head from between Ballmer's legs...

Damn. That was really disgusting man... :D

Re:Total nonsense

[tcr]

> However, it still has more than enough to block the introduction of any new standards by someone else.

True, and SVG is an example.

IE support remains unlikely, as it would cover some of the same ground as Silverlight.

Re:Total nonsense

[Matt Perry]

Windows XP, in a VM running on a Mac, does not use quite the exact font that Windows XP runs natively.

Yes it does. It's the same code being executed whether it's running on a Dell, HP, IBM, or in a VM.

Re:Total nonsense

[entrigant]

If your code is so hopelessly dependent on font size you're doing it wrong. I can screw up your site simply by adjusting my default font and font size in the browser. A good design should account for that and be able to cope. It should be fluid and respond properly to changes in viewing area size and fonts.

If you're busy doing fixed size per pixel designs just make your site a single img tag or embed a pdf in a object tag and be done w/ it. No testing needed.

Re:Total nonsense

[kchrist]

While I'm not aware of any font differences, I can say with certainty that WinXP/IE7 under VMware can behave differently than the same software running on real hardware, at least where JavaScript is concerned. Just a couple weeks ago we did a dozen rounds of "can't reproduce" when someone with a real Windows machine was seeing a problem that I and two other Mac-based developers couldn't reproduce under VMware. We finally checked it on a real Windows machine and lo and behold -- we could reproduce the problem. Still haven't been able to do it in a VM.

I have no idea what the problem was, but luckily the main JS dev on the project also has a lot of experience with IE, despite being a Mac user, so he's working on it. Whatever it is, I'm sure it was an edge case, but it shows that it is possible and while VMware is good enough for most things, it pays to do a QA round on a real Windows box as well.

Re:Total nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen...

Re:Total nonsense

[Simetrical]

Acid 3 is, unfortunately, heavily dependent upon CSS3 functionality, which isn't officially standard yet and could change. So claiming that Acid3 is some kind of test only tests if you're compliant with drafts.

Bzzt. The only part of CSS3 that Acid3 tests is Selectors, which has been in Last Call since 2005, and hasn't been a draft since 2000. 92/100 tests are unrelated to CSS. As for Selectors, Last Call means that it's only open for final adjustments, not major reworking. No significant changes are likely to occur: all objections have been hashed out over the past four years, and further functionality is deferred to CSS4.

In particular, anyone even remotely familiar with the CSS WG's development process (e.g., by reading www-style) knows that it's very reluctant to change anything that's already interoperably implemented. Even if something is nominally a draft, any part that's been implemented is very likely to remain stable, with only adjustments to details and corner cases (and only then if implementers are okay with it). The entire Selectors specification has been interoperably implemented by multiple browsers for a long time now.

The people writing these standards are mostly the implementers (i.e., browser authors). They aren't going to implement a feature and then screw themselves over by gratuitously changing it after the fact.

Re:Total nonsense

[savuporo]

Problem is, that the lines between Laptop->Netbook->Tablet->Mid->PocketPC->SmartPhone are blurring.
Where do you draw the line ?
There are a bunch of ARM-powered MIDs, netbooks and tablets etc coming out in short order, and they probably will gain a pretty big market, considering the battery life and price...

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

No, it DOESN'T.

I have Windows XP installed on my MacBook Pro in a Boot Camp partition. So I can boot Windows natively, or I can run the SAME Windows in a VM. And the fonts are not exactly the same!

to avoid misunderstandings, let me make clear what I am saying: it might be the same actual font file. That is all fine, but irrelevant. The issue is that it is not rendered exactly the same on the screen, which is the important part from the point of view of a web page.

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

Not so, because the font size is explicitly fixed in CSS.

Regardless, I have two things to say here: first, we are NOT sizing things by pixel at all... that is amateurish. But second, and more important, is that the text box example was only an example to illustrate my point. I didn't say we actually do it that way.

Re:Total nonsense

[Matt Perry]

Do you really have that many clients running browsers in virtual machines that it's worth testing for?

Re:Total nonsense

[man_of_mr_e]

Unfortunately, parts of CSS have been raised to Final Call, then lowered back to draft status before. For example, CSS 2.1 has had that "honor", so it's impossible for anyone to say that this won't happen.

Re:Total nonsense

[Simetrical]

Unfortunately, parts of CSS have been raised to Final Call, then lowered back to draft status before. For example, CSS 2.1 has had that "honor", so it's impossible for anyone to say that this won't happen.

Sure. But again, the changes made are generally the ones that the implementers themselves approve of, and rarely to never waste a lot of effort by anyone. CSS2.1 has received clarifications and has had some unimplemented features cut; it hasn't dramatically changed already-implemented features. Individual features in a CSS spec can be much more stable than the spec as a whole.

Re:Total nonsense

[Jane Q. Public]

We don't know. The browser doesn't announce that it is running in a VM, so our information does not contain those numbers.

I completely forgot to mention testing browsers in Linux, which ups the number from 23. I don't think they run Windows browsers under Wine, however, so it is not a big number.

Re:Total nonsense

[entrigant]

Fair enough, and I do not mean to belittle your extensive and admirable testing efforts.

However, I would like to say fixed font sizes in CSS are nearly as bad. This severely hampers usability and accessibility. Most browsers will let users override that, but ideally they should not need to. Many sites these days even include icons on the site itself to increase or decrease the relative font size of the entire site and set it via cookie.

Re:Total nonsense

[Lehk228]

if the exact font or font size being rendered (or the presence or absence of cleartype) is going to break your design, the design is already hopelessly broken.

I have never had an issue with even large variance in what font/ size is used because the design should be flexible and resilient. if everything is so interdependent and fragile you should be looking at your overall structure, not trying to work around minor quirks on different platforms.

The most recently "RIA Weekly" podcast...

[tcopeland]

...which is #52 here talked about JavaFX and its prospects for a bit. One of the guys had just gotten back from JavaOne and was talking about the vibe he was getting about JavaFX. Larry Ellison apparently commented favorably about it, so, whatever that means.

RIA Weekly is a good podcast - Michael Cote is a savvy guy and he always has good discussions with his cohosts/interviewees. AAAA+ would buy again.

Re:The most recently "RIA Weekly" podcast...

[Cyberax]

So far, JavaFX is an utter failure.

The language itself is OK (though not quite on par with C#) and execution environment is pretty nice (though startup delay is _still_ noticeable). But there's NO TOOLS FOR DESIGNERS. And that means DOOOOOM!

At the same time, Microsoft Expression Blend is really nice. And Adobe's tools are really great.

Re:The most recently "RIA Weekly" podcast...

[tcopeland]

> (Score:-1, Offtopic)

Really? My original post was about a popular podcast that compares the three rich internet application dev tools mentioned in the article summary. Seemed relevant to me... weird.

Tne answer's simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft simply won't add HtML 5 audio//video tags to IE.

Re:Tne answer's simple.

[icebike]

Sooner or later they will.

Re:Tne answer's simple.

[NightLamp]

I agree they will support the tags but will they add Theora or will it be plugin-dependent?

I guess open-source plugins are the lesser evil but it is hard to imagine Theora penetration achieving critical mass without easy IE integration, and without that YouTube will remain Flash due to the h264 licensing debacle.

Interesting discussion about HTML5 video implementation

Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[itsybitsy]

Dump Flash and Silverlight into the dust bin of bit history along with the YouTube master control! Onward!

How about adopting Chromes Native Code Binary API plugins for all the browsers while we're at it? Let's get it so that we can auto download plugins written in languages other than that icky JavaScript gooicky stuff.

Get on with it guys! The web browser is still just so much as a dumb terminal spitting screens to a central server master control program!

Let the independent distributed revolution begin!

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[zoips]

What's wrong with Javascript?

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[itsybitsy]

Ick, you have to ask? For starters it's a round parenthesis language like C, Java, and other icky goo.

Well, it does have prototypes so it's not all totally lost.

Heck, even C is getting blocks now with llvm and clang over at apple - grand central dispatch relies upon lambda blocks like smalltalk has for decades.

If you like javascript that's great, good for you. It's just not for all of us who prefer other languages. That's were the chrome native binary api comes in with the browsers. It let's us download natively compiled components written in OUR FAVORITE language - whatever it happens to be - and we're then not restricted by the goo and ick in the javascript. It also means that our existing code bases can be utilized in the browsers even if it's C, Objective-C, C++, Smalltalk, Perl, LISP, Forth, ERlang, ... ... ... and so on....

It's about FREEDOM of choice for ME the developer rather than icky javascript being FORCED upon me as it has been for the last decade and a half or whatever it's been....

As for youtube they have too much power... decentralize now with the video and audio tags!

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[zoips]

Not a particularly great explanation as to the shortcomings of Javascript other than apparently C-style languages are a no-go with you. Plus it's prototype system is pretty half-assed, so I'm not sure that's even a positive (I'd prefer real prototype setup like in SELF).

I don't recall asking why anyone would want to use another language, though, as that's obvious: language preference. *shrug*

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[nine-times]

Auto-download plugins? Why do I want plugins? Do you mean things like Firefox Addons?

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[itsybitsy]

No, shivers, definitely not! I explicitly mean this: Native Client.

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[Jane Q. Public]

IMO, in a way JavaScript is the worst of both worlds: both verbose AND hard to read.

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[NiteMair]

How about adopting Chromes Native Code Binary API plugins for all the browsers while we're at it? Let's get it so that we can auto download plugins written in languages other than that icky JavaScript gooicky stuff.

Well, as much as the Native Client sounds neat and all, it's going to leave all non-x86 systems out in the cold...

ARM, mipsel, CellBE (which basically includes PPC) are all still valid processor platforms in this day and age, so you can take your x86-only Native Client and leave now.

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[derGoldstein]

Verbose? Maybe. Hard to read? What do you consider easy to read?

Actually, I seems to me that those two properties conflict somewhat. For example, Perl is terse, and for the most part reads like machine code. The most gruesome monster I can think of is C++.Net, which, indeed, is both extraordinarily verbose and looks like a maniac typed it.

But what do you think "reads" well, disregarding everything else? (If I'd had to guess I'd say you're a fan of either Python or some version of Lisp?)

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[TheRealMindChild]

Ick, you have to ask? For starters it's a round parenthesis language like C, Java, and other icky goo.

Use VBScript. Problem Solved.

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[Jane Q. Public]

As I said, it's just my opinion. But here is one example: Ruby is both terse, and easy to read.

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[_merlin]

As for youtube they have too much power... decentralize now with the video and audio tags!

Video and audio tags won't change the fact that YouTube gives people what they want: free video hosting with lots of bandwidth (for creators) and one place to find all kinds of video (for consumers). Tags for embedding video and audio won't change that.

Re:Let's get on with it! HTML 5.0 Now!!!

[piercep]

Whats wrong with Flash?

Need good tools

[poached]

Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX all have major vendor tooling support to help coding, developing, deploying on these platforms easy. I don't know of any tools in existence or in development that can beat the solutions offered by these vendors. Adobe might be willing to do that in the past, but they own Macromedia (flash) so I don't know if they will step up. In short, unless the tools are there, it will not see major adoption.

Re:Need good tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, some programming stud will come by and create a F/OSS toolkit for it.

Re:Need good tools

[StreetStealth]

The only thing that would get any of the above-mentioned companies on board would be for HTML 5 to take off to such a degree that they feel their authoring environments are threatened enough that they need to adapt.

And as arguably their support would be instrumental in HTML5 taking off in the dynamic browser-based media market, it's pretty much a catch-22.

Unless some new player lands on the scene with a well-designed and powerful authoring environment built from the ground up for HTML 5. Then things could get really interesting.

Re:Need good tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think Adobe would integrate HTML 5 media in Dreamweaver. Some solutions will lend themselves to different media approaches, so all paths being equal you're still using an Adobe product.

And chill on the Flash bash. The fact that there's so much bad content just reveals how accessible the tools are.

Re:Need good tools

[WiseWeasel]

[cough]google[/cough]

Re:Need good tools

[Anonymous Coward]

1976 called...

It will be a moving target

[Anonymous Coward]

When the browsers support html 5, people can start making content for it. The whole reason for flash and siverlight are the failures of the old html (which still shines despite having all this stuff bolted-on over the years to keep up)

If HTML 5 means just another bunch of tags with another bunch of CSS descripters and a set of scripts in a different language bolted-on to make it do stuff, along with spotty browser support, I suspect the one-stop shops of UI with scripting that flash and sliverlight provide will have a long future.

 

What about the browsers?

[laughing rabbit]

The RIA guys are quoted as saying they're not worried, because HTML 5 + CSS 3 is 10 years out.

If this is the case, how far behind will the browsers be in supporting the standards?

Re:What about the browsers?

[hardburn]

The 2D Canvas tag already works pretty well in Chrome, and mostly works in Firefox with some notable features missing. The w3c plans on adding a 3D standard at some point, but my guess is that the 2D API isn't going to change much from here.

Re:What about the browsers?

[nine-times]

Both Mozilla and Apple are already working on HTML5 and CSS3 support. I'm not sure about Opera, but I'd guess they're already working on it. Microsoft will probably drag their fee (as always), but you'll see support in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome well before that "10 year" timeframe.

Re:What about the browsers?

[DragonWriter]

Both Mozilla and Apple are already working on HTML5 and CSS3 support. I'm not sure about Opera, but I'd guess they're already working on it.

Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari already, in either the current general beta versions, have support for a variety of parts of HTML5 and CSS3, and even IE supports a little bit.

Re:What about the browsers?

[BZ]

The 10 year timeframe is for going to REC. Which means there are two complete interoperable implementations.

Unlike previous W3C standards, this time they're not going to publish as final it until they have evidence that it can actually be implemented, and by more than one development team. That's been a major issue with CSS2, for example: the long time CSS2.1 has been taking has been largely about fixing things that were underdefined, contradictory, or just wrong (in the sense of not making any sense) in CSS2 and that were discovered when people went to actually implement the spec.

Re:What about the browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure about Opera, but I'd guess they're already working on it.

Yes, it's strange, huh? Anne van Kesteren is quite active in HTML5 but I don't see much happening in Opera itself. Opera is the last serious browser without <video> support. There was an experimental video-enabled build last year, but it's broken with the current spec, and there's no sign of video in Opera 10.

Re:What about the browsers?

[MemoryDragon]

Lets leave the standards aside, RIA development on browsers has a bigger problem when it comes to HTML. And HTML5 does not take care of it.
Lets have a look, usually a RIA application is a self contained application with a load of widgets which in itself are self contained and only via dedicated contracts influencable, the widgets themselves communicate over messages (events)

Now what do we have in the WEB a huge singleton called the DOM tree, normally not bad in itself, but it has no subtree isolation constructs so we cannot really get any isolation, the control language javascript, does not provide that feature either.
The only thing really more or less there is the event system, but even that does not work unified over all browsers!

This is one of the many reasons why it is so hard to develop complex RIA applications even on modern browsers, the runtime makes mistakes which other systems like Smalltalk already had eliminated in the mid 70s! But that is more or less the entire problem of the entire web development!

If I was a real RIA guy I would not be worried either too much, the basic mistakes cannot be fixed anymore and unless someting like XUL (basically a fixed up component model which never became standard) becomes cross platform it just will not be viable to program that stuff for intranet due to cost reasons!

Re:What about the browsers?

[entrigant]

It took microsoft 10 years to kind of fully support HTML4 and CSS2 w/ IE8. Another 10 for CSS3 and HTML5 would fit historical records.

That's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

but it won't work in IE until the point's moot. Remember kids, it's not done until Lotus 1-2-3 won't run!

Re:That's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that we're in charge now.

It's not done until IE can't display it!

Actually, forget about IE. As long as it works ok in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome, it's done. If it also works in IE then it's just a bonus.

