Maqetta: Open Source HTML5 Editor From IBM

PybusJ writes "IBM has released an online HTML5 editing tool called Maqetta, hosted by the Dojo Foundation. eWeek calls it an open source answer to Flash and Silverlight. That remains to be seen, but it does look interesting."

Comments

Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good gosh, this thing actually makes Eclipse, NetBeans and Visual Studio feel fast and efficient.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Haedrian]

Maybe you should try it when the site's not been slashdotted...

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

Well the entire thing is coded in dhtml, not html5 but pure dhtml which scales down to firefox 3.5.
And actually it is not that slow, it is ok and what you can expect from a pure html + javascript solution.
The neat thing about this is, it puts out pure dojo widget code, which is heavens sent if you want to generate
dhtml forms rather quickly.
The downside is it pushes out the more easily readable pseudo tag code

which is slower on browsers which do not have document.querySelectorAll than the programmatic initialisation (nevertheless pseudo attributes are a no go before html5 as well where the syntax for those things was finally finalized)

Either way thanks ibm and this is a neat thing. The dojo library undeservedly is rather unknown it is one of the most extensive javascript libaries out there and one of the oldest as well, and one of the cleanest designed ones as well.
Jquery is utter junk compared to it, but it does not reach entirely the code quality of the YUI 3 lib.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case, then this is further proof that "cloud computing" is a load of bullshit. I will never seriously use a development IDE that'll start to slow down just because other people, somewhere else in the world, are using it, too.

But I don't think that's the issue. Even once a file or page is loaded, it's still horribly slow to edit anything. Try editing the sample JavaScript file, for example. Ignoring the 45 or more seconds it takes to actually load, the editor itself is fucking slow. It lags by a second or more when typing. Copying-and-pasting is horrid. Even just scrolling is choppy and distracting. Any server performance issues should not result in this awful client-side experience.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should try it when the site's not been slashdotted...

Been using Maqetta for past week (read news via eWeek) and it's not that the site is slashdotted, it simply darn slow.. The things is slow even when running locally (the distribution is bundled with jetty 7).

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use NetBeans daily and have no problems with its speed or efficiency... but full-blown IDEs like your examples are very large and complex applications, and I have a workstation designed for such development tasks. Use the right tool for the job... don't try to run an app that's heavy by its very nature on a system made for web browsing and email. You wouldn't try to do heavy 3D rendering or high-end gaming with nothing but desktop on-board Intel video an expect good performance, would you?

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[clang_jangle]

You don't need any of that anyway. HTML and it's associated companions are easy enough to do with any text editor. If you can't do that, you have no business coding websites. Hand-rolled is still the only way to get efficient, secure code for websites, especially if you're providing much in the way of content or process payments.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you need to use a browser with Native HTML5 support.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[PopeRatzo]

If that's the case, then this is further proof that "cloud computing" is a load of bullshit.

You're just figuring this out about "cloud computing"? Did you ever thing "cloud computing" was anything but a way to take away control from the individual? "Oh yeah, just put everything you are and do on some servers "out there". Why should you have everything that's of value to you where you can put your hands on it? It's more fun if you disperse it to the Cloud. And if you give me a hamburger today, I will gladly pay you back on Tuesday."

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what's the thing with open source IDE's. They're all so damn slow. In comparison Visual Studio actually does work fast and is efficient to use.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Isaac Remuant]

How long do you reckon it will be slashdotted?

Also... Really? Plain text password on the activation email? Really?

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Kenneth Stephen]

The dojo library undeservedly is rather unknown...

Quite the contrary, it is deservedly unknown. Have you tried to do programming with Dojo? The documentation is terrible. You can never figure out how to accomplish even the most trivial of tasks if you even wander an inch off the beaten path shown in the examples. Ever heard of the phrase "An undocumented feature is a feature that doesn't exist"? By that token, Dojo is the javascript framework that has the least set of features.