HTML5 is awesome

[cthulhuology]

HTML5 is incredibly awesome. I've been building some apps that run only in safari and the things you can do in so very little code make Flash and Silverlight look like anemic. What people don't realize is that HTML5 means tools to author HTML5 in HTML5. I've done a simple Object Oriented Javascript programming interface that currently only runs in Safari4 (only one with sufficient HTML5 support), and it is amazing what you can get done in 500 lines of code. Using the framework at http://www.dloh.org/ I built a graphing app by adding 2 lines of Javascript. A simple movie player is 5 lines of javascript. It takes stupidly little code to make compelling apps using the right tools and HTML5. Furthermore, more and more phones are supporting the WebKit framework. Qualcomm is recruiting a team to port webkit, so we'll soon see it on Brew phones. Iphone runs it. Android phones run it. And even if you run Opera, once again you're getting decent HTML5 support on your phone. This is game changing technology because it runs on the devices that most of the 6 billion people on the planet actually use.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[bogaboga]

Why is the site you link to in your piece show as 100% black in Firefox 3.0.11?

Disclaimer: I am no web developer.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[setagllib]

I think you have a very unusual definition of "app". If an entire app exists and you just need to embed it with 2 lines, you did not write an app, you used an existing one. If I make my own bash script to launch Firefox, did I write a web browser app?

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[amRadioHed]

Because 3.0 probably doesn't support the HTML 5 tags it needs. Try it in 3.5.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

App in 2 lines - yeah it's doable.. I see you have never met perl...

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. A fun little app I built. Not much code at all and no compiling.

http://blueboxsw.com/jktest/index10.cfm

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

its a black page for me too in google chrome.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

I think the question is more along the lines of "How hard did you have to think to write those 2 lines?." 10 minutes of thought followed by 10 seconds of typing does not an application make. If you thought long and hard about the code you were writting (say perhaps several hours or days) and the end result was a few lines, I might be willing to concede there was a possibility you did something novel. Its like those Qt guys jumped on the multiprocess browser bandwagon when Chrome was new. Sorry, XEmbedding a whole bunch of stand-alone browser windows into tabs does not a multi-process browser make.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[setagllib]

Of course an application in two lines is do-able. That's not the point. cthulhuology described using an application library + 2 lines to make an application that would normally be tens of thousands of lines, but the fact is they're all still there in the library. Assuming one line is boilerplate, that leaves one line to invoke the actual application from the library. It's the equivalent of a shell script, and that's why I gave the example of bash + firefox.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Chemicalscum]

You can see the black and white widgets with Firefox 3.5.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

It's black in Fx 3.5 RC too, but that's not surprising because as GGP said it

currently only runs in Safari4 (only one with sufficient HTML5 support)

.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[indi0144]

It's a black page on Opera 9.64 also CPU usage went to OVER 9000. Wheres the preloader? Whats trashing my CPU? WTF was that? // Thats the stuff that's going to kill Flash? At least Flash has a preloader friendly script and is not melting my CPU while showing a black screen.

Yeah, and Flash it's teh bloatz! ~

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Fnkmaster]

Just so you know, you did some Mac-specific stuff too. So the basics load and work in Firefox 3.5, for example, but the keymap stuff doesn't seem to work as it does in Safari 4 for Mac (i.e. the equal sign won't show up in a box). And Safari 4 for Windows doesn't seem to be passing right click events into your app properly, so it's totally non-functional.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[backdoc]

That is cute. I double tapped to create a new box, then did document.getElementsByTagName("p")[0]...... a bunch of things. It was cool.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Randle_Revar]

Maybe it using features only in FF3.5? It works fine in SeaMonkey 2.0a (gecko 1.9.1/ff3.5) and the main development target seems to be safari 4.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Rocketship Underpant]

I think we'll see more cutting-edge web designers starting to do what Apple is already doing on some pages of their own site: using HTML5 and then, for obsolete browsers like IE, loading a Javascript compatibility library that reparses the page into HTML4 elements.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

epic fail on my webkit browser the widgets are all messed up, the menus do work

Little point to a 1 browser framework.....

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[AliasMarlowe]

Why is the site you link to in your piece show as 100% black in Firefox 3.0.11?

And as 100% white in Opera 9.64? The page source is not viewable either.
It looks like enormously incompetent coding, or a pathetic failed attempt at malware distribution.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[WillKemp]

It works fine in FF 3.5 (under Linux) for me.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[colinrichardday]

It;s 100% black in my Operra 9.64. I can also read the source code. The page is basically running three js scripts.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Jellybob]

I'd think the line

currently only runs in Safari4

probably answers that question.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the site you link to in your piece show as 100% black in Firefox 3.0.11?

Disclaimer: I am no web developer.

currently only runs in Safari4 (only one with sufficient HTML5 support)

bogaboga fails reading comprehension

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it "only runs in Safari4 (only one with sufficient HTML5 support)"?

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[coryking]

This is game changing technology because it runs on the devices that most of the 6 billion people on the planet actually use.

yet it doesn't work on any of the browsers in stalled on my computer.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Firefox 3 doesn't (yet) fully support HTML 5.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[djheru]

Now you see the advantage of flash and silverlight. They are plugins, so the people who develop the technology control how it is implemented and displayed. With HTML5, each browser will implement features differently. That's why I first started looking at flash, because I was so sick of the CSS incompatibilities back in the day.

Re:HTML5 is awesome

[T.E.D.]

Why is the site you link to [dloh.org] in your piece show as 100% black in Firefox 3.0.11?

Hah! My Internet Explorer 7 is far superior. It shows the page 100% white.

HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[Radhruin]

I've recently embarked upon a hobby project where I'm only targeting the latest browsers, excluding IE8.

Not until now have I realized how much we web developers are hampered by IE. Canvas and Javascript are a highly capable platform for interactive graphics, and it works across browsers and operating systems without issue. Chromium on Linux for example, incomplete as it is, works with canvas out of the box (not to mention about 10 times faster than FF in executing Javascript).

The ability to create web pages quickly, using convenient CSS2 and 3 rules, the ability to use piles and piles of Javascript without worry, the ability to have everything just work across my target browsers, it's utterly amazing. If we weren't stuck in this damn backwater due to having to support IE, the web would be a far more compelling platform.

I absolutely cannot wait for the day when HTML5 and CSS3 are widely supported and adopted, but will that day ever come? Surely Microsoft realizes, as I have, how much potential is here, and I don't doubt that some of the higher ups would hold IE back so that developers are forced to use their plugins in order to deliver their content.

For those projects that don't care about IE support, HTML5 canvas/video/audio is a fantastic leap forward for the web. For the rest, business as usual for some time to come I'm afraid.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[xlotlu]

For those projects that don't care about IE support, HTML5 canvas/video/audio is a fantastic leap forward for the web. For the rest, business as usual for some time to come I'm afraid.

No, it's not. You have the option to double your coding efforts, and implement your canvas features in VML as well (see for example OpenLayers for nicely abstracted code; it has 3 renderers: canvas, SVG and VML), or use ExCanvas, which does all that for you. It's slower compared to a native implementation, but it works.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[nine-times]

I have a hard time believing that IE will be able to hold out like this over the long-term. One of the big hold-outs on IE are businesses who have legacy web apps. Sooner or later, they'll be willing to upgrade/replace those, and if you can simplify development and save money, and all you have to do is install a free web browser that works on your existing platform, people will do that.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[derGoldstein]

The assumption that the IE team is motivated to compete with other browsers on the grounds of features and compatibility is naive. MS if pushing Silverlight through every vector they can think of. They like things the way they are: proprietary. This is the same company that makes Visual Studio, along with compilers for a dozen languages. Do you *really* think they'd have a problem developing a JavaScript engine to compete with V8? Or implement a few additional CSS rules? How about Canvas?

As long as the numbers of IE usage remain where they are, they are not compelled to push this route of technology. They like things the way they are now.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[obi]

Now all we need is a webkit plugin for IE8 and below. ... only half serious.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely cannot wait for the day when HTML5 and CSS3 are widely supported and adopted, but will that day ever come? Surely Microsoft realizes, as I have, how much potential is here, and I don't doubt that some of the higher ups would hold IE back so that developers are forced to use their plugins in order to deliver their content.

It doesn't matter if they attempt to hold IE back, all it's going to take is one compelling must have killer app in HTML5 and they'll either have to start coding support, or everyone will just simply download another browser. With HTML5 support and Google Wave coming out I'm starting to understand why Google released Chrome. If people hear about Google Wave everywhere and then try to go to the site and see a "incompatible with your browser, download Google Chrome" message, they'll probably just download and install the damn thing. That gives Google control over the platform it's running on then as well. Firefox has been eroding IE's marketshare simply by being a better browser, imagine what the power of a killer app, marketing and a big name like Google will be able to do. I've already seen Google putting IE specific "download google chrome" advertisements on some google homepages, it's only a matter of time before the browser is swept right out from under them if they don't keep up with the other browsers. More than likely, IE will just become more compliant. And I don't really care either way, as long as we as developers can move forward.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[wampus]

They have a strange way of keeping things proprietary, contribuing code to the open source implementation of Silverlight.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[derGoldstein]

I'm actually staring at the screen and trying to think of what to "say". Have you just met Microsoft? They've had .Net code running on BSD since ~2002, and I'm *not* talking about Mono. They've released plenty of code that runs "on the competition", while attacking both from the legal *and* the PR fronts. It's all a messed up game for them, they're stalling for as long as they can. They'll help you along with your science project and then sue you for using their patents in it. If we haven't learned this by now, I suppose we never will.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[derGoldstein]

You can make plugins for specific tasks, like media or paste-in bytecode, but you can't use this same tactic to improve the underpinnings. How do you speed up JavaScript? How do you add support for CSS3 features?

Unless you mean a "plugin" that, in effect, kidnaps the entire browser. If that's the case, sign me up.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

I'm a UI designer with a little programming knowledge so I can see both sides to some extent. Our company has been using Silverlight since the earliest betas and I firmly believe that, for the moment at least, this technology has the most promise for web 2.0 applications. Yes, it's proprietary, yes, it's Microsoft, yes it's not widely used yet, but as a designer, the tools provided, such as Expression Blend, are far above and beyond anything I've used to create flash or HTML content, and I believe this will be the deciding factor.

Look at Flash and Actionscript. While it's come a long way, back in the day programmers would go to great length to develop flash applications _because all their artists used flash_.

For the record I'm not normally a M$ supporter and while I'd choose the alternative to 99% of their applications, I believe in judging each by it's merits, rather than it's maker.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[LDoggg_]

dojo.gfx does this as well.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[Pascal Sartoretti]

For those projects that don't care about IE support, HTML5 canvas/video/audio is a fantastic leap forward for the web. For the rest, business as usual for some time to come I'm afraid.

Who can afford to not care about IE? On the desktop, nobody. On the mobile web (smartphones) however, IE is not relevant. And guess where the future is headed?

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[obi]

Yep I meant the latter ;) Let's just bypass everything IE and render with another engine like webkit (triggered by a content-type or meta tag or something). Would people notice?

If I look at my linux install, webkitgtk used by midori takes about 14M, while the flash 10 plugin takes around 10M.

The alternative is waiting until IE8 support can be dropped, around the time IE10 gets well established. I guess poor web developers have a long wait ahead of them still.

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually staring at the screen and trying to think of what to "say". Have you just met Microsoft? They've had .Net code running on BSD since ~2002, and I'm *not* talking about Mono.

[citation needed]

Re:HTML5, with canvas, is fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of work do you do? I had a terrible experience with Expression Blend, it only supports simple transforms. Hand-tweaking xml is not my idea of an animation package.

Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Virus Hunter]

I'm sorry but I just can't stand developing in Javascript. Javascript is hands down the most arcane language I find myself developing in. At this point being locked into a language like Javascript by the standards community seems much more restrictive than what the proprietary plug-ins are offering. Programming in both Silverlight and Flex has been a liberating experience for me. When using Silverlight or Flex I'm able to focus on creating an application that satisfies my customer's needs; instead of focusing on the black magic tricks that are so often required when using Javascript and HTML. At the end of the day it's so obvious that HTML and Javascript were not intended for serious application development. Not only do Silverlight and Flex offer better programming models they also offer rich support for databinding, and that has simplified so many of my applications. So unless HTML 5 comes packaged with a better programming language and data binding you can count me out.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Trutane]

I'm sorry but I just can't stand developing in Javascript.

Why write in Javascript when you can use a library like jQuery or toolkit like GWT that spare you the messy details of working in straight JS and take care of cross-browser compatibility?

I guess one answer would be, "because they don't support HTML5." Anyone know the status of HTML5 support/compatibility in these JS libraries and tools?

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[acidrainx]

I was ready to jump on you when I read the title of your post, but you're right, mostly. JavaScript is actually a really nice language to develop in (for small projects). With features such as lambdas, closures, and functions as first class objects, you can write some very elegant solutions with very little code.

Even with those features it's still stuck in the dark ages when compared to other modern languages. Prototypal inheritance, while cool, doesn't really offer the power that classical inheritance gives you when you're creating large systems. There's no such thing as super in prototypal inheritance, which gets annoying after a while.

Lately I've been looking into Flex and ActionScript 3. AS3 is basically what EcmaScript 4 was going to be before Microsoft derailed it. It's basically Java with a different syntax, a few extra features (lambdas, closures, namespaces), and no equivalent to abstract. It's really nice.

While I'm all for HTML5 and open standards, I highly doubt that it will ever be able to keep up with proprietary solutions like Flex. There's always going to be that big asshole in the corner who refuses to keep his browser up to date with everyone else. I've written large programs in JavaScript and its just far too stressful trying to keep IE-compliance. Until Microsoft or IE are dead and buried, I'm going to have more fun writing Flex apps that run on all browsers and all platforms without any platform specific code.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[aztracker1]

-1 ignorant... jQuery *IS* javascript... I wouldn't suggest that *anyone* start using jQuery unless you have a good understanding of JavaScript (the language, not the browser DOM). I see too many stupid questions from people thinking they can use jQuery effectively without knowing the JavaScript language.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[acidrainx]

Mod this guy up. I'm really sick of people bashing JavaScript when they really mean to bash the DOM and its inadequacies and cross browser woes.

Please, if you want to sound intelligent when talking about the problems with JavaScript, make sure you're talking about the language, not the APIs available in the browser. That part is called the DOM.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[thestudio_bob]

The reason you have to use "tricks" as you call them, is because some browsers have not implemented the standards properly. The reason you don't have to deal with that in Flex and Silverlight is because they are proprietary environments running within the browser. These plug-ins handle the rendering, not the browser. I understand what you are saying, and I agree that JavaScript could be more robust, but I think the reason it's not there now is because a few companies (or one) have been holding it back for awhile. It's been a good 10 years since we've seen major advances in HTML and Javscript. I'm excited that there's a chance that people are finally starting to take notice again. Hopefully this means that it will start to evolve more and perhaps take care of some of your concerns.

BTW: Have you checked out http://www.sproutcore.com/?

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Lehk228]

so only part of it is utter shit.

unfortunately for anyone trying to use it, the part that is shit is required to do anything useful and so it makes the whole thing shit.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[acidrainx]

I think you missed the point. The API is not the language. The language is the language. To put it in words that you will understand: The API is shit, the language is not.

Yes, the DOM is not great and it's implementation in IE is worse. But jQuery and other libraries do make it much nicer to work with, which is what the original guy was trying to say.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Lehk228]

i perfectly well understand the distinction between the API and the language, however the two are entangled so any judgement must be made on the whole not just the parts.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Ian-K]

You're spot-on.

My ideas were along the line...

• Yes, JS is very limiting when you have to develop any large libraries. The people who wrote/maintain jQuery will disagree, but they also know what I mean.
• Building any relatively complex UI is a complete nightmare. Let alone a fully-fledged UI like you would like to have. If you want your web app to look and behave like a real app... you're in for some frustration, unless you use some 3rd-party libraries... and I've seen none I'm entirely happy with. Either they're free and buggy or you have to pay tons of money to use them. This thing is more art (and prayer) than science.

Prediction: Unless HTML5 includes support for LAYOUTS and WIDGETS, it's not gonna do much.

Over the last 3 years I've developed some rather large data-centric web applications over HTML+jQuery. In the process I had to develop my own MVC framework just to survive (JS frontend libraries based on jQuery and PHP backend equivalents). I'm now happy (and lucky) enough to claim that they work on Firefox, Chrome (layout so-so) and Safari (you can forget IE).

Now I'm at the task of combining these to a much larger application. I want it to load on a single page, having multiple "views" (think viewstack), each having a rather complex interface in them (splitpanes, tabbed panels, lists etc.).

Do the UI in HTML / <your favourite framework>... forget it. In Flex... a few hours. Some colleagues used extJS extensively for another project which again had a complex UI. End result: they got it to work like they want, but only on FF2!

I'm now at the process of learning Flex. There's a learning curve to it but at least it's a lot more promising (and CONSISTENT) than HTML will ever be, in my opinion.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[loufoque]

You do realize Javascript and Actionscript (that Flex uses) are the *same* language?

And if Javascript is the most arcane programming language you've ever used, you really know nothing of programming languages, I'm afraid.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Browser incompatibilities are not the fault of javascript. And no, it's not Java or C and that's a good thing. Get yourself a javascript library and quit complaining.

Re:Yeah, but javascript sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto to everything you said. What many people forget is that Internet facing applications for the general public are the minority of development.

Just like shrink wrapped software vertical market apps internally developed apps, so are Internet facing apps browser based vertical market apps browser based internally developer apps.

If I am selling a vertical market app or building an internal app, I want to use the tools that make the development job the easiest, fastest, most robust, etc. JavaScript ain't it.

RIA?

[selven]

What's RIA? Is it like the RIAA but without the A at the end? What's next then, MPA? BS?

Re:RIA?

[CountOfJesusChristo]

It's too bad that there is no way to look for the answer on the internet

Re:RIA?

[Virus Hunter]

RIA stands for Rich Internet Application. It's a term that was coined by Macromedia in order to describe the rich user experiences that can be provided by flash. The term has gained a lot of popularity, and it generally refers to any technology that allows the user to have a rich application experience from within the browser. Currently the major RIA platforms are Flash, Silverlight, and Java FX, and I've also seen this term applied to Ajax before.

Adobe brought this on themselves

[icebike]

Had Adobe not steadfastly refused to put any end user controls or setting in Flash no one would have bothered to develop alternatives.

But because they wanted to cater to the jumping monkey segment of the web advertising world, they stonewalled every request for end-user controls, such as no looping, no animation, no sound, etc.

Besides the fact that it is bloatware, its just end user un-friendly.

In order to control Flash, you needed to kill Flash and millions of web browsers would like to do exactly that.

Being an open standard HTML5 is open for development of end-user controls, such as animate only while cursor hovers, sound off till I say so, etc.

Bring on HTML5.
This is a market Adobe deserves to lose.

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[derGoldstein]

As an aside: Does anyone remember how they pushed SVG before they bought out Macromedia? They even made a decent player, which you can still get here. Notice the first line on the page: "Please note that Adobe has announced that it will discontinue support for Adobe SVG Viewer on January 1, 2009."... Who needs SVG after you own Flash?

Screw Flash. Screw Acrobat. Screw Silverlight. On the web, the most puritan Free Software advocates are right: If it's proprietary, don't download. Don't install. You've just giving them the power to take away your choices.

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[aztracker1]

I was honestly hopeful, for a very short while, after the Adobe buyout. I was really hoping to see Flash become a gui tool for an open container format. Basically SVG + Mp3/ogg+Vorbis + some video format + Javascript in a zipped package (Similar to Silverlight's xap, or Open Doc, etc). Essentially allowing the format to become open, while Adobe continued with best of breed tools.

So much for that dream. I'd still like to see a contained package format though, Xap is about as close to it as I've seen... if only MS's codecs for Moonlight supported their DRM channel (I could use netflix in linux).

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[derGoldstein]

Well, there's AIR. You can use just web-standards to develop for it. And you have the benefit of WebKit plus their JavaScipt engine, which I think is a version of Tamarin. On the free side, there's Titanium, and Prism. But these are site-specific-browsers. If you meant something that you could package into a gzip/tar and send over the web, I think you're left with the usual feature-sniffing and mass-o-files stuff that we all know and "love"...

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[indi0144]

On the web, the the guy (and his IE6) that pays for your work/design/coding is right.

There I fixed that for you, bonus points for the reality check.

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[benwaggoner]

Being an open standard HTML5 is open for development of end-user controls, such as animate only while cursor hovers, sound off till I say so, etc.

If HTML5 enables equivalently rich media players to Flash and Silverlight, HTML5 will be rich enough for publishers to not enable end user controls they don't want enabled.

Or, to put it another way, if HTML5 makes it trivial for end users to skip the commercials in commercial-funded television, no one will be publishing commercial-funded television in HTML5.

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

And what, exactly, is there to prevent people from authoring "punch the monkey" controls in HTML5?

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[WillKemp]

In order to control Flash, you needed to kill Flash and millions of web browsers would like to do exactly that.

Millions of web browsers do do exactly that - with flashblock.

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[m50d]

Nothing, but your web browser will have all the "no looping", "no animation" and "no sound" options that the GP wants. That's where it differs from flash.

Re:Adobe brought this on themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Existing of adblocking capabilities doesn't seem to kill ads in general.

well...

[evil_marty]

this is the beginning of the no-plugins trend and I for one think its about time. Sure some 98% of people have flash installed, silverlight much much less and java (well I tend to steer away from that as much as possible, besides when was the last time anyone ran an applet these days?) but the problem we are seeing is that single vendors take there time to migrate to other platforms, and usually then they lack features and what nots. Look at flash, it isn't even available for the iphone and it's linux support is very limited (alpha still?) not to mention lacking 64bit in windows, fucking windows! If flash was an open platform then more external resources can be used to address these situations but then this is where html5 goes one step further, instead of making it a plugin for everyone to download why not just make it part of the browser and save the hassle.

Re:well...

[aztracker1]

In all fairness the lack of iPhone support is more of an apple decision on the platform, preventing third party apps from allowing dynamic execution ore than anything Adobe. But no x64 support, especially on windows is just assinine. Then again, where's my 64bit Firefox, Safari or Chrome on Windows?

Re:well...

[Chemicalscum]

"besides when was the last time anyone ran an applet these days?" - I did today. The best chemistry stuff on the web runs on Java applets. Jmol and Marvinsketch anyone ?

Re:well...

[MrMista_B]

You want no plugins, huh?

So you're going to give me built-in AdBlock Plus, Noscript, Flashblock and Element Hiding Helper?

No?

Then I'm sorry, but most people who care about plugins in the first place, just won't bother.

Re:well...

[evil_marty]

I know flash for the iphone is an apple decision but I kind of agree with. I always tend to think of flash as a heavy plugin, a couple versions ago it would make my system crawl with all the animation and effects, obviously flash developers didn't factor in that not everyone had a 3ghz computer dedicated for flash. Even youtube occasionally spikes my system now and then when loading videos, imagine the poor lil iphone. I'm a believer that the "web" should be in a "web browser" and not need 3rd plugins at all, but instead bring out features more frequently and target particular versions. ie. HTML6 might have 3d so in order to utilise that feature you must run a HTML6 supported browser, instead of creating a plugin and backporting it to vintage browsers.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are Firefox extensions, not plugins.

Re:well...

[aztracker1]

VRML was around before html4 browsers iirc.. ;) though no native support was included... I do remember it being excessively slow at the time.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blogs.computerworld.com/64_bit_linux_adobe_flash_player_surprisingly_good

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ostatic.com/blog/64-bit-flash-plugin-released-for-linux-first

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who uses Java applets? I know that Facebook uses one for their image uploads, and last I heard they were pretty big.

Re:well...

[m50d]

So you're going to give me built-in AdBlock Plus, Noscript, Flashblock and Element Hiding Helper?

Yes, and any sensible browser design would do that. Functionality should be in the program itself. /Opera user

Re:well...

[Bert64]

Firefox i imagine you can just recompile... I don't think there are official 64bit builds of firefox for linux either, but i was running firefox and its predecessors on 64bit linux machines many years ago (alpha cpu)...

Re:well...

[Simetrical]

You want no plugins, huh?

So you're going to give me built-in AdBlock Plus, Noscript, Flashblock and Element Hiding Helper?

No?

Then I'm sorry, but most people who care about plugins in the first place, just won't bother.

A "plugin", in web browser jargon, is an application that uses the simple, cross-browser NPAPI. Flash, Java, Silverlight, and Adobe Reader are good examples of plugins.

Plugins are very limited in what they can do: for instance, they can get direct input from the user and do direct output to part of the screen that the browser gives them. If you pay attention, you'll notice that things like Flash often are out of sync a bit with the rest of the page layout, like being drawn on top of everything even if they should be cut off. Plugins can't easily interface with the browser's UI or make other complicated changes. The NPAPI doesn't expose higher-level details like that to them. Plugins are invoked only when a particular media type needs to be handled, and exit when they're no longer needed. They can't be used for anything other than handling particular media types.

Since NPAPI is standard and stable, a given plugin can (AFAIK) run in any browser on the target platform that supports NPAPI (meaning everything except IE, as usual in web development). They also don't care what browser version you use them on. But they pay for this with inflexibility.

AdBlock Plus, Flashblock, and Element Hiding Helper are all examples of extensions, not plugins. You'll notice that in Firefox, there are separate tabs for "Extensions" and "Plugins" in the Add-ons window. Extensions can do much more than plugins. They have access to a large collection of hooks, and can run continuously. They can do things like edit menus, dynamically alter rendered content, and so on. But they pay for this by being browser-specific, and not even always being compatible between versions of the same browser.

Plugins are what the GP was objecting to, and plugins are bad. They're only really needed to handle nonstandard formats like Flash: if the format were openly specified, support could be integrated directly in the browser (as with HTML5's canvas, video, etc.). Plugins are always native compiled code, and so can introduce crashes, memory leaks, and serious security vulnerabilities if not well-written, and the NPAPI makes it hard to cordon them off into their own process to prevent this. Most plugins are closed-source and proprietary, even if you use an open-source browser or operating system.

Extensions are a totally different story. Extensions are most often written in JavaScript, so they introduce no special stability problems and are automatically at least visible-source. Firefox extensions are mostly open-source. The worst you can say for extensions is that they're often slow, and the popular ones should usually be integrated into the browser proper.

So extensions are okay. But if plugins were to die in favor of open standards, the web would be a much better place for it.

Re:well...

[Simetrical]

Who uses Java applets? I know that Facebook uses one for their image uploads, and last I heard they were pretty big.

Wikipedia uses Java instead of Flash for playing audio and video (if your browser doesn't support <audio>/<video>), mainly because Java is open-source and Flash is not.

The problem with HTML is the implementations

[DrXym]

No browser implements HTML properly. In some instances there is no such thing as "proper" since the spec is ambiguous, contradictory or forgiving, or the content abuses lax enforcement of doctypes leading browsers needing to implement all kinds of the quirks. Even if HTML 5 were rigourously defined and backed up by proper compliance testing, you only have to look at HTML 4 or indeed proper PNG support to realise how long it will take for browsers to properly support it. Even if HTML 5 were properly supported by say, Google Chrome, is it at all likely for the majority of web users to switch to that browser? Of course they won't. They'll stick with whatever they have until they are compelled to upgrade.

So it's no surprise sites turn to Flex, Silverlight or JavaFX. While they are proprietary technologies they do generally work as claimed and even in a cross-browser and cross-platform manner. It's also easy for sites to persuade people to download & install the plugins without the trauma of upgrading or replacing their browser since the browser will help them do it.

Therefore I don't see HTML 5 supplanting RIA plugins for a very long time if ever. It would require decent support by all leading browsers. In some instances such as Internet Explorer, there is even a very major conflict of interest which makes it unlikely to happen. Aside from these hurdles, another major issue are AJAX toolkits and development environments. Frankly developing AJAX stinks for all sorts of reasons, and I don't see that situation changing much either.

Re:The problem with HTML is the implementations

[BZ]

> Even if HTML 5 were rigourously defined and backed up by proper compliance testing

For what it's worth, that's one of the most important goals of HTML5.

> how long it will take for browsers to properly support it

That 10 year number in the article is actually more or less the current estimate from people like the spec editor for HTML5.

Re:The problem with HTML is the implementations

[MemoryDragon]

> Even if HTML 5 were rigourously defined and backed up by proper compliance testing

For what it's worth, that's one of the most important goals of HTML5.

> how long it will take for browsers to properly support it

That 10 year number in the article is actually more or less the current estimate from people like the spec editor for HTML5.

The funny thing is the uptake on mobile platforms will happen way faster, developers are not hampered by "but it also has to run on (fill in any IE version after 5.5)" requests. On PC level things will move more slowly which means probabla 5-10 years unless there is a revolution on the web developers side (which never will happen)

Re:The problem with HTML is the implementations

[Anonymous Coward]

"Compliance testing"... Drop all filtering on user agent, and i bet we get there quicker.

Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[Gopal.V]

The fundamental issue with the new RIA standards is the lack the of authoring tools. I have got a number of graphically-inclined friends who are never going to write something with HTML5 mainly because there are no tools out there (yet) which come even close what the Adobe authoring tools can do.

Recently, I sat with one of my friends (who's a decent artist) and played around with Processing 1.0. After several minutes of hard work, it just became abundantly clear that visual thinkers have a lot of trouble expressing what they want algorithmically. The experience was repeated the next time, when he was playing around with chucK (yeah, he's a music dude too).

The graphic artist folks will have a lot of trouble using the HTML 5 authoring tools currently available, especially if they're confined to use HTML Canvas programmatically. I've easily gotten upto speed with canvas, but I'm a programmer with no artistic pretensions.

Real adoption of HTML5 - canvas and video & all, will need easy ways to author media ... not write code.

Re:Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[derGoldstein]

Sometimes it really sucks you can't contribute to a discussion and mod it. I reached your post only after posting my rants. You hit the nail on the head: People are confusing Graphic Designers with Developers. Even if canvas gave you 5 times the capabilities of Flash, it won't do the trick until there's an authoring environment -- an end-user application that's designed to be used by graphic designers. There are only so many polymaths around who can code and do visual design. Programmers write tools for, primarily, programmers. Thus the abundance of IDEs and coding tool stacks. It takes an effort, and a team of people with varied skillsets to create a software program that's meant to do, for example, animation.

I can only hope that the guys that are doing Inkscape will consider something along these lines.

Re:Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[icepick72]

What if the HTML 5 RIA authoring tools are Silverlight, JavaFX or Flash with a suitable export format? Likely they would support more proprietary and richer content in their own formats. How about Microsoft implementing HTML 5 RIA compatibility mode in Silverlight and bundling that with the browser with hopes the developer will go for the richer proprietary Silverlight experience. Something has to render the RIA content. Just some thoughts.

Re:Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Not sure if you know this, but with the latest release of Flash and ActionScript3, you have to be a coder to get ANYTHING done.

If you want pure linear animation, Flash still works great in the hands of designers, but the second you add a replay button, you now need to start coding.

Adobe shot themselves in the foot by pushing flash out of the hands of designers, taking away a huge advantage they had against HTML5.

http://blueboxsw.com/jktest/index10.cfm

Re:Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[MemoryDragon]

No worries authoring tools will come, it is as usual first the web developers will use it later on Adobe or another company integrates it in their toolchain then the graphics artits will start to use it as well.
It always has been like that!

Re:Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[radarsat1]

Of course its true that many, perhaps most, artists have difficulty expressing themselves in a formal language, and figuring out how to design algorithms. I would guess this has a lot to do with not having done much programming in the first place, but perhaps that's also a direct result of not being good at it.

In any case, you have to also admit that there does exist quite a large community of artists who _do_ enjoy expressing themselves with languages like Processing and ChucK. They are perhaps a rare breed, but I would say that artists who know how to cross this gap are an interesting niche.

Also, it's not so uncommon.. a composer I know told me that before Max/MSP came along, he used to use Lisp! And he is definitely not a programmer, so I was quite surprised.

Mind you, web designers can often be part of this group since they have to deal with things like HTML and CSS all the time, so they're more likely to lean towards wanting to figure out Javascript, and then perhaps learn more.

Re:Developers, developers ... and authoring tools

[radarsat1]

Of course its true that many, perhaps most, artists have difficulty expressing themselves in a formal language, and figuring out how to design algorithms. I would guess this has a lot to do with not having done much programming in the first place, but perhaps that's also a direct result of not being good at it.

In any case, you have to also admit that there does exist quite a large community of artists who _do_ enjoy expressing themselves with languages like Processing and ChucK. They are perhaps a rare breed, but I would say that artists who know how to cross this gap are an interesting niche.