I also have a problem with the way the library is structured - it is painfully hard to extend the library. For example, one of the "dijits" provided is a tree widget. Instead of a "normal" node, I wanted to extend the widget by having each non-leaf tree node be a checkbox, but doing this turns out to involve putting out huge chunks of code.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on.
I'm in the middle of setting up a load of very nicely configured servers in a private cloud a few moles from our main DataCentre.
The bit of wet string between our DS & The cloud site (note, they are less than 5 minutes walk apart) is really hard to swallow.
Oh, and the Cloud Company want to not only charge us by the month for the facility, and for every bit of work they have t odo in THEIR kit but also by the Mb for the traffic over the network link (a.k.a the bit of wet string with a tin can at each end) between the facilities. It took me longer to upload the O/S to the site than it did for me to download it at Home over a 4Mbit ADSL link.

I've done the sums and after 3 monhs, it makes more sense to have the kit inside our own DC. But the PHB's think that 'The Cloud' is the way forward. When they get the bills I am pretty sure they will be changing their tune in quick order.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

I have programmed with dojo several years and if you go to www.dojocampus.org you have quite a good documentation outside of that, there are several really good books.

The extension points of the widgets are hit and miss several are rather easy to extend and a handful of them quite hard, but that is to be expected by a widget lib.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's start with Eclipse being overengineered, enterprisey Java with call stacks 10 miles deep.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you looked at the documentation lately? They're actively working on that since the Dojo 1.6 release last month.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[jimrthy]

OTOH...unless you're a security expert, an individual hand-rolled solution is just begging to be hacked.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[clang_jangle]

By that definition all competent coders who hand-roll websites are "security experts". I don't agree, but it's something I could add to my resume I guess... :)

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[johnsnails]

Mod parent up! Your are spot on, a distinction that needs to be made!

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Mr. DOS]

I have programmed with dojo several years and if you go to www.dojocampus.org you have quite a good documentation outside of that, there are several really good books.

Or you could just use jQuery, which has good official documentation, a good community, and is faster to boot.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[metamatic]

Yeah. First they called it dumb terminals, then diskless workstations, then network computing, then thin clients, then cloud computing. Same idea, they just dress it up with new technological clothing and trot it out again every decade or so.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[jimrthy]

Well, by *that* definition, pretty much no coders are competent.

The NSA assumes they've been hacked. Unless your doctorate thesis focused on cryptography and programming security, you really don't have much chance to get it right by yourself.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good gosh, this thing actually makes Eclipse, NetBeans and Visual Studio feel fast and efficient.

Er... since those are pretty well the big three of IDEs if you want to do much useful, and you seem to be heavily implying they're slow enough to begin with, to what are you comparing them? Some obscure feature-free IDE you came up with? An obviously unfair comparison to a straight-up text editor where you're manually doing the computer's job of keeping track of the class structures and compiler statements? Some all-but-worthless IDE that only runs on and compiles code to one or two platforms at best?

IDEs, or at least any of them that are any good, are sizable beasts to begin with. They aren't for the faint of processor or RAM. The fact that IBM made one that runs entirely in a web browser and it actually runs at all is quite frankly nothing short of downright amazing.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[daid303]

Code::blocks is open source, and it never slows down on me. Not even on my laptop.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Icegryphon]

You do realise there are such things as private clouds and hybrids. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpN_huYbXUo
Or are you just feeding the Trolls?

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I would agree that the documentation is extensive on dojocampus.org if it wasn't so frequently vastly and utterly WRONG. I've been developing with Dojo since somewhere around .08 (circa 2005 I think) and even back then it was attrocious - but rightly so - it was a new project with an overwhelming number of people who jumped in the pool. And for versions 1.3 through 1.5 the documentation was often never updated. The documentation would say in big bold headers - This documentent is outdated please click here for the new documentation - which every single one of those links pointed to dojocampus.org - THE HOME PAGE, not the actual updated documentation for said specific feature - because more often than not that page DIDN'T EVEN EXIST. I'm not lazy and am willing to then research for the new answers except that if they existed they were so frequently wrong that I personally deem the dojo project and utter failure. Sure I was able to bend the framework to my needs when forced to, and figure out why the hell line 75,278 threw a JS error, but I would never start a project with that POS again.

And to even suggest books as an alternative indicates to me that you haven't worked with DOJO for a LONG time (by tech standards anyway) because the last books published for this pile of garbage were in 2008 - and they were some of the last books I will ever purchase on computing due to their innaccuracies and outdated mode of technical coverage. Even those books admittedly report that the content in the books is deprecated but should be applicable until version 2 - which was over 3 years ago - and they are still only at 1.6 and they are still just as innaccurate as they were in 2008 because those Russell is about as naive to think the interfaces would be backwards compatible for that long as equally naive he is on the practicallity of the framework to begin with.

And even had they been more accurrate (a feat I don't blame Russell for because no one could be expected to properly document about it in it's persistent state) they still let you down - Mastering Dojo should be a lot more than just how to use their widgets out of the box. I would have much rather seen more than 20 pages of documentation on how to use their abstract databinding interfaces for remote data in all of its variant forms with regard to a few key controls than over 100 pages of What is AJAX and Why use Object Oriented Programming in Javascript (WHICH IS A FUCNTIONAL LANGUAGE!!!!) Instead you get a grade school level of understanding when you expect a Black Belt level of intimacy as the pretty cover and double entendre would suggest.

When you have a javascript client side framework that is over 21 MB ZIPPED!!! you have a fundamental architectural and maintenance problem that is there to stay. It is a perfect concrete representation of the conceptual frustrations I have the the JAVA community as a whole and why I'm ashamed that I couldn't release my HTML based HTML composer that produces clean developer quality html markup before IBM released Maqetta because it's the type of solution that if done correctly can really spurr development versus wasting cycles on building a page from scratch every time - but when that development comes with the cost of DOJO that solution could just turn out to be a scar that nobody wants to revisit but for the wrong reasons.

Even the DOJO build systems are terrible - they do not work as designated and past that have platform incompatibilities that produce entirely different results from when you build on Windows versus Linux. The architecture promotes the direct importation of over 50 separate libraries without the build, which from a "designed for the masses" perspective is a FAIL because you end up with people who hack in the results and produce a lag time on page load that is worse than YUI in it's early days.

The widget aspect is nice, but the dependencies and points of frequent failure between them is unbearable. I've worked with some difficult and poorly documented sy

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer, stop trolling Slashdot.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little biased because I'm working on such a project of my own, but I think the distinction isn't that black and white and in this case falls more on the "yeah we could absolutely do that with speed and complexity realm." You wouldn't do modern high-end graphics development on modern desktop hardware - but modern desktop hardware is infinitely more powerful than what is required to make an application like an HTML composer inside the browser seem (and actually be) snappy.

In another year or so browsers will have caught up to that performance impass even more so. So for a better analogy - Yes, it's absolutely ok to use modern desktop web interfaces to develop yet another html interface (a technology that hasn't fundamentally changed in 15 years) in the same way that developing Wolfenstein 3D or even Duke Nukem 3D would absolutely be achievable on a modern desktop even with that poor old on-board Intel video card that just happens to be sporting half a gig of memory backed by a quad core multi gigahertz proc.

And if mockup IDE's like these hadn't received such a bad wrap from total failures like Microsoft Expression Web or Frontpage or even the markup produced by Visual Studio and Eclipse in years past then we might have been producing better components for the web for ages (instead of rewriting by hand the same crap over and over as other people seem to prefer), and maybe today we could have been in a better place all around instead of using one of the most revolutionary technologies in modern times for nothing more than informational browsing and email.

And just because something is produced by IBM and it happens to run slowly (like EVERYTHING they release) - doesn't mean the platform is innappropriate or that the approach is unfeasable - it typically just means a JAVA engineer wrote it. (No offense to really senior engineers who can actually make the JAVA platform efficient - but you (and myself included) do not represent the masses and you should have, just as I have, experienced that frustration when taking on projects written by 50 junior to mid level java developers and are tasked with making the system usable.)