Also, it's not so uncommon.. a composer I know told me that before Max/MSP came along, he used to use Lisp! And he is definitely not a programmer, so I was quite surprised.

Mind you, web designers can often be part of this group since they have to deal with things like HTML and CSS all the time, so they're more likely to lean towards wanting to figure out Javascript, and then perhaps learn more.

Double Standards?

[bogaboga]

What I hear is that "we need an open standard on video that is not controlled by one [proprietary] company."

But when it comes to Linux and where system files are "kept" (read installed), versions and naming conventions for files and all the rest, folks advocate for what is essentially chaos on the Linux platform.

How do they do it? By making lots of noise about choice. Where choice has put us to date is: Being behind on the desktop. We should have a target system configuration and still leave those who want the status quo to pursue their dreams. Folks, we can do better.

Question is: Why the double standard?

Re:Double Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy. You've mixed up the words "one" and "proprietary". Open source programmers don't care so much that there are only one of everything, and in fact flexibility is good (free market or bazaar there). However proprietary software is as useless to programmers as cars with the hood wielded shut would be to mechanics.

You also don't seem to realize just how irritating to have government representatives tell you that you cannot use code you wrote from scratch yourself without paying some other random people money for their 'ideas'. Especially when you think the solution those other people came up with is a clunky mess and the only reason you did it was for compatibility.

Re:Double Standards?

[AceofSpades19]

What I hear is that "we need an open standard on video that is not controlled by one [proprietary] company."

But when it comes to Linux and where system files are "kept" (read installed), versions and naming conventions for files and all the rest, folks advocate for what is essentially chaos on the Linux platform.

How do they do it? By making lots of noise about choice. Where choice has put us to date is: Being behind on the desktop. We should have a target system configuration and still leave those who want the status quo to pursue their dreams. Folks, we can do better.

Question is: Why the double standard?

I don't believe the goal of linux is to be #1 on the desktop.

Re:Double Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was some sort of effort to standardize the Linux filesystem: LSB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base .

I don't know how it fared, hopefully someone more informed will come along and shed some light.

I thought FreeBSD's layout was pretty much as good as it was going to get for a POSIX filesystem. But alas they have other problems keeping me from using it (unjournaled fs and the fact that you must build security updates from source using ports being the primary ones).

They are slowly supporting ZFS but I doubt that'll be ready for quite a while, if ever, in a form I don't need to babysit; and I think they are pretty much adamantly refusing to remedy the latter problem.

Earth to BSD devs, I don't want to recompile Samba/CUPS/whatever every time it needs an update which pegs my CPU usage at 100% for quite some time. Please offer updates in binary form.

(Also please don't stall the boot process waiting for a DHCP lease acquisition)

Re:Double Standards?

[Ant P.]

Why the double standard, indeed.

On the one hand we have a free desktop environment with 3D effects that run well on an Intel GPU. On the other hand, Vista is somehow "ahead". By what measure? It isn't performance, price or familiarity.

RIAs have common runtimes, browsers do not

[javacowboy]

The big problem with HTML5/JavaScript/CSS is that each browser has quirky behaviours that need to be tested. Even if Internet Explorer no longer existed, developers would have to test against Firefox, Safari, Chrome and maybe Opera. An example of a quirk is Safari not recognizing table element widths in percentages. A Flash developer tests against one Flash runtime, same with a Silverlight developer and a JavaFX developer.

Adobe released a beta of a multiple browser runtime testing tool, but it's apparently very flawed.

So until the above problems are solved, many RIA developers will simply use Flex, Silverlight or JavaFX, instead of coding for a hodge-podge of different browsers.

Re:RIAs have common runtimes, browsers do not

[MemoryDragon]

Actually having developing RIA apps on open standards now for almost two years I must say the testing effort is not that bad, as soon as you can take IE and older browser versions out of the game.
Especially last year the run fpr 100% ACID3 compliants helped a lot.

The fixing effort across the latest browser engines (including opera 10) is less than 1% of the actual coding time which means all modern HTML5 capable browser engines (safari4, chrome, opera10, mozilla 3.5) if it is at all, normally it just runs!
Compare that to the problem of adding another 30% of coding time for the IE and you can see where things are heading. I am glad mobile devices for now are moving away from Microsoft software, and my hope is that Microsoft wont realize that the battle for the next generation of webapps will be on mobile devices for a long time, long enough so that they cannot stop the development towards html5 upfront with their Web malware!

Quite an imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

you can imagine [...] if Internet Explorer puts [HTML5] already in there, why do we have Silverlight?

Sadly I think this question will remain rhetorical for the foreseeable future.

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[itsybitsy]

Here are some articles on the topic of what is wrong with javascript.

Certainly the speed issue is or has been resolved with impressive recent results. Hopefully that trend will continue.

I don't agree with the strong typing but then that's just me.

Here they are, all with the title "What is wrong with Javascript" funny enough!

http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2006/02/27/WhatIsWrongWithJavaScript.aspx
http://service.compuskills.co.uk/blog/2007/01/17/what-is-wrong-with-javascript/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/getting-smart-about-languages-and-libraries-836

The bottom line for me is that I want MY TOOLS and LANGUAGE(s) that I use for projects rather than having so called "standards" forced on me.

If you like JavaScript all the more power to you.

If you like freedom to choose your own destiny then all the more power to both of us!

Native Clients for POWER USERS in the BROWSER!
http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/NativeClientUsingNativeCode.html

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[itsybitsy]

I'd also prefer SELF in the browser and with Native Client you'll be able to add SELF to your web pages!!!

Yes, javascript sucks for me. Notice I didn't mention the language that I prefer as I didn't really want to get into a language war. I don't care if someone else prefers another language as I pretty much get their reasons as I've been around a while. If someone wants to use some language, SomeLanguage(tm), then please let them!

Native Client now!

Hope WIN7 catches on

[schwit1]

With older browsers all that was needed was a plugin. If the user/corporation is required to update the browser, good luck.

How many organizations are still use IE6? Too many.

Re:Hope WIN7 catches on

[Bert64]

Plenty of organizations stuck with netscape 4.x for years too, they will be forced to update if the sites they need to use don't support their crufty old browsers any more.

Native Client Now Please!!!

[itsybitsy]

In addition to the wonderful video, audio and other enhancements of HTML 5 let's also get Native Clients for powerful apps now please!

Native Client: Using Native Code to Build Compute Intensive Web Applications
Client Track - Brad Chen, David Sehr, Nicholas Fullagar Some applications require high-performance client-side computation. Native Client is a technology for running native code in web applications, with the goal of maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web apps. This talk will give a brief overview of the architecture of Native Client. We'll then look at some specific example applications as well as strategies for how to use native code to handle compute intensive tasks within web applications using SRPC, Shared Memory and NPAPI. Native Client.

Native Client will enable me (or you) to have web pages running MY (or your) OWN choice of programming language including a mix of languages as I (you) see fit. True freedom of choice, power and higher speed. Desktop powered apps can finally come to the desktop no matter what language they are written in!

We independent developers decide that ...

[unity100]

if you make it good, and we like it, you'd be surprised how fast proprietary technology gets replaced. look at PHP. many of you who work corporate may not be aware, but PHP dominates the majority of sites that belong to individuals and small businesses now. check elance, rentacoder, etc - you'll find that the demand for php projects at least quadruples anything closest.

how did it happen ?

people liked it. it was adequate (then), it was free, it allows you to do anything (now). period. it took off.

before any of you language nazis come up and start trolling about how you dont like php syntax, how there are more 'elite' languages out there, and how php is 'not a language' etc, i should say - i dont give a flying fuck. neither do millions of people who utilize it and who develop on it. so keep it.

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[shutdown -p now]

It could be done with PHP because replacing server software doesn't affects clients; in particular, it does not require them to install new plugins and/or change their browser.

Client-side, it's a very different kettle of fish. Silverlight can fight Flash by being bundled with the OS (or installed wia WU); JavaFX can fight it by being bundled with JRE (or installed when JRE is auto-updated). I don't see any similar opportunity for HTML5.

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[MemoryDragon]

It could be done with PHP because replacing server software doesn't affects clients; in particular, it does not require them to install new plugins and/or change their browser.

Client-side, it's a very different kettle of fish. Silverlight can fight Flash by being bundled with the OS (or installed wia WU); JavaFX can fight it by being bundled with JRE (or installed when JRE is auto-updated). I don't see any similar opportunity for HTML5.

HTML5 comes free with the browser of your choice, the only one out of the game for now is Microsoft, which means as soon as you have gotten rid of the pestilence IE in reality is you are free to use it.
I think the fastest uptake will happen on the mobile platform, as soon as people see what is possible on mobile phones the demand for the same stuff on the desktop will happen, but then IE either has to catch up or to die!

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[shutdown -p now]

HTML5 comes free with the browser of your choice, the only one out of the game for now is Microsoft, which means as soon as you have gotten rid of the pestilence IE in reality is you are free to use it.

Your "as soon as" clause effectively translates to "not in the next 5 years for sure", and that's a very optimistic assessment.

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[rdnetto]

JavaFX can fight it by being bundled with JRE (or installed when JRE is auto-updated).

Except that the end user still has to install Java. If they're going to do that, then it's not so much of a leap for them to install an alternate browser or some sort of addin for IE that enables decent HTML5 rendering (maybe by swapping out the rendering engine?) I'd only expect that to happen if IE really sucks at HTML5, and the technology just hasn't gained the momentum for us to be judging Microsoft on it yet. Apart from Youtube's experiments, I don't know of anyone that's considering HTML5.

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[MemoryDragon]

HTML5 comes free with the browser of your choice, the only one out of the game for now is Microsoft, which means as soon as you have gotten rid of the pestilence IE in reality is you are free to use it.

Your "as soon as" clause effectively translates to "not in the next 5 years for sure", and that's a very optimistic assessment.

This depends on the surrounding, smaller companies very likely already now. Corporate environments, if we are lucky we have gotten rid of IE6 in less than 20 years, Mobile phones, pretty much now, Extranet sites, IE has to be supported but likely IE6 can be dropped within a years timeframe depending on the region you target (USA probably within 2 years, Europe definitely within a year!)

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[MemoryDragon]

JavaFX can fight it by being bundled with JRE (or installed when JRE is auto-updated).

Except that the end user still has to install Java. If they're going to do that, then it's not so much of a leap for them to install an alternate browser or some sort of addin for IE that enables decent HTML5 rendering (maybe by swapping out the rendering engine?) I'd only expect that to happen if IE really sucks at HTML5, and the technology just hasn't gained the momentum for us to be judging Microsoft on it yet. Apart from Youtube's experiments, I don't know of anyone that's considering HTML5.

Iphone and android based phones...

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[shutdown -p now]

Except that the end user still has to install Java.

Thing is, quite a lot of people already have JRE installed. That's why I mentioned the auto-updater. It's obviously nowhere near the penetration of Flash, or what Microsoft can achieve with WU, but it's better than nothing.

it's not so much of a leap for them to install an alternate browser or some sort of addin for IE that enables decent HTML5 rendering (maybe by swapping out the rendering engine?)

Swapping the rendering engine would effectively amount to quietly installing a different browser. Apart from potential problems with IE-only sites this may cause (and which the user is going to blame on your plugin), it's probably not a very good thing to do in general. It may well result in the plugin being qualified as malware.

Well, I guess one possibility is to make a Flash or Silverlight plugin that is itself a browser. But that would mean 1) porting WebKit to C# or other .NET language, and 2) it would have pretty large size anyway.

A more interesting approach would be to try to dynamically rewrite HTML5 into HTML4 + IE-specific stuff + Silverlight with equivalent functionality. I'm not sure how feasible that approach is to implementing all HTML5 features, but I can see how it could be used to add support for "video" and "canvas" elements, at least.

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[shutdown -p now]

This depends on the surrounding, smaller companies very likely already now. Corporate environments, if we are lucky we have gotten rid of IE6 in less than 20 years, Mobile phones, pretty much now, Extranet sites, IE has to be supported but likely IE6 can be dropped within a years timeframe depending on the region you target (USA probably within 2 years, Europe definitely within a year!)

Um, we weren't talking specifically about IE6 originally, we were talking about IE in general. IE8 still doesn't implement the more interesting bits of HTML5, such as Video and Canvas, so you'll have to deal with that.

Re:We independent developers decide that ...

[DragonWriter]

Client-side, it's a very different kettle of fish. Silverlight can fight Flash by being bundled with the OS (or installed wia WU); JavaFX can fight it by being bundled with JRE (or installed when JRE is auto-updated). I don't see any similar opportunity for HTML5.

HTML5 support is, increasingly, bundled with the OS on lots of mobile platforms (both Android's browser and Mobile Safari on the iPhone.)

The desktop isn't the only route people get to the Web these days.

Microsoft?

[asdfndsagse]

Microsoft might be part of the w3 organization, but none of their browsers support any of the HTML5 specs, i dont call that being involved, instead they have specifically decided not to support these standards, and try to slow down, and break apart the web.

Re:Microsoft?

[shutdown -p now]

... but none of their browsers support any of the HTML5 specs

IE8 supports bits and pieces of HTML5. It's a very far cry from full support, but your claim that "none of their browsers support any of the specs" is plain wrong.

Re:Microsoft?

[MemoryDragon]

Microsoft might be part of the w3 organization, but none of their browsers support any of the HTML5 specs, i dont call that being involved, instead they have specifically decided not to support these standards, and try to slow down, and break apart the web.

Happened many times, they were members of the Corba consortium and derived DCOM from the technologies there, early they were members of the OpenGL consortium it ended with DirectX 3 being a plain COM based copy of OpenGL, their membership in the W3C consortium has been going on for longer than a decade.

But to Microsofts defense they behave more nicely. The last stunt they pulled was to rip off SVG and label it under their own name (XAML) incompatible of course, while not supporting the official SVG standard, but that has been several years ago!

Re:Slashdot users are fucking bastards

[theskipper]

I think I understand your intent conceptually, but would like more clarification. Are you referring to "penises" or "penis' ", as in collectively owned?

In other words, are we talking about a collection of individual penises all grouped together, then referring to them? Or as a metaphorical single penis that is owned by the slashdot bastards as a single unit?

My concern is that it would certainly be easier on the bees if it was a collection of physical penises, rather than an imaginary metaphorical one. The latter would just be cruel to the bees.

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

From your posts I'm guessing your "other language" is Visual Basic.

What Flash has that the other lacks

[tepples]

And draw with <canvas>.

Flash Player comes with the equivalent of a library for tweening Bezier curves over time. And the Flash editor (3 figures USD) comes with an editor for objects made of Bezier curves. The HTML 5 draft's canvas element currently has neither, to the best of my knowledge.

Re:What Flash has that the other lacks

[iluvcapra]

It sounds like you're comparing a tool to create Flash animations with a standard that defines vector graphics, which is a bit apples-oranges. A canvas tag allows animations, because it's a DOM object and can be modified, but the low-level semantic is the Painter's Model; you stroke to it and demand it to redraw thru Javascript. There's no reason you couldn't build a tool that allowed you to tween bezier curves... the tool doesn't exist, but the primitives in HTML5 are perfectly complimentary to animated paths.

Web standards have a horrible past...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're currently in the process of taking our large open source web-based application and re-writing the entire front-end in Flex.

We just got tired of the cross-browser headaches, especially with javascript/layout. As more and more browsers get released into the wild we found ourselves spending a large percentage of time just testing and working around issues with each browser rather then making real progress with the application itself.

Moving to Flex essentially eliminates any cross-browser issues for us, not to mention all the additional goodies it offers.

Browsers haven't implemented the standards that have been out for the last 10 years properly, I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to get it right anytime in the future.

I have an ARM, you insensitive clod

[tepples]

I'd also prefer SELF in the browser and with Native Client you'll be able to add SELF to your web pages!!!

From the front page of the Native Client site, with my emphasis:

Native Client is an open-source research technology for running x86 native code in web applications, with the goal of maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web apps.

That doesn't bode well for compatibility with ARM subnotebooks, ARM PDAs and PDA phones, PowerPC set-top boxes, etc.

And even on devices with a GenuineIntel or AuthenticAMD CPU, it's far from ready. From the release notes:

Support for the following browsers is not available at this time:

• Internet Explorer

[...]
Native Client does not work on 64-bit versions of Windows.

Why is it?