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

That does not change the fact that the framework is as unpopular as it is for that very reason. They've been "working on that" since DOJO 1.0. To still be "actively working on that" 7 years later and when version 1.5 was the pinnacle of its worst moment in history in that regard - it really only justifies the points I made in response to @MemoryDragon. @Kenneth Stephen had it spot on, if you follow the examples verbatim you MIGHT get a working solution, but the moment you have to step off that path (ie anything you'd actually do in the real world) you had better start digging through the 20 mb of source code to figure it out on your own.

(I realize the 20mb estimate includes a lot of resource files, but that doesn't really change the fact that it's a beast of a system to wrangle and you're pretty much on your own to do it.)

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[clang_jangle]

Well it is true a web coder can only be as secure as the DBA, server, and network admins allow, but assuming competence in those departments one can still make an awful lot of choices that affect security.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[PopeRatzo]

First they called it dumb terminals, then diskless workstations, then network computing, then thin clients, then cloud computing. Same idea, they just dress it up with new technological clothing and trot it out again every decade or so.

But this time, it's not just corporate data that's going out to the "cloud" but personal data. I can understand the desirability of limiting what is stored locally on a corporate network. The cloud computing hype that we have today suggests that everything can be safely stored on the servers in Amazon's cloud. It's really important that we give a lot of thought to how that is going to change the Internet and our relationship to our computers and personal data. Storing backups of my important data in a secure off-site location is best practices. Storing that data in an off-site location over which I have no control and very little understanding is a different matter.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, JavaScript is object oriented. Everything in JS is an object, which means it can't be anything but object oriented.

Protip: Don't confuse "class-oriented" with "object-oriented".

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[presidenteloco]

You're only assessing the first-generation cloud which is controlled by a small number of corporations.

A massively distributed, fragmented auto-coalescing, multiple-layer-encrypted, peer-to-peer cloud would be different.

Now you might liken that one to communism, I'm guessing, but I'd link it to effective and not easy to control or corrupt or break.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[presidenteloco]

Yeah you know you have a problem when the basic java won't even show you in its default logging the call stacks as deep as you have when there's an exception, so you, literally, can't get to the bottom of it. (Oh I know you're probably going to say there's a setting for that somewhere in some obscure cupboard somewhere, but get real.)

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard VS 2010 is fairly slow.
While java is not as slow as it used to be there can still be problems.
Also eclipse is very modular its plugins on plugins on plugins (yes most of the default ide is provided by plugins).

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trying to deflect attention away from the fact that he's put your IDE first on that list, Eclipse Foundation.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

The jquery core itself is just about 1% of the extensiveness of the dojo core, mainly the query part and a little bit of xhr and events, and that part is well documented, everything else is a myriad of extensions. Some of them well documented some of them utter garbage not even working not a single line of documentation.
I would not even closely compare dojo and jquery. Jquery does not even cover the ground the dojo core covers and both have about the same bootup times. Things become slow in dojo as soon as you dont package and use a lot of digit widgets. Which means dojo issues load of xhr requests to fetch additional code in. This can be fixed by packaging everything.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

Actually I am working with dojo as we speak, we dont use too much of it just the core the query part and a handful of widgets, and it works out quite well.
The core itself can be reduced to 50k of code if you pack everything in with all the dependencies you have about 200k of code. What you talk about the 21 MB is the source all its tests all the documentation and whatever comes with it. As soon as you isolate what you are using you are down to something smaller.

You can compare a full dojo distribution with a full jquery distribution with every plugin on earth written for it.
The huge difference is outside of the jquery core you have a huge mess of plugins with different quality, while dojo tries to enforce a certain quality standard by using extensive unit testing on its core and dijit widget.
As for the documentation, it could be better, but given the extensiveness it is ok. Not like YUI standards but given all the resources out there good enough to use it. For me the code ultimately is the last reference the books usually are a jump starter.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

Actually JS is both, it is rather messy because everything is basically a function and an object or we could name it both is the same.
What you dont get is inheritance namespacing etc.. out of the box all you get is access to the prototype function to build such structural patterns upon.
The problem by not delivering both simply is, that you have to build your own solutions upon it which has several disadvantages. Namespacing must be built with maps which means speed hit and automatic documentation tools will fail.
The same then goes for classes inheritance etc... documentation tools automatically will fail if not custom tailored to the syntax of the framework.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

PS: Jquery, I have worked with jquery as well extensively. You can use it nicely from the core, but as soon as you hit the widget area it becomes an utter mess, some widgets are really good but some are utter garbage and you often end up with fixing a myriad of bugs to get the thing going. Trying a pure functional approach and having a non existent real widget api does not help either. The code often ends up in a mess and things which could be isolated with inheritance are exposed fully which makes often widget code convoluted.
As for prototype, nice try in language design, but a library which alters the core language underneath it just for the sake of it is possible is a no go, I have seen to many problems caused by this ghetto blaster of a library.

It really depends on your needs, what you do, but jquery for instance has its merits if i need to decorate a site quickly and if I can find a plugin which allows me to fix a problem quickly. I however would never program a bigger fully dhtml/ajax site with it, which does not do any page refreshes but provides you a huge rich client ui.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

The funny thing is i never really have had a huge problem with dojo. Mastering Dojo was heavens sent for me to explain some non obvious constructs outside of that, the code + a little bit of brain and dojo campus got me around.
As for the 20MB that is mostly like you would see a jquery distro with all sources and a load of plugins all unit tests included documentation etc.... You usually isolate your files and end up with a 50-300Kbyte single include source thats it.
I have worked with several projects with dojo. Usually it was like that.

The dojo core was very good and always worked, not a single problem. Dijit widgets, there it dependend heavily on how far you would use them, the core widgets usually worked. Data bindings were somewhat problematic in a way that they are hard to use. And some widgets were a little bit buggy, but most of them more on the dojox side.
The biggest project I was involved with just used the core and rolled its own widgets.

So it is mostly comparable to jquery, where you have a good core and depending on your luck good or bad extensions.
The main difference is the dojo core covers way more ground.

Pronunciation

[DamienRBlack]

Is that a 'Q'? How am I supposed to pronounce it? Makketa?

Re:Pronunciation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a color between purple and pink. Look it up next time.

Re:Pronunciation

[Jagen]

from the FAQ;

'"Maqetta" is a spelling variation of the Spanish word for mock-up ("maqueta"). The team members pronounce the name as if the "q" were a "k".'

So, yes. :)

Re:Pronunciation

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Try "Hey, Macarena!" instead . . . it seems to get folks' heads turning ...

Re:Pronunciation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's mauve you insensitive clod!

Re:Pronunciation

[clang_jangle]

There's a whole spectrum in there, you colorblind clod!

Re:Pronunciation

[johnsnails]

i cbb trying to pronounce it so just pronounced it marquee, its a nice sounding word that younger folks will soon not no how to pronounce, freeing up its usage, eh?

Re:Pronunciation

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the macarena in

"One little two little three macarena,
four little five little six macarena,
seven little eight little nine macarena
Hey~~~~ macarena!"

I swear by the song.

Re:Pronunciation

[Anonymous Coward]

i cbb trying to pronounce it so just pronounced it marquee, its a nice sounding word that younger folks will soon not no how to pronounce, freeing up its usage, eh?

That's a great idea, Bert*.

*That's how I pronounce the word "John".

Broken!

[Anonymous Coward]

the site is very slow

HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[RingDev]

HTML5 is not a Flash/Silverlight replacement. It does some things better, it does somethings worse, but for the majority of the functionality of Flash and Silverlight, HTML5 just doesn't do it.