[JobyOne]

Why is it that every time a new technology is created we have to phrase it as "taking aim" or "taking on" or being a "[blank] killer?" Why can't we all just get along?

But seriously, why can't we look at this in terms of the development doors that will be opened, and not mind the fact that RIA content will someday probably fall by the wayside? Progress happens, and those companies/individuals/organizations that fail to adapt fall behind and eventually wither. I think we can all agree that HTML5 has the potential to be awesome, let's approach it in terms of how to make it as awesome as it can be, instead of wringing our hands over the fates of the poor, defenseless multinational corporations.

Re:Why is it?

[DragonWriter]

Why is it that every time a new technology is created we have to phrase it as "taking aim" or "taking on" or being a "[blank] killer?" Why can't we all just get along?

Avoiding the generalities, in the specific case of HTML5, its because some of the biggest players pushing (Apple and Google, certainly, as well as others) are specifically pushing it to replace proprietary content delivery mechanisms that are suboptimal for their particular business models.

Non-x86

[tepples]

The bottom line for me is that I want MY TOOLS and LANGUAGE(s) that I use for projects rather than having so called "standards" forced on me.

And yet you appear to be trying to force i686 as a so-called "standard" on me. I don't see how devices with CPUs other than x86 architecture are going to run Native Client programs efficiently.

If all you have is a stud

[ClosedSource]

everything looks like ... you know the rest.

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[derGoldstein]

Ok, you've been around for a while. I'm going to infer, from that statement, that you have experience in numerous languages? And, from previous statements, that you don't like parenthesis "goo", so that means C, C++, Objective C, Java, Lisp (man, you must hate lisp...) or any derivatives of the above? What does that leave us with? I guess Python is parenthesis-less, and Perl has less parenthesis. I guess you can do Ruby with relatively few, but you'll still need them.

Seriously, which specific language were you thinking of for programming XML/SGML and the DOM?

Freedom of choice of instruction set?

[tepples]

True freedom of choice

I choose an ARM chip for my battery-powered device. How well does Native Client work with it?

Re:Freedom of choice of instruction set?

[itsybitsy]

If you watch the linked video you'll see that they are planning on supporting X86-32, X86-64, and ARM in their next release.

As a developer deploying to clients via the web browser using a Native Client application I'd need to have versions that work on these cpus assuming I want you to be able to use the app from your handheld gizmo. If that's part of your deployment scenarios you'd need to support that. For many other languages this won't be a big issue as they can be compiled for all these (and more) processor targets or have Virtual Machines that are already built for those targets.

Native Client won't be for everyone nor for all deployment scenarios. But if you want the FULL Power of Desktop Applications it is very hard to beat!

Re:Freedom of choice of instruction set?

[tepples]

As a developer deploying to clients via the web browser using a Native Client application I'd need to have versions that work on these cpus assuming I want you to be able to use the app from your handheld gizmo.

So now, every developer has to buy x86-32, x86-64, ARM, and PowerPC devices in order to test his scripts instead of just downloading different browsers and running them on one PC. I thought we got away from having to buy multiple machines when Safari got ported to Windows.

Re:Freedom of choice of instruction set?

[itsybitsy]

Ah, nope! If you're "scripting" it's likely your script language virtual machine would already have versions for X86 and ARM. All you'd have to do in most cases is configure the download area of your web servers and web pages with the Native Client copies of those virtual machines. Easy as pie for most developers.

If you are using C or other lower level languages or custom languages then sure you might need to have a wider deployment testing requirement.

I already have iPhone (ARM) and X86-32 and X86-64 boxes... they are almost a dime a dozen... so it's not a big deal for most developers. No more so than testing in all the browsers... where you're currently almost guaranteed that there are significant differences that will break your code... with the Native Client approach being BSD one version can rule all the browsers (yeah right). Ok, it might take some work too but hey, they have to try.

It's coming. Whether or not you use it is up to you.

Re:Freedom of choice of instruction set?

[tepples]

I already have iPhone (ARM)

What makes you think Apple is going to digitally sign a Native Client plug-in? From Apple's iPhone SDK developer agreement:

3.3.2 -- An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

Besides, a lot of students learning web development during high school or college have a dirt-cheap prepaid phone and can't spare $220 plus tax for an iPod Touch.

and X86-32 and X86-64 boxes... they are almost a dime a dozen

To somebody who's already employed. People before their first real job or between jobs need to stretch their computing dollar further, and that might mean using an older PC without x86-64 support.

Re:Freedom of choice of instruction set?

[itsybitsy]

Ok, you win... there are deployment scenarios that might not be appropriate for the use of Native Clients. I think I said that in an earlier posting. But you know it's true of existing web deployment scenarios anyhow... most web sites suck on the iPhone... just try to visit UFC.com or NFL.com for example. Yikes. Also many differences between browsers break the best web designers designs. The best laid plans of mice and men and students too.

As am aside, Apple is on the losing side of history with their iPhone license terms. When I buy a phone I expect better!

HTML5 gives me The Fear

[maiken2051]

Right now you pretty much have to be Flash-literate to make singing/dancing ads that can annoy effectively across the browser genpop, and not many people are. FlashBlock puts today's little pests peacefully to sleep. What will I do when the enemy is indistinguishable from the page code, and anybody can hatch one with two lines of JavaScript?

I don't like the Javascript centrism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. I recently started trying out the language and I've never came across a language I had so much trouble with (assembly and C aside) picking up. And I really like strong typing. Here's hoping we'll have other options than Javascript.

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[derGoldstein]

I could easily whip up a dozen articles on how many-a-programmer has fallen in love with JavaScript. In fact, I could give you articles of that nature for any language. Ditto for articles about how language X sucks. Whatever language/tools you like, I'll find you people who hate them.

I agree that it would be *nice* to be able to program using any language you wanted, but it's not the case at the moment (nor for the foreseeable future). I switched from C++ (primarily) to JavaScript/Python, originally not because I *wanted* to, but because I *had* to. I now see the good parts in both, but I can't force my opinions upon you. The point is: If you can't adapt, you're going to have a big problem finding work soon, at least if you want to program *inside* the browser.

(I'd mention that you can use Java/GWT, but from an earlier comment, I take it that won't solve the problem)

Flash-to-SVG,DHTML,etc.

[CarpetShark]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

Agreed. What's really needed is a version of Flash (or some third-party tool) that outputs javascripted SVG + HTML5 video.

And now a word from our sponsor

[westlake]

If graphics artist types can't make the kind of pointless crap that they do now with Flash, we won't see uptake of HTML 5.

But isn't this simply another way of saying that it's the guy paying the bills who gets to make the big decisions?

Flash is everywhere and the tools are mature.

Silverlight in Beta has about a forty per-cent share. To the user, having to download these plug-ins doesn't even register as a speed bump.

Whether it makes sense to shoehorn everything into a "standard" browser design strikes me as a question worth asking.

The geek may call them "walled gardens." I tend to think of them as islands.

Distinct communities.

Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, The Sims and so on.

I have a strong suspicion that as these communities evolve they are going to want - and they are going to choose - the tools that work best for them -

whether the geek likes it or not.

 

Openlaszlo

[yossie]

There is an Open Source product named Openlaszlo. It is a RIA development platform that can output both Flash 10 and DHTML 4 applications from the same source that are to all intents and purposes identical in function and look. Check them out at http://www.openlaszlo.org/

Isn't search a factor?

[caywen]

One factor I'd think would contribute greatly to the success of one over the others is how well a search provider like Google can reasonably analyze and index the content.

Re:Isn't search a factor?

[mctk]

You get a C+. Your comment is insightful and original, at that. You have a clear title indicating the content to be found within and you have neither spelling mistakes nor grammatical errors. What's more, by refusing to make a categorical statement, you are promoting discussion. It is clear that your comment is an opportunity for others, perhaps more experience in the field, to chime in. So why the C+?

You should know better than to start a new thread this far down. Find some random troll up at the top of the page and respond to it. I DON'T CARE IF IT'S GOATSE! Within minutes, others will be vigorously arguing the importance of search up above. They will be the ones scoring karma and street cred. You, my friend, have missed out on your big chance. The cars, the girls, the glamor. I'm afraid history will remember you thusly: an also ran. The internet is a vicious place, Mr. caywen. C+.

Re:Isn't search a factor?

[caywen]

lol, thank i stand properly educated. arigatou sensei mctk!

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[Bigjeff5]

Er, regarding your three examples of why you hate javascript:

The first was someone who hasn't properly learned Javascript - the "name" convention for the input box is very beginner stuff. I don't program javascript, I don't program much of anything really, and I know about that one. They have reference books for that sort of thing, and the guy just needs more experience with it. That he avoids it instead of tackling the problems isn't helping his situation with javascript. It would be almost like complaining that you have to separate items in an array with commas in C. If you can't remember that, it's not the language that has a problem.

The second basically said javascript would be great (with a caveat or two) if it weren't associated with useless web crap and turned off all the time.

The third was talking about ALL programming languages, javascript and python were just used as examples.

Quit whining, seriously. It's like complaining that python isn't as fast as C, or that C is harder to write than python. They have their purposes, if you want to do client side browser scripting you should learn javascript.

Besides, as the poster above me noted, you've got quite a bit of selfish double-speak going on.

WebKit vs. IE

[Anonymous Coward]

For the past two years, I've been telling everyone the new browser war is between IE and WebKit. WebKit has become the default platform for the mobile browser market (iPhone using Safari and Android and Palm using their version). One of the big reasons Apple started WebKit was to keep the browsing platform out of the hands of a single vendor. It's not that Apple doesn't like proprietary technology. It's that they don't like proprietary technology that they depend upon and don't control.

The battle for HTML 5 vs. Silverlight vs. Flash will be on the mobile platform. It's easy for Silverlight and Adobe to create a desktop application that work with 90% of the desktops (and a bit more work to get another 9%). However, the world is changing. Adobe and Microsoft can't create Silverlight and Flash clients for every single possible mobile platform. The trick is to get enough HTML 5 clients out there that it'll be worth it for developers to learn HTML 5. If enough developers pick up HTML 5, companies will make IDEs for HTML 5.

If that happens, Flash and Silverlight will go away. The other possibility is that Apple will buy Adobe and open source Flash. Apple loves open source standards because it means that they'll be able to sell all the neat gadgets that work with these standards.

Re:WebKit vs. IE

[Kensai7]

WebKit is also used by Symbian which has more clients than iPhone, Android, and Pre put together. Funny though, nobody in the States ever remembers that...

Re:WebKit vs. IE

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no one has picked you up on this, WebKit is just a fork of KHTML. Apple certainly didn't 'start' it.

"the tool doesn't exist"

[tepples]

the tool doesn't exist

Which is exactly my point. Flash is here, and Flash is now. I don't see the free software community coming up with robust HTML 5 authoring tools that replace Flash any time soon.

Re:"the tool doesn't exist"

[Bigjeff5]

Ahh, I get you.

Because we have something now that works, something in the future that may work better is not worth considering.

How short-sighted.

I guess innovation is dead, cause, you know, we have things. N'stuff.

Sun uses Flash

[jasonmanley]

I wonder what it says about JavaFX that Jonathan Schwartz's blog uses Flash for its video?

Re:Sun uses Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

It says that Schwartz believes that his message is more important than the medium it's delivered on.

Re:Sun uses Flash

[jasonmanley]

That's quite interesting considering that his company is in the business of making and promoting the 'medium' - independent of the 'message'.

They might eat their lunches, but ...

[ezzthetic]

Do they drink their milkshake?

Re:They might eat their lunches, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I drink their milkshake.

You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Dan Schulz]

In this day and age, you don't need to know good html in order to make a webpage. We have WYSIWYG editors. So I don't see why we couldn't have an editor for the canvas tag, that would provide artists with a point and click interface like flash does.

And yet those tools produce more crap code than Microsoft had market share for its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser in the first few years of this decade.

Seriously - there's a huge problem when someone can create a Web page with a WISIWYG editor that breaks when a new browser, browser version or rendering engine comes out and is generally inaccessible to people with disabilities while leaving search engines guessing which content is the most important; yet I can create the exact same page by hand using nothing more than a plain text editor and a decent graphics program (like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements) that works just as well in Internet Explorer 5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera, Safari, Chrome and other browsers without having to update them whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released - without hacks about 90% of the time for any browser. And that's just for GUI capable desktop clients.

While using only 25% of the code the WYSIWYG editor barfs up, making the site accessible to everyone (not just the disabled), search engine friendly, and able to support up to three times as many people due to lower code weights, fewer HTTP requests needed with every page view, and optimized images (CSS sprites anyone?) - and that's just off the top of my head.

If I can learn how to do that, anybody can. And my high school counselors (not to mention my family and their friends) thought I would never amount to anything.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Tubal-Cain]

If I can learn how to do that, anybody can. And my high school counsellors (not to mention my family and their friends) thought I would never amount to anything.

You haven't said whether they have been proven right or not. (though your tone implies that you are using your skills for more than test loads on your LAN, in your mother's basement)

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[reallyjoel]

my high school counselors (not to mention my family and their friends) thought I would never amount to anything.

I believe in you

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Dan Schulz]

Fair shot. I'm self employed, and I spend my time helping other Web professionals and enthusiasts on forums such as SitePoint (where I volunteer as a community Advisor), SEO.com (as an administrator), and newer communities such as LovingTech.net (yep, I'm a moderator there, too). What sucks for me though at the moment is that I've spent the past six months watching my mom waste away due to the lack of proper health care from one doctor after another (and that's despite having health insurance). Right now I've got three really wonderful clients that I'm working with, and am about to pick up two more (I'm very picky about the clients I take on - I prefer to work with those who are willing to work with me, rather than those who kick the tires and want to buy oceanfront property in Arizona for a nickel once global warming has had its way and finished redrawing the map). Not bad for someone who does all the work himself (and spends his time helping others with their own sites instead of working on his own). Of course, I could be doing something more productive, like cutting up a fish to illustrate how Congress wastes our taxpayer money.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[root_42]

yet I can create the exact same page by hand using nothing more than a plain text editor and a decent graphics program

Please tell that to the slashdot maintainers. The site currently looks like crap in Safari 4 (did so as well in Safari 3), with colored dots (friend / foe / blabla) and strange widgets all over the place. The "Reply to this" button is also rendered broken, and i don't know what else as well. WTF is going on with /. at the moment? Huge public beta test?

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[xouumalperxe]

You haven't said whether they have been proven right or not.

Considering his argument is undoubtedly true -- WYSIWYG editors do produce crap code, and handwritten code is smaller and more compatible -- if he was a failure it would only add more punch to his final point, that if he can everybody can. Consider that the guy whose counsellors, friends and family all thought would amount to nothing is doing it. Accept for a moment it's true. If that guy can write proper HTML, why can't a freaking professional web designer do it?

Of course, life throws curveballs, and it seems the guy who would amount to nothing has a clue, in an area where most "professionals" don't.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon my naivety, but it's too much to ask for a visual editor capable to output an HTML page conforming to the W3C standards?

I mean, a compiler is capable to output executables and libraries an order of magnitude more complex than every webpage i could think of (even while using Interface Builder / QT Designer / "Visual IDE Creation Tool Of Choice" ), Yet it seems impossible to implement an appropriate visual editor for a something that amounts to a souped up version of XML plus Javascript.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[phooka.de]

Sometimes I'm lazy too. So on vacation, when downloading the photos of the day onto my old PowerBook, I started iWeb to select a few of them and write something about the picture and where it was taken, so I could host it for my parents to look at them.

I used iWeb because I wanted something simple at the end of a long day.

The result is absolutely W3C-valid - no errors, no warnings. Renders well in Firefox and Safari, I have no idea about IE6, but I think that renders it correctly as well. Sorry, what was the issue with incorrect HTML and WYSIWYG-editors again?

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[16Chapel]

I hired an HTML expert last year, and the first thing that I did for all the applicants was look at the code behind their pages.

If we were building only static HTML pages I might, *might*, consider employing somebody who uses a WYSIWYG editor, but any project that uses dynamically created pages can't afford to use computer-produced HTML, you need hand-coded work.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found HyperText Studio to be quite lightweight for a WYSIWYG editor, and you can use it to easily create CHM files as well as HTM. Its a pity it sometimes crashes :-(
The difference between the code it outputs and the code Microsoft Word outputs is shocking.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[loufoque]

So on vacation, when downloading the photos of the day onto my old PowerBook, I started iWeb to select a few of them and write something about the picture and where it was taken, so I could host it for my parents to look at them.