There is awesome stuff you can do in HTML5 and Javascript, but it's still no replacement for a dedicated sandbox. Especially with the new hardware accelerated XNA 3-d graphics and sound coming from Silverlight 5.

-Rick

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[TheRaven64]

It would help if you could give some specifics. 'A dedicated sandbox' is a pretty meaningless thing, since all JavaScript does run in a dedicated sandbox. Some of the things HTML5 can do:

• OpenGL ES via WebGL.
• 2D vector art, either immediate mode via canvas tags or scene graphs via SVG.
• Audio and video playback, via (scriptable) audio and video tags.
• Get network data without going through HTTP via WebSocket.

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Threni]

I understand Google use flash for their file handling in the browser; ie adding attachments etc. Can you browse network drives, select multiple files, get their stats/remaining disk space etc in html5?

I don't want to sound trolly as I'm not a web developer. It seems people are trying to do more and more in the browser to make the online experience a bit less crap and more useful like a normal application, but with a sandbox based-security system. I had hoped that something better would replace the browser but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Perhaps it will...after just another 5 or 10 new standards are added to the mix...

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[maxwell demon]

Silverlight doesn't work on Linux. Which means they can add features like crazy, I'm still not interested.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 > (Flash+Silverlight)

There, fixed it for ya...

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[dkf]

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

With HTML5, you can't lock yourself in to a big corporation's strategy for hating users in various ways.

Damn you HTML5 for making things open!!! :-)

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[RingDev]

Which is a great point for using the correct tool for the job. If your goal is 100% market penetration, you'll be writing HTML4 for years to come, so the debate over HTML5 vs Flash vs Silverlight is entirely moot anyway.

If you're willing to drop some small percent in favor of a more robust interface, you can switch to Flash. Drop some more and you're in HTML5/Silverlight penetration range.

But clearly, if your target audience is Linux users, you'll either not want to use Silverlight, or limit your functionality to that covered by Moonlight.

-Rick

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

well said.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[oakgrove]

If you're willing to drop some small percent in favor of a more robust interface, you can switch to Flash.

It's not about what percentage of people can use your site. It's about how much money you can pull in. iOS in the big picture has a fairly small percentage of the overall market compared to the desktop. Despite this, many mainstream sites have redesigned their sites with html5 and h264 video.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

You should look at the File, Blob, FileLit and FileReader objects.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Immediately target the web.

For all intents and purposes, right now Flash / Silverlight are the best shim available for older browsers.

Also, had to say it, but directly injecting into a video stream, throttling the data download based on latency / use.
Queuing multiple tasks on the client while being able to update the DOM efficiently (workers can only talk to a main thread).
Syncing an audio track with a video source without having to write a roll your own.
Using any form of HTML5 Forms (not supported anywhere but Opera)
Local Devices (web camera etc) ((they just scrapped the element, and are now prototyping Window.requestDeviceAccess))

The list goes on.
Seriously, as a web developer, HTML5, CSS3, ECMA5, and WebApps 1 is not the god send you all think it is.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

Well, just one thing I would like to be able to do is to record audio (preferably live).

Oh, and availability of an actual 8-bit datatype would be nice.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Sure, but you must realize the advantages of working in flash too. Flash is consistent across platforms ... try that with HTML (even HTML5). Flash supports a consistent set of playback formats across all it's implementations. Flash supports audio (and video) recording and sending to a server (needed for e.g. a softphone).

Flash, unfortunately, has lots of things no "open" solution has.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is not consistent at all across platforms. Apple devices come to mind. And it sucks on Linux too.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[itsdapead]

HTML5 is not a Flash/Silverlight replacement. It does some things better, it does somethings worse, but for the majority of the functionality of Flash and Silverlight, HTML5 just doesn't do it.

HTML5 + JavaScript/ECMAScript + SVG + WebGL have the potential to act as a delivery platform for most of what Flash/Actionscript does (I've used flash a lot, but haven't used Silverlight). Plus, there's node.js to potentially offer a server-side solution.