For that, you should use a web application designed for publishing photo albums, not use a WYSIWYG editor.

The result is absolutely W3C-valid - no errors, no warnings.

And that is irrelevant.
Being valid is necessary, but not sufficient to be good.

Sorry, what was the issue with incorrect HTML and WYSIWYG-editors again?

iWeb is known for being much better at generating valid HTML than other WYSIWYG editors.
However, it still only has a 81% validity rate (others are usually below 4%). Why the hell all those editors don't always generate valid HTML in 100% of the cases, I don't know.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[MosX]

I've been wondering about this... I use IE8 at work at I've been noticing the same thing. Just now I decided to check out the site in Chrome, and I'm still seeing the same colored dots and widgets all over.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[garaged]

I just tested, /. looks pretty similar both on FF 3.5B99 and Safari 4, reply button works on both, no widgets in the wrong place.

I'm a huge fan of FF, I don't use safari very often, and don't even like it too much, but is not that bad (on a mac)

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Tablizer]

Please tell that to the slashdot maintainers.

Shhhh. They are playing, and we are the guinnie pigs.
   

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Eccles]

I'm using FF 3.0.11, and also have the strange widgets/friends/foes buttons problem. If I open /. in IE7, I don't see them, even logged in (so the user/thread settings are the same.)

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[godefroi]

works just as well in Internet Explorer 5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera, Safari, Chrome and other browsers without having to update them whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released

I call BS. Having done this for over a decade now, it's clear to me you have no idea what you're talking about. The set of all pages that display correctly in both IE5 and FireFox 3 is, for all practical purposes, empty. And that's the entire point of Flash and Silverlight.

It's the property of being controlled by exactly one company that makes them VALUABLE. You never have to wonder whether your crap will look right, because there's only ONE PLATFORM. No ambiguous interpretations of "standards". No moving targets.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[spion666]

If you switch to the new (and sometimes painfully slow) comments interface then the problems should disappear for all browsers

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Dan Schulz]

It's in all browsers, and for Ghu's sake, we shouldn't have to switch to the new (and painfully slow) comments system to "fix" the problem.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Dan Schulz]

Welcome to the painful reality of SGML being so lax in its rules enforcement. If only SGML would stop invalid code dead in its tracks rather than allowing the browsers to not only parse but render invalid code as Web pages, then we'd be able to get somewhere. Of course, that would make HTML so "complex" and "difficult" that only those with computer science degrees (or the patience of Mother Teresa) would be able to actually author pages in HTML to begin with.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Dan Schulz]

Allow me to ask you a few questions then. Are you still coding the same way now that you were when you first started? Or are you continuing to push the boundaries of what you believe is possible with Web standards based technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?

Are you willing to embrace new ideas and ways of doing things, or are your coding practices so set in stone that you're unwilling (or able) to adapt?

The reason I ask is because if you're still coding today the way you did in 1999, then you should expect to have to check and recheck, plus hack for Browsers X Y and Z (and versions a, b and c of each). Learning how to write standards-compliant semantic code that separates the structure, appearance and interaction as much as possible, while still ensuring accessibility and ease of use, not to mention maximum code optimization for the search engines (you know, "search engine friendly design") will mean you no longer have to check over your shoulder every six to twelve months when a new browser (version) is released.

I'll grant you - it's not easy, and there is a steep learning curve involved. But the rewards far outweigh the risks, especially when money is involved (I've seen sites that were built the way I described far outperform comparable sites that used outdated techniques). As for moving targets, HTML 4.01 has been around for about a decade, same with CSS 2.1 - HTML 5 and CSS 3 are still about a decade away from being capable of real world deployment. And you know what else? At least with HTML/CSS/JS, I don't have to worry about browser plugins determinig whether I can even access the site or not - the content is always available to me. Can't say the same with Flash/Silverlight and other technologies that require plugins (and still depend on HTML for delivery).

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You can develop a feature-rich website that "works just as well in Internet Explorer 5, IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera, Safari, Chrome and other browsers without having to update them whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released - without hacks about 90% of the time for any browser."

1) I'd like to see that website.
2) I'd like to know how long it took you to develop.

If you can do this, why don't you create a WYSIWYG editor that writes HTML like you do. That sounds like some magical HTML you write.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[ckaminski]

I love the giant gray bar at the top that obscures two lines of text, so using page-down is broken. Thanks a lot, slashdot.

Apparently the Slashdot 2.0 beta project wasn't getting enough people (because really, it sucks). So now we're forced to use it. And I'm in low-bandwidth mode, too. Go figure.

And this new Ajax "Reply -> Edit -> Preview ->Submit" thing is half the speed of the old way of doing things.

W.T.F.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[ckaminski]

I don't know, XHTML managed to fix most of the broken crap. But who defines invalid codes? Implementations.

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[J.Y.Kelly]

Please tell that to the slashdot maintainers. The site currently looks like crap in Safari 4 (did so as well in Safari 3), with colored dots (friend / foe / blabla) and strange widgets all over the place. The "Reply to this" button is also rendered broken, and i don't know what else as well. WTF is going on with /. at the moment? Huge public beta test?

That was annoying the hell out of me too. I found that if I add http://c.fsdn.com/sd/cs_sic_controls_new.png to my adblock list then the random graphics disappear (as do some other bits, but I'll live with that).

How did this not get picked up and fixed already on a site this big??

Re:You're right - the tools are stupid.

[godefroi]

I got smart and stopped doing webpages. HTML, Flash, Silverlight, all of it.

But you're still lying. There's no "magical technique" that makes IE5 (remember, you said IE5) render pages the same as modern less-bug-ridden browsers (you mentioned FF3). Sorry, anyone who's doing it for real knows that. You can get approximations, but not correctness. The more "RIA" your webpage, the more broken it's going to be in this-or-that browser. It's why "RIA" frameworks exist such as Flash and Silverlight.

Of course, you might be the guy who's writing godaddy.com's parking pages and the semi-contextually-relevant expired-domain ad-lists. In which case, yeah, you probably can get that to look right in all your target browsers, because there's no real design going into it.

You're right: the market is short-sighted.

[tepples]

something in the future that may work better is not worth considering.

I didn't say it wasn't worth considering. In fact, let me consider it in the same manner in which for-profit businesses will likely consider it: The majority (over 51 percent) of our viewers use Windows Internet Explorer (IE). Because even version 8 of IE doesn't do HTML 5 canvas at all, Flash Player is still more widely deployed than HTML 5 canvas. And even if we could get our viewers to switch to a different web browser, buying n seats of Flash CS from Adobe is cheaper than paying programmers to develop a custom vector animation editor and playback libraries, retraining our artists (many of whom learned Flash in college) on our tool, and paying our artists to redraw all their animations.

Another angle: There's a word for "something in the future that may work better", and that is "vaporware". Duke Nukem Forever was canceled. How likely is it that HTML 5 infrastructure will get to the point where a site with HTML 5-animated comedic short films can compete with Newgrounds, which uses Flash Player, within three years?

How short-sighted.

You're absolutely right: the market is short-sighted.

I guess innovation is dead, cause, you know, we have things. N'stuff.

HTML 5 replacing Flash is like Linux replacing Windows on the home and home office desktop. Windows works well enough, and people know Windows. Flash works well enough, and people know Flash. So a mass switch isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

Re:You're right: the market is short-sighted.

[azior]

I guess innovation is dead, cause, you know, we have things. N'stuff.

HTML 5 replacing Flash is like Linux replacing Windows on the home and home office desktop. Windows works well enough, and people know Windows. Flash works well enough, and people know Flash. So a mass switch isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

i guess you're right, but the web is a very different playground. there isn't just one mainstream system almost everybody is aiming at (windows), but an array of browsers AND content providers who don't have or want to play nice with microsoft.

like i said earlier in this thread, once google will leverage their user base to use html5 (which they are supporting) everybody suddenly has a need to use html5 browsers. gmail already went from plain html to great ajax stuff and left hot/livemail looking like crap (even after the remake)

remember: microsoft, like any company, has plenty of succeses that eventually failed. encarta comes to mind

....then everything looks life a heifer?

[tpgp]

If all you have is a stud....then everything looks life a heifer?

I guess that's how adobe / ms view HTML 5 anyway.

They don't plug into tools, for some reason

[Ilgaz]

That is one thing MS Silverlight team doesn't understand too.

If you want designers/video guys embrace a new technology, you have to plug into Adobe's tools and Apple Quicktime framework in a perfect, seamless way.

Both Adobe tools and Apple quicktime has no problems with stuff plugging into them and in case of Quicktime, it is actually designed for "components adding new functionality". There is no "evil" to whine about, just an ignorant company who aims to give hell to people who dares not to use their operating system. Well guess what? Designers really use Adobe, Apple technologies and Quicktime (on windows too) so there is no point sending them to Eclipse IDE download. Yes, they suggest them to use Eclipse... Designers... Eclipse... :)

Re:They don't plug into tools, for some reason

[QuantumG]

Ya.. if a website uses quicktime, I close it. Worst video player ever. Windows Media Player works better.. and that's saying something.

Re:They don't plug into tools, for some reason

[nidarus]

If you want designers/video guys embrace a new technology, you have to plug into Adobe's tools and Apple Quicktime framework in a perfect, seamless way.

Flash succeeded despite crappy integration with Adobe's tools.

Adobe only bought Flash a couple of years ago, remember?

Just ran a small test for HTML 5...

[rrossman2]

I found this website which demo's the canvas tag in HTML 5. It's basically a small maze, with different textures on the walls.

You're able to change the texture settings to either Lower, Low, Medium, or High.

Working my way up with the settings, using the latest Firefox 3.5 beta, Opera 10 Beta, and Google Chrome (just a straight download, no beta if there is one).. and on my machine I found:

• Google Chrome handles it the best. Even on highest, it moves just as well as Firefox on Lower (the lowest setting)
• Firefox is slow on Medium, and majorly lags on Highest
• Opera falls in the middle, alright on High, but has lag for sure

It's not quite the results I was expecting. Granted it's just one test on a very, very premature standard, but being the other two are beta releases showing off and fixing up the newest and greatest, I figured Opera would take the lead with Chrome and Firefox near each other. I didn't try Safari, but if anyone else has all the HTML 5 compatible browsers installed give it a shot and see what you get.

If anyone else knows any other HTML 5 semi-intense webpages that exist yet, or some way to compare how the browsers stack up with HTML 5 so far, please post as I'd be interested in checking it out

Re:Just ran a small test for HTML 5...

[colinrichardday]

Middle was OK on Opera 9.64. High was sluggish, but I only have 32MB of video ram with no 3Dacceleration.

Re:Just ran a small test for HTML 5...

[Bert64]

That's cool, resembles wolfenstein 3d...
Works nicely on Safari 4 (default version supplied by Apple update), seems to work just fine on highest.

Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[Ilgaz]

That huge framework install with all the functionality still hurts quicktime, in case of Windows Media, you have already got it forcibly installed and it also uses undocumented goods of Windows to perform better. Linux? No official support. Real? Well, people still think it is spyware even while it is open source.

All these tools are in fact superior to Flash for embedding video, especially Real Player is really in 11th generation. Why they fail? Because they don't have Adobe design tools for use of real artists (designers) and they are still STUPID (hear me Apple) to add additional stuff to that already bulky download.

I always feel sad for using Flash to embed videos with the functionality missing from it but as I can't tell people to "download 30 mb application" or "give up your IE and use that open source browser" (sorry!), I embed Flash.

That was my point. Quicktime is a great technology being wasted by couple of idiots at Apple Inc. You know, the idiots insisted on asking $$$ for full screen playback for years. They couldn't seperate the "player" and "recorder"... They owned 80% of video market share back in worst days of Apple, can you believe?

Re:Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[QuantumG]

No.. I have the damn thing installed. The problem is that it locks up and kills my browser. Aka, the Java bug.

Re:Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[loufoque]

Real? Well, people still think it is spyware even while it is open source.

RealPlayer is proprietary, and the Real formats too.

Re:Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[Ilgaz]

You know what? I am not RMS and I don`t give a shit. Real won`t open millions of dollars worth codecs which has been progressing for years. Especially when there are still couple of idiots wondering around as "spyware", proprietary etc.

It is open source, it is not GPL but it is still open source. They also offer their million dollar patents for FREE to open source projects. Realplayer is based on open source Helix code too. Of course, it takes a while to figure why they can`t be GNU like open source, it needs knowledge about real world, real business terms, patents based on other closed patents, acquired codec technology etc.

Why not ask Apple to open their codecs (or their implementation) ? Or Microsoft? Trust me, they can`t even if they wanted to. Of course, it is easier to hit real networks. Always has been.

You know what? I have no clue why they bother with open source, support for other systems (especially linux) in official way etc. either. Such a non thanking community...

Re:Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[Ilgaz]

http://bugreporter.apple.com/

I have a feeling that your bug reports will be handled better than my PPC Mac Leopard problems ;)

Re:Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[loufoque]

I suggest you look up the definition of open-source [1]. Real is not.

I also suggest you look up the definition of free software [2]. Indeed, free software is *less* restrictive than open-source, contrary to popular belief.

Please also refrain from spreading confusion between free software and copyleft.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_definition
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_definition

Re:Flash is de-facto standard for a reason

[Simetrical]

I always feel sad for using Flash to embed videos with the functionality missing from it but as I can't tell people to "download 30 mb application" or "give up your IE and use that open source browser" (sorry!), I embed Flash.

Within a year or so you should be able to serve 20% or more of your users using <video> (depending on the percentage that's non-IE and how fast they upgrade). It has fallback built-in, so you can put in the <video> tag and stick the embedded Flash garbage inside. IE and whatnot will ignore the <video> tag, while the new browsers will ignore the Flash.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

400M Silverlight installs

[benwaggoner]

There have been 400M downloads of Silverlight so far.

That's more than the total market share of Firefox + Safari + Chrome (+ Linux + Mac + iPhone + Android if you're thinking platforms). So Silverlight's already a bigger audience than every browser NOT IE running on Windows.

Popfly is hardly meant to be the big Silverlight install driver :). In the USA, the highest profile Silverlight projects have probably been Netflix and the Olympics (Beijing and soon Vancouver), with the Masters and NCAA March Madness as recent big ones.

Because so much of media is geoblocked, the big Silverlight drivers vary by market. Russia has RuTube, South Korea has all major broadcasters and the leading search provider. France just had their big Tennis tournament.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[roca]

Comparing downloads with market share is bogus; for many reasons there have been FAR more Firefox downloads than current daily users. Why don't you tell us the actual market share of Silverlight-enabled browsers?

You lost MLB and NYT after pouring resources into them. I'm less worried about Silverlight than I used to be.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[Dragonshed]

Major League Baseball Advanced Media totally botched the transition not once, but twice. When switching from Flash to Silverlight last year their new Silverlight-based streaming player didn't work, leaving paying customers without service for days. This year they decided to switched back to a Flash-based player ON OPENING DAY. Unfortunately, the new player doesn't work either, and in many ways was worse than the silverlight player, requiring additional installation plugins for HD capabilities, and left these same paying customers without the opening day experience they're paying for two years in a row.

New York Times Reader was a different case. It worked fairly well, but NYT got thoroughly flamed for introducing the reader for windows only, basing it on WPF's FlowDocument capabilities which aren't available for the Mac. Similar text features are eventually going to make it into Silverlight, but things like Printing are a much higher priority for the SL guys. The silverlight version of the reader used a complicated templating system rather than true adaptive text layout. Adobe's Text Layout Framework may not have been the first to market, but that + Flex + AIR are the first to bring it to a wider audience and may ultimately resonate more.

Also I'm sure politics played a prevalent role in both cases, especially in the case of NYT where the Mac User's vitriol for anything microsoft played out.

MLB 2008
http://www.pcworld.com/article/144035/mlbs_web_video_strikes_out_on_opening_day.html

MLB 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/major-league-baseball-str_b_185158.html

NYT:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1424-new-york-times-switches-from-wpfsilverlight-to-flash-for-reader-2.html

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[benwaggoner]

Why would you have to worry in the first place?

It's perfectly natural to see projects switch technologies periodically. MLB has bounced between technologies for years and they may again based on their experiences this year.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10215761-93.html

Most of the big companies who have done Silverlight continue to do it, and we're certainly seeing plenty of media companies switching from Flash to Silverlight, and a bunch more once Silverlight 3 is launched with compatibility with F4V (Flash H.264) files.

And from a market share perspective all we need is one great Silverlight site for each user. It's not like someone needs to uninstall Flash to run Silverlight; it's not a zero-sum game.

I'm quite pleased with the current rate of adoption, myself. I'm obviously not going to announce new official numbers here, but there's plenty of sites that track these things that'll give you a sense of the velocity of install rate.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[SnowZero]

There have been 400M downloads of Silverlight so far.

That's more than the total market share of Firefox + Safari + Chrome (+ Linux + Mac + iPhone + Android if you're thinking platforms). So Silverlight's already a bigger audience than every browser NOT IE running on Windows.

First, downloads != daily usage. Second, {browser,phone,operating system} != plugin. If you want to use such a wide definition of platform, we might as well include Facebook, since it has an app platform. Facebook has 100M users active daily; Compared to 400M users ever for Silverlight. It seems that Facebook is very likely to be a bigger "platform" than Silverlight.

As for flash, youtube has 100M videos watched per day, and 300M accounts. All of those presumably would have flash, yet that would only be a percentage of the total. It's safe to say flash is in more common usage than Silverlight -- Many people (such as myself) downloaded it for the Olympics and haven't used it since.

In the USA, the highest profile Silverlight projects have probably been Netflix and the Olympics (Beijing and soon Vancouver), with the Masters and NCAA March Madness as recent big ones.

IOW, Silverlight's success up to now stems from exclusive content deals Microsoft has managed to strike with content providers, by way of generous contracts. If Chrome were the only way to see the 2012 Olympics, I would expect a lot of downloads of Chrome, and likely a lawsuit from Microsoft. It's funny how the shoe feels on the other foot.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that including Windows Update pushing it down automatically?

Sigh.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because Silverlight was pushed in the Windows Update?

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[Anonymous Coward]

So You say that silverlight is installed on more than 60%of the world machines? I think you work for too long at MS :-)

Any as usual Microsoft will just push a windows update to get SL installed on 90% of machines. that's why Mac + Linux + others need to go over 25 % market share ....

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[X0563511]

Well, the solution would be to punt the MLB developers in the face for doing that. You can hardly blame the tools for their implementor's idiocy.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[X0563511]

I'm proud to say I've never even seen Silverlight, let alone considered using it myself.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[FreeUser]

There have been 400M downloads of Silverlight so far.

Silverlight is included in many updates to Windows XP. At a company I worked for fairly recently, the windows admin ticked the box to install silverlight on some 100+ PCs. No one at that company ever used it while employed there (the company has since gone bust). With Silverlight being included in basic Windows XP upgrades, I'd say it's very likely the vast majority of the 400M "downloads" you cite has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Silverlight adoption or usage.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[jonbryce]

I think the biggest losers in media streaming market from Silverlight are Real Player, an abomination I'm glad to see the back of, and Windows Media, Microsoft's previous offering. People are moving from those to either Flash Video or Silverlight, but mostly Flash.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[Gilmoure]

Seems like every time I go out to microsoft.com for a driver, it's popping up a new silverlight install ad. I've installed it multiple time but it keeps coming back. I guess that's one way to generate d/l numbers.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[jsight]

'm quite pleased with the current rate of adoption, myself.

In looking over the stats on a fairly high traffic consumer heavy site:
Flash (9+ only): 97%
Java (1.5+): 87%
Silverlight (all versions): 20%
Silverlight (2+): 19%

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[benwaggoner]

Depends a lot on methadology and demographics. RIAStats shows quite a bit higher, sampling from a bigger range of machines.

However, even they're missing some stuff, as they show the Silverlight 1.0 installed base on MacPPC as 0%.

Sites that adopt Silverlight see their Sliverlight installed base rise very quickly of coures :).

The real question for any particular site is Silverlight Installed base + conversion rate; if they can get 80% of users who don't have Silverlight to isntall it, from a base of 30%, then they get 86% of their users with Silverlight.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[Clover_Kicker]

Why would you have to worry in the first place?

Golly, what could possibly go wrong for end users if a Microsoft technology gains the upper hand in the browser wars? I get all warm and fuzzy reminiscing about the golden days of IE supremacy after Netscape had been curb-stomped and before the alternatives gained a following.

Re:400M Silverlight installs

[jsight]

The real question for any particular site is Silverlight Installed base + conversion rate; if they can get 80% of users who don't have Silverlight to isntall it, from a base of 30%, then they get 86% of their users with Silverlight.

And there's the real problem. Yes, they could get ~80% with enough work. Or they could just use Flash, do almost no work to convince customers, and settle for a mere 95+%. :)

I'll tell you how.. YouTube.

[brunes69]

Google is a Canvas/HTML5 backer, both via their various web properties and via Chrome.

And YouTube is already experimenting with HTML5 instead of flash (http://www.youtube.com/html5)

All it will take is a web property like YouTube to put a nice big link up there saying "hey, look at how much cooler YouTube could be without IE), and people will start dropping it like mad.

Re:I'll tell you how.. YouTube.

[shutdown -p now]

YouTube is first and foremost a commercial enterprise for Google. If they drop IE support, or significantly degrate QoS compared to other browsers, they will see a significant drop in number of users (just how significant is a matter of debate, but still. Doing so just to promote HTML5 would be very costly, and doesn't make much sense, since Google won't profit from HTML5 directly.

Re:I'll tell you how.. YouTube.

[brunes69]

I didn't say to drop IE support, I said to put a link up saying how much better the experience would be without it.

Re:I'll tell you how.. YouTube.

[DragonWriter]

Google is a Canvas/HTML5 backer, both via their various web properties and via Chrome.

And Android's browser, which is more important than Chrome because its bundled with the OS on Android phones, so on those platforms it has the same (or stronger) position than IE has on Windows devices.

All it will take is a web property like YouTube to put a nice big link up there saying "hey, look at how much cooler YouTube could be without IE), and people will start dropping it like mad.

More likely, it just needs platforms like the iPhone and Android to get popular enough; if you've got a big audience that HTML5 is the best way to reach, HTML5 will get adopted.

RIA RIA RIA RIA

[gumpish]

Let's see how many times we can say "RIA" in the summary and top rated comments without saying what the acronym is!

Google is smarter than that

[shis-ka-bob]

What Google could do is to see what browser is being used and they will offer the 'best' user experience for the end user. Go to Browserspy.dk and look at all of the Info at their disposal. The can offer HTML5 if your browser supports that. They could offer JavaFX is you have Java 6 installed and enabled. They can then use Silverlight or Flash if needed. If I am running Safari, and you are running Chrome, we will have a better experience than my friend with IE. She will not have a 'degraded' QoS as much as we will have an enhanced experience.

Re:Google is smarter than that

[shutdown -p now]

What, exactly, would be enhanced about experience of people working with HTML5 version as compared to Flash/Silveright/JavaFX?

Re:Google is smarter than that

[brunes69]

The HTML5 spec lets you do all kinds of things you could never dream of doing with Silverlight or Flash, at least not unless the whole site is a giant flash app.

For example, you can actually bind Javascript hooks to the rendering of a movie, so you can interact with it on a frame-by-frame level s image elements. You know all those cool YouTube annotations that show when watching a movie? Now, imagine the same capability, but have not *NOT* be tied to being inside the movie frame.

Imagine being able to enter comments on an excerpt of the film alone in the comment system.

Imagine being able to edit YouTube clips *on the site* via CSS - yes you can do this using HTML5.

Those are just some ideas out of my ass. The things you could do with the power of HTML5 are amazing if you sit and think about it. Go look at the spec, you will be surprised.

Re:Google is smarter than that

[MemoryDragon]

What, exactly, would be enhanced about experience of people working with HTML5 version as compared to Flash/Silveright/JavaFX?

No plugins, thats pretty much it!

Re:Google is smarter than that

[shutdown -p now]

The HTML5 spec lets you do all kinds of things you could never dream of doing with Silverlight or Flash, at least not unless the whole site is a giant flash app.

For example, you can actually bind Javascript hooks to the rendering of a movie, so you can interact with it on a frame-by-frame level s image elements. You know all those cool YouTube annotations that show when watching a movie? Now, imagine the same capability, but have not *NOT* be tied to being inside the movie frame.

I have no idea how Flash or JavaFX work there, but SIlverlight exposes a lot of hooks to client JS running in the same browser window (and you can expose your own as needed). So what you describe is still quite possible with Silverlight without having the entire site running in the plugin.

All the rest of it are seemingly doable in all three (Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX), from what I know about them.

Re:Google is smarter than that

[shutdown -p now]

No plugins, thats pretty much it!

Why would a typical user care? Especially as Flash quite often comes preinstalled, so he doesn't even know it's a plugin...

Re:Google is smarter than that

[YAN3D]

Flash/Actionscript has had communication between Flash and the browser since Flash 3 (over 10 years ago). It started out as function calls like fscommand(), and is now a formal API in the form of ExternalInterface.

Re:Google is smarter than that

[MemoryDragon]

No one will care that is the main problem...
The web designers and web programmers are on the wrong side of things. Otherwise if they had their ways IE6 would already have been banned into oblivion!
One of the reasons why the movie tag wont be a major incentive to upgrade any browser!

No plugins, thats pretty much it!

Why would a typical user care? Especially as Flash quite often comes preinstalled, so he doesn't even know it's a plugin...

Silverlight is better than Flash, but I don't use

[Crazy Taco]

You have to be kidding about Silverlight overtaking Flash. Not only has Silverlight failed to take any notable market share to date, many projects that started with Silverlight have switched to Flash (or even Java and JavaScript).

You are partly right in what you are saying, but wrong if you are implying that Silverlight is anything less than a big leap forward over Flash and Javascript. As a developer, the first time I used Silverlight I swore I'd never go back to AJAX or anything else. It is so easy, well designed, well integrated with Visual Studio and uses the same .Net languages I'm used to. It really feels elegant to use in many ways, and it's much faster to make something in Silverlight than other technologies, ESPECIALLY AJAX.

However, after the initial euphoria wore off, I ended up choosing not to do anything in Silverlight and to design my new projects using AJAX, again. The main reason was that, because Silverlight is not heavily adopted yet, I don't know what support will be like five years from now. Will it be dropped by Microsoft due to lack of adoption? Also, can I count on developers moving into my role behind me to know Silverlight, since it isn't heavily used right now? I think it is an outstanding technology, but until it's more widely adopted, its status will be uncertain. And that's the real catch-22... as long as it is uncertain, more people won't adopt it, at least not quickly. And that, I think, is the biggest reason it is failing to take any market share from Flash. Everyone is waiting around to see if it goes anywhere, and as long as everyone just waits, Silverlight can't take off despite being a good technology.

And this brings up an interesting side question: Most likely if there was a major, open industry standard around Silverlight that anyone could use, the uncertainty would be dissolved and adoption would start. Does this situation indicate that the market is no longer receptive to proprietary standards (at least in areas such as the web, where open standards are the norm)?

For Revolution To Succeed, It's The Idea, Stupid

[deanston]

I love the fact that despite the mighty MSFT with its VBScript/JScript/.NET, Sun's Java and JavaFX, and Adobe's Flash and ActionScript in combined assult on common, non-plug-in, web standards, JavaScript simply refuses to die and is more popular than ever. Despite the lack of dedicated tools support from major vendors. It shows the majority of web users simply just want a free web browser that works without fuss. How often do you actually hear the majority commenters rave about a total Flash website? How about the other way around? The popularity of Flash has only 2 main reasons - 1) Stream videos (mainly porn) in a way the users cannot download; 2) flashy banner ads only the designers and advertisers themselves love. The vendor tools that supposedly make it *EASY* to develop only make it easy to develop crap. The danger of vendor plug-in is this - if you can view the web and vendor specific content with just the vendor plug-in, why do you need the web browser? Don't let them cripple the web browser or hinder its evolution.

Re:Silverlight is better than Flash, but I don't u

[Lennie]

"Does this situation indicate that the market is no longer receptive to proprietary standards (at least in areas such as the web, where open standards are the norm)?" I definitly think so and a lot of other webdevelopers certainly think so too.

I strongly disagree with this narrow perspective

[LostMyBeaver]

First of all, the rule is, if Microsoft doesn't support HTML 5 in Internet Explorer, then we won't see it being used. Also, we won't see companies like Adobe investing heavily in supporting HTML 5 in development tools since it competes with their Flash business and with their server business. Microsoft won't make much effort to support HTML 5 since they never considered it interesting to begin with. After all, they squashed EcmaScript 4 since as far as they were concerned, you don't need it when you have better systems like .NET and Flash.

On the other hand, like most other HTML elements out there, portions of HTML5 will be adopted as people see them being convenient to use as opposed to alternatives. But, what Ian Hickson (know him personally, nice guy, but has always lacked any realistic grip. Always assumes that people will gladly inconvenience themselves so long as there's an "open" standard as opposed to one like Flash), doesn't realize is, is that for a new tag to make it into HTML and propagate to all major browsers can take years. For a cool new feature to make it into Flash and propagate to nearly every computer that views a page that makes use of that feature is as fast as the download of the feature.

Plug-ins themselves aren't the problem. Flash is not the only solution out there thanks to Silverlight, so there are no alternatives. In fact, plug-ins are easy to write (I know since I implemented plug-in support in one of the major browsers) and because of what can be learned from Macromedia/Adobe, they are now quite easy to deploy. Using a tool like Trolltech Qt combined with OpenGL makes it even easier since you can write the plug-in once and deploy it to pretty much every browser with little more than makefile changes. As a matter of fact, I've been very tempted to make a sample which simply wraps the Qt SVG support to do the same in order to make SVG a plug-in with consistent behavior across all browsers instead of the fiasco it is now.

The fact is, plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight are possibly the best thing about the web since it is possible to extend the browser from a single central source as opposed to waiting 5-10 years for a W3C spec to be made and propagate. Also, they're even better than a W3C spec since they can provide consistent results across platforms.

The real important feature of HTML5 is the <video> tag which will only prove itself useful if browsers support it. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and of course Opera are obviously going to support it. But the question is, whether Internet Explorer will. And frankly, I'm sceptical about this.

W3C screwed up the video tag since they didn't make a true investment in multimedia as part of the standard. They didn't want to use H.264 for the obvious reasons, but more importantly, they should have made a formal container specification and streaming packetized protocol specification for use with it. Now, simply supporting the <video> tag isn't good enough. Now all the browsers have to standardize on what formats are baseline, and frankly, I'm waiting for sleeper patents to start popping up everywhere once all the major browsers support Ogg.

Different leage

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing HTML5 with JavaFX or Silverlight is like comparing apples with oranges.

JavaFX and Silverlight use compiled programming languages with everything you can expect from a modern programming language like threads, and annotations. Furthermore they have the complete toolset to create, refactor, debug and test programs offline.

HTML5/CSS doesnt even have a decent programming language. There is only java script, which is a interpreted, week-typed script language which is very slow and doesn't support essential features like threads for example.

I think HTML5 will make Flash obsolete, but Silverlight and JavaFX play in a different leage.

HTML5 audio/video will be an epic fail

[melted]

For several reasons:

1. Microsoft doesn't give a shit about it. Therefore enterprise users won't give a shit.

2. Even if Microsoft does give a shit, neither Apple nor Microsoft will support Ogg Theora. Therefore Linux is SOL again.

3. Apply #1 and 2 to audio standards as well. No common, open, royalty free, pre-installed standard across all platforms == epic fail.

The main power of Flash right now is that once you install the plugin, you might as well forget all that BS about paying for codecs on all three major platforms. It's all in there. It's convenient. It's sufficient.

Typical fanboy posting

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod down!

FF doesn't have the html5 support, duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly enough, firefox doesn't actually do everything.

Bring HTML5 and a Good Browser

[Delifisek]

PBBG's will fix the problem.

When we begin to design advanced UI's which required HTML5 people begin to change their browsers.