What's lacking currently is (a) nice development tools similar to Flash Pro or Flex (depending whether you want code-based or visual development), (b) a clear winner in the Javascript application framework stakes (Until TFA is de-slashdotted I assume Maqetta uses Dojo? ) and (c) reliable, mainstream browser support for all the associated technologies (e.g. SVG - essential for Flash-style 2D vector graphics and animation - is currently a pain in IE and disabled on most non-hacked Androids - particularly vexing when all the Fandroids keep bashing Apple for not supporting Flash).

Maybe Maqetta will offer a solution to (b) in the future.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

What people dont understand is that HTML5 is great for video, but when it comes to complex interactive video/animation (what flash is good at doing) you will need to have javascript in order to handle it. JavaScript has been around for 15 years and to this date, nobody has made a nice and simple easy to use editor to build complex interactive video/animation with JavaScript as its core. The simple reason behind this is that JavaScript is not made to handle complex layers of different animations going on at the same time with all sorts of changes like RGB color changes, opacity changes, animating rotation, all with the ability to be interacted with. Cause flash is not just video, its complex video that you can interact with easily.

Now I am not bashing on HTML5 by any means, I am already incorperating HTML5 in quite a few projects I have. It has its awesome advantages like being able to run on mobile phones quite nicely, but when it comes to anything remotely complex, even with using libraries like jQuery, doing multiple layered animations, doing multiple changes with different values, it starts to lag up. And besides the obvious performance issues when it comes to super complex things, It is also more difficult and time consuming to create these applications since there is no quick and easy way to make multiple layers, multiple smooth animations (custom tweens and eases), and also making them interactive.

If there are any people out there that disagree, I want you to take a nice interactive flash website out there, and copy it exactly but do it in HTML5. First try to do it without any javascript, and then after you find out that you need javascript, try finding a nice library that helps with animations (jQuery for example) and then try it. You will still find that it will suffer from the problems listed above.

Here is an example website for you to challange yourself to make in HTML5:

http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates/32546.html

and this is a far simpler one than most of the flash websites you see out there.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand Google use flash for their file handling in the browser; ie adding attachments etc.

Take a look at the browsers Google supports. How would you do it in IE7?

Can you browse network drives, select multiple files, get their stats/remaining disk space etc in html5?

Yes. And you could have learned how by searching for "html5 file api" in the search engine of your choice.

I don't want to sound trolly as I'm not a web developer. It seems people are trying to do more and more in the browser to make the online experience a bit less crap and more useful like a normal application, but with a sandbox based-security system. I had hoped that something better would replace the browser but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Perhaps it will...after just another 5 or 10 new standards are added to the mix...

Native applications have not ceased to exist. If you don't want to use a browser, you don't have to. If you have a better way of doing things, by all means implement it (or at east write a standard someone else can implement). Vague hand-waving about how much better everything could be is not all that useful. Stop hoping and build something.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

Get something out there that works today on 99% of the browsers (excluding iDevices)?

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[hellop2]

Silverlight does work on Linux. Which means they can add features like crazy, but I'm still not interested.

FTFY

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Only "kinda" in the best of scenarios that's even before mentioning any codecs or other need-to-license extras.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[exomondo]

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

Can you sync sound with vector animations?
Can you interact with the webcam or microphone?
Can you do videos with alpha channels?

I honestly don't know the answers to those questions but they are some of the more advanced stuff that im pretty sure - im not a flash dev so i'm not entirely sure - can be done in flash and not sure if the can be done in HTML5 (yet).

Better then miss america

[spliffington]

Here is it. An open source answer to flash. Like Gimp to Photoshop. Here it is.

Re:Better then miss america

[Anonymous Coward]

More like firefox to IE (bazinga!)

Re:Better then miss america

[Anonymous Coward]

More like firefox to IE (bazinga!)

No pretty sure it's like GIMP to Photoshop.

Let's be fair...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Could be that it's Slashdotted, not that it's inherently slow.

Why even mention silverlight?