Single Vendor versus 10 Vendors/Committees

[slaingod]

I've been using Flex more and more where possible, simply because it lets me focus on what I care about, the value that my code brings to things, NOT trying to make sure it works in X different browsers that each need to be tweaked, etc.

When using Adobe (or MS for the color of a flash, Silverlight), I have one vendor, with one vision, one set of design tools, one set of help files, where most of the examples I find on the web I can use immediately and get back to work.

With HTML5, I have:
HTML Committee (w3c, etc.)
Javascript committee
CSS Committee
1 of many javascript libraries, like Prototype, JQuery, etc.

Then you have:
Microsoft (IE)
Mozilla (FF)
Safari
Google
Opera, etc.

each with their own implementations of the 3 committees work, that are partial and flaky and require the above mentioned javascript frameworks to even begin to be useful since they incorporate some of those browser work arounds. But then everytime you look for an example on the web, you find something that uses the framework you aren't using, so you have to keep looking or rewrite code you really have no interest in as part of your business.

Until there is a unified framework that is actually Write Once, Run and look the same Anywhere as Flex (or Silverlight), there will be a place for them. MXML (and possibly XAML) are simply a huge relief to work with after dealing with the morass of HTML/JS/CSS dev.

I absolutely agree that the mobile market is a BIG issue that needs to be dealt with, with Flex-Flash/Silverlight though.

If MS chooses, HTML5+CSS3 is 10 years out.

[Karellen]

HTML 5 + CSS 3 is 10 years out. Are they just whistling in the dark?

If Microsoft choose to not implement HTML5 + CSS3 for 10 years, then HTML5 + CSS3 is, to all intents and purposes, 10 years out.

There's no point in using the parts of CSS2 that IE6/7 doesn't support on your web page, because the number of people using those browsers is so big and un-ignorable that you have to find a way to do what you want using the bits that it does support. But once you've done that, what you've done generally looks correct in modern browsers too. Using the bits of CSS that IE doesn't support is therefore mostly redundant and will add to your maintenance headaches. Hence, as a developer, you're generally stuck with whatever IE chooses to support.

Re:If MS chooses, HTML5+CSS3 is 10 years out.

[pseudorand]

While I agree the IE's poor standards support has been a bottleneck to moving the web forward, I put a much larger share of the blame on the w3c than on M$. After all, Flash (1998), Java (1998) and ActiveX (1996) have all been around for over a decade, but HTML doesn't even have vector-based graphics yet. The w3c is an incompetent, useless body that does nothing except hold us back. They really just need to have a few devs from IE and Mozilla have a conference call once a month and we'd do a whole lot better. I'll even volunteer to pay the phone bill for the call if they'd be willing to go that route.

Re:If MS chooses, HTML5+CSS3 is 10 years out.

[DragonWriter]

If Microsoft choose to not implement HTML5 + CSS3 for 10 years, then HTML5 + CSS3 is, to all intents and purposes, 10 years out.

Assuming environments on which Microsoft browsers are dominant remain the dominant browser environments for that 10 years.

OTOH, if non-Windows smartphones and similar mobile devices continue to proliferate, Microsoft won't be able to use its desktop OS monopoly and consequent "default choice" status among desktop browsers to dictate de facto web standards, and will be forced to either adapt or risk losing its position on the desktop to vendors that do keep up.

native client on 64 bit...

[js_sebastian]

And even on devices with a GenuineIntel or AuthenticAMD CPU, it's far from ready. From the release notes:

Support for the following browsers is not available at this time:

• Internet Explorer

[...] Native Client does not work on 64-bit versions of Windows.

Unfortunately, this is a more fundamental problem. Native Client makes use of x86 CPU's segmentation features to provide memory protection. These are not available on 64-bit CPUs (except when running a program in 32-bit mode). So native client will NEVER work for a fully 64-bit browser. I do not see any way of providing equivalent memory protection without segmentation, short of dynamic instruction rewriting (emulator-style) which has an order of magnitude more overhead (say, 2x overhead, versus 5% overhead for native client).

No, it doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

> That allows you to program in java

GWT ist a transpiler which translates Java SYNTAX to JavaScript syntax. It comes with a set of proprietary Java classes which wrap JavaScript equivalents.

Instead of learning JavaScript, which you have to learn anyway as soon as you want to use GWT's "native javascript interface', you must learn Java and understand the non-standard classes that GWT provides.

It doesn't buy you anything but a complex additional layer. It might sound appealing at first, but as soon as you start using it, you will soon find yourself writing plain JavaScript code anyway.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the headline too fast and my brain saw:

"HTML takes aim at Fleshlight"

The web has come of age!

Consistently

[Alistair Hutton]

"...and it remains to be seen what parts will be implemented consistently across all browsers"

Is the key phrase. Given that one of the RIA tool vendors also controls and significant percentage of browser adoption of HTML 5/CSS 3 features I can only see a viable future for Flash in the medium term.

There's little you can do in Flash/Flex that you can't do in (D)HTML/Javascript/Ajax. I say this as a Flex developer. The key thing is though that Flex provides a single consistent environment to develop on whilst developing for HTML is a nightmarish, byzantine, tangled knot of subtle incompatibilities and shifting target environments.

Well, your guidance counselers are right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you, but 99% of the time, when your HS guidance counseler says you won't be President, they are usually right. Once you admit you are a troll that ruined your life, well, it all becomes easier to deal with and potentially correct.

Re:Well, your guidance counselers are right.

[Dan Schulz]

Saying that a student's odds of being elected President are so astronomically high that he might as well invest his or her time in something less harmful (like banking, or becoming an attorney) is one thing. Saying you're not even fit for janitorial work or flipping burgers is another thing entirely. The simple fact that I get to choose my own hours, decide whom I want to work with (even though they by default become my bosses for an agreed-upon amount of time), and set my own rates without much difficulty or fear of a prospective client saying "No, I'll go to the 'guru' who can do the same job at 1/1,000th of the quality for only a dollar a day*" strongly indicates that the counselors, like many other people in my life, were in fact wrong . (* Especially when they realize it's far cheaper to hire me at the start rather than once their "guru" has screwed everything up so badly that I have to come in and fix everything.)

Scriptable video compositing and interaction

[jaromil]

FYI: freej 1.0 will be released in July, it is a vision mixer engine (2d) with a javascript interpreter (xulrunner) and python bindings http://freej.dyne.org/

Open standards please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Open standards please, please, please, one standard for all, end of all this bs my proprietary framework is better than yours debate... just roll the best proven features of all these alternatives in!

Re:It's the tools stupidhttp://tech.slashdot.org/s

[loufoque]

By pointless crap, he meant eye-candy that is useless, with fricking animations everywhere that distract you from the actual content and that and only gets in the way of productivity and accessibility. I don't ever remember seeing a Flash website that had an usable interface.

Re:I strongly disagree with this narrow perspectiv

[azior]

google is already creating html5 sites for alot of their products (like gmail, gdocs, gcal en youtube), and their user base is massive. that might be what ms needs to finally implement html5. in ie8 they also got with the program and had pretty good html and css standards support.

the problem you point out for the tag is valid (ogg theora vs h.264) but browsers can also handle more than 1 image format for . i'm also not aware of sleeper patents or other problems with the use of the proprietary jpeg format

Flash, JFX and Silverlight sux

[rnp]

Flash, JFX and Silverlight are a bloated crap software. Though, it is not the biggest issue. The problem is to make web propietary, all of us were in the hands of these corporations.

Let's put them in the recycle bin :-)

10 years out - of course it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIA guys are quoted as saying they're not worried, because HTML 5 + CSS 3 is 10 years out.

Does anyone else see a pattern here? Disruptive open standard is proposed. Committee is formulated to advance the standard. Microsoft gets involved. The standard languishes for years. SVG. CalDAV. XML Forms. Etc. Microsoft's strategy is clear: delay and disrupt progress on any and all open standards which pose a threat to their proprietary alternatives. Putting Microsoft on an open standards committee is like putting Rush Limbaugh on Barack Obama's campaign team.

Apples vs. Oranges; but you've got a point

[davide marney]

Sure, /if/ your content is the type that can be presented in a text-oriented, page-by-page manner, then creating simple, barebones HTML pages is smart coding.

But every design has its limits. Try pushing at the edges of HTML, and it gets painful, fast. On one project I audited, we were spending 75% of our coding time on browser workarounds. Switching to a RIA was a huge time-saver. At the edges of user interface design, HTML compatibility is thoroughly broken.

However, your instinct that the simplest designs are usually the best is spot-on. This is exactly kind of back-to-the-basics thinking that is behind REST, Atom, JSON, and other web-centric techniques.

Re:Apples vs. Oranges; but you've got a point

[Dan Schulz]

Sure, /if/ your content is the type that can be presented in a text-oriented, page-by-page manner, then creating simple, barebones HTML pages is smart coding.

Actually, that's not the case. It's just a matter of using markup to structure your documents, and then letting CSS handle the display. That doesn't mean you can't use sticky footer techniques (like the one Paul O'Brien uses on SitePoint), Gilder/Levin image substitution techniques, or even advanced floating methods that literally rearrange the content so that you have floats on one part of the page floating underneath content on another part of the page even though there's another content block (or three) in between them.

And yes, I am aware of issues that plague even the most advanced designs; and how sometimes you have to use hacks to compensate for the failures of a browser (not just IE, but Firefox, Opera, and Safari/Chrome as well) to render things properly. (Don't believe me about Firefox? Look up Bugzilla 915 one of these days.)

But every design has its limits. Try pushing at the edges of HTML, and it gets painful, fast. On one project I audited, we were spending 75% of our coding time on browser workarounds.

Given that I've been doing this since 2002, I should know that every design has its limits; it's a limitation of the medium, not the languages used. As I tell everyone, HTML is for structure, CSS is for presentation, and client-side scripting is for behavior. While there is overlap between the three (as there should be with any healthy symbiotic relationship), they do have their own jobs and when used properly, they can achieve results that would otherwise be impossible with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

But I'm one of those people who debugs as he goes along in all browsers - first with the HTML to ensure that the markup is structurally sound, then the CSS to ensure that the appearance is practically the same in all browsers made in this century (I'm a user-centric developer who prefers to put the people who will use the Web site first, rather than a designer's ego - but that doesn't mean designs can't look great while working well), and finally the scripting (script by script) to make sure that nothing's broken there either. Taking that kind of approach allows me to reduce the time spent debugging by nearly 95%. I've also found that most of the problems I have (and this isn't true for everyone) will be in the HTML itself, and that by modifying the markup slightly I can get it to work in all browsers, rather than piling on hack after hack after hack that I have to check again and again whenever a new browser, browser version or layout engine is released.

Oh, as for pushing at the limits of HTML? There really aren't any limits if you use it as a structural markup language because of the rules in place. The real limits to be pushed are with CSS and JavaScript - that's where the real magic is.

Switching to a RIA was a huge time-saver. At the edges of user interface design, HTML compatibility is thoroughly broken.

At which point I would dare say you're not creating a Web site, but an application. Two completely different environments (with their own sets of rules) co-existing in the same medium. (As someone who once had to make a Web site look 100% identical to a Flex app in all browsers, I should know.)

However, your instinct that the simplest designs are usually the best is spot-on. This is exactly kind of back-to-the-basics thinking that is behind REST, Atom, JSON, and other web-centric techniques.

As I've said before, even rich graphics intensive designs can be done using POSH (Plain Old Semantic HTML). Yeah, you may need a few container hooks, but given that multiple backgrounds and other CSS3 properties aren't properly implemented in all browsers yet, I can live with it for now. (Though I don't know how much more I can take - I want my CSS3 fix now, damnit!)

Re:Apples vs. Oranges; but you've got a point

[davide marney]

Yeah, you may need a few container hooks, but given that multiple backgrounds and other CSS3 properties aren't properly implemented in all browsers yet , I can live with it for now. (Though I don't know how much more I can take - I want my CSS3 fix now, damnit!)

I rest my case...take the frustration in this statement and multiply it by 10. That was our life.

Re:Silverlight is better than Flash, but I don't u

[jbolden]

I wouldn't worry about developers behind you on projects. The next sure thing is very hard to predict. Standards within languages change, ways of accessing data change or thinking about problems. Paradigm shifts happen quickly and as "close to the metal" is getting less popular language flexibility is increasing.

Re:Silverlight is better than Flash, but I don't u

[RingDev]

I am a developer in a very similar boat. Recently I picked up with a larger organization that is moving a lot of their technology to the web (and off of thick client on Citrix).

I've been doing web development for years, long before AJAX was AJAX. But the shop here has some guys who have done only minimal web development. In order to spin them up on serious web development we're talking about teaching them HTML, CSS, Javascript, ASP.Net's model, and the AJAX model, coupled with the challenges of developing for multiple platforms.

Well, I had been playing around with Silverlight 1 and Beta 2 for a while, and I was having the same feelings as you. It's so much more elegant, so much more simple, so much faster to develop with.

I also have fears about support. Especially with SL 2 as most outstanding bugs have been fixed in SL 3 (due out in Q4) so a lot of the support is just "Install SL 3 Beta", which doesn't really fly in a corporate environment.

But I'm pushing ahead in this direction anyway. For a internal development where I can kick out better looking apps in less time with a higher level of usability, it just makes sense. For external development, I'm still in the air though, I'd like to see more adoption and SL 3 stable before pushing for public projects.

I am still excited for HTML 5, but I'm not expecting it to be a viable development platform for at least another 3-5 years. And with the rate of adoption in most corporations, I'd venture that the 5+ year time frame is more likely.

-Rick

I, for one

[cool_story_bro]

... welcome our standards-compliant overlords (and it's about damn time)

It is more similar to java

[djheru]

The structure of packages, the strong typing of variables, classes and functions, and many of the classes ARE similar to java

Imaginary team

[YourExperiment]

'That's a big elephant in the room for them because you can imagine the Silverlight team [whose] whole existence is to add [this] functionality in.

What? I have to imagine the Silverlight team? Don't they exist?

Note to editors: I think the point of liberally sprinkling square-bracketed words around your quotes is to ensure the sentences make sense.

Re:It's the tools stupidhttp://tech.slashdot.org/s

[nidarus]

By pointless crap, he meant eye-candy that is useless, with fricking animations everywhere that distract you from the actual content and that and only gets in the way of productivity and accessibility. I don't ever remember seeing a Flash website that had an usable interface.

Pointless animations that distract from the content are bad graphic/web design - the work of the talentless hacks JobyOne was probably talking about.

HTML 5 Takes Aim At Flash and Silverlight

[J. Tyler Ballance]

HTML needn't be the end for innovative web software, but it surely could be a long overdue end to those damned plug-ins! The reason those plug-in required software products deserve to die a terrible death is that those programs have hampered commerce and made most customers' web experience, miserable!. If you were running a traditional store, you would not stop customers at the door and insist that they don a monkey suit in order to shop. This is somewhat like what those plug-in software companies did. What macromedia and their ilk were saying was, "Either wear the monkey suit, or take your business somewhere else." recent research has shown that eighty-eight percent of web users refuse to pause to download plug-ins; they simply take their business elsewhere. The fact that most of the world is still using low-bandwidth connections (estimated at eighty percent of users) adds to the problems created by demands for downloading plug-ins before gaining access to commercial sites. With HTML5, business should experience a significant increase in online traffic and sales. If HTML5 lives up to expectations, this one change could be the key factor in some business segments starting on the road to economic recovery. Let's hope the HTML5 implementation happens quickly.

Re: MLB.com experiences

[John Dowdell]

re: "This year they decided to switched back to a Flash-based player ON OPENING DAY. Unfortunately, the new player doesn't work either, and in many ways was worse than the silverlight player, requiring additional installation plugins for HD capabilities"

The new video backend and distribution system (as well as the new client) were used throughout Spring Training. The biggest problem this spring was the installation of the separate NexDef stream manager, which was also a difficulty during previous seasons... overall the forums were much, much happier this year:
http://www.mlbsupport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

Thanks for the link to the Huffington Post piece. It describes the Gameday Audio system, which is not the Flash video client or interactive display.

(For what it's worth, I had been impressed with the support staff at the MLB.com forums.)

jd/adobe

Re:Let's get on with it! Native Client Now!!!

[rp]

JavaScript is terrible. jQuery fixes it.