[erroneus]

To this very day, I have never ever seen silverlight in action. Where is it used? I'm sure someone will pipe in with some links but still, in every-day casual browsing and such, where?

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[capnkr]

Netflix.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

netflix player for one. any microsoft websites.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

CTV's live streaming Olympics video feed was all in silverlight

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[TheRaven64]

It used to be used for streaming by the company that I rent DVDs from, but after their trial period they realised that no one had Silverlight installed, and everyone was clicking on the 'watch online' link, seeing it required downloading some crap they'd never heard of, and just gave up. They switched to Flash before the official launch. Apparently Netflix uses it, but they only do business in the USA, so are irrelevant to 90% of Internet users.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the UK Ordnance Survey Mapping site has just changed to use it. Nice to know that our government is spending out tax money on a site that requires you to buy commercial software to use. I uploaded a lot of walks routes before it changed, but since I use Linux and it is not Moonlight compatible I cannot do it any more.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[nstlgc]

When was this, 5 years ago? By now, Silverlight has a penetration rate of over 70%. And over 95% of those are Silverlight 4.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Attila Dimedici]

I have come across several websites that use silverlight. Unfortunately, I do not remember what they are, since I promptly navigated away and never went back.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[chrish]

The folks at Dundas Data Visualization have a nice Silverlight-based digital dashboarding solution. (Full disclosure: I used to work for Dundas, but I didn't do any Silverlight stuff there.)

Netflix apparently uses it, and, um, some other video-streaming things. And there are demos.

I think MS is showing some ADHD with Silverlight; they seemed really gung-ho about it, and then sort of fizzled out when it didn't immediately kill Flash and take over the net. And they appear to have boned their partners again by convincing them it's the next big thing, and then not actually getting behind it.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[pmontra]

It could be worse. Italian's public broadcaster (http://www.rai.it) switched to Silverlight a long time ago, both for live streaming (all broadcast channels are replicated on the web) and for archives. I fire up one of those Windows VM I use for testing with IE when I really need to see something there. What would you say if BBC switched to Silverlight too?

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.freestockcharts.com/

Neat site that uses Silverlight.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought even MS was pretty much done with Silverlight by now. They didn't run any sessions on it at their last PDC and their response to that was that Silverlight was now their mobile development platform for WinMo 7, but with their increasing focus on HTML5 as the better cross platform solution, it seems likely Silverlight is going to die a death pretty soon. Besides, market penetration only matters if people are using it - 70% of PCs have it because it's pushed on users, but advertisers and developers who want as close to full market penetration as possible will stick with Flash for the foreseeable future (at least until sufficient numbers of users are on platforms that support HTML5).

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Bucc5062]

While I can appreciate your thoughts on the whole silverlight vs Linux issue (a home user of Ubuntu), I checked out the site and found it a truly fascinating tool. Were I to visit England I could see how this would be a great help in getting off the main tourist paths and really getting to see the countryside.

I do not see (or can find) an equivalent site for the United States. Perhaps because of our size it is harder to implement, perhaps our self centered politicos think that a site like this would take business away from honest entrepreneurs. No matter, the complaint is noted, but do regard that it is a good helpful site. I did a quick search and found this link for Linux users who do not have Moonlight installed.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[raddude99]

"70%" is only according to microsoft, more reliable sources put it at about 60% (e.g. http://www.statowl.com/plugin_overview.php).

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't sure if I had silverlight installed on my work computer, or what version I had if I did, so I thought I'd go to Microsoft's Silverlight Showcase and see what I could see. I can see the gallery, but whenever I click on "View Now", the button depresses, but does nothing further. So I decided to check "about:plugins", and yes, I have Silverlight 4, it just doesn't appear to work properly.

The company I works for ships some configuration utilities written in Silverlight, and we get complaints from customers (and internal developers and testers) about having to install Silverlight.

So far, in my experience, Silverlight has approximately zero relevance in the real world. Slightly more than zero, but still approximately 0.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Eskarel]

Silverlight is very good, and they're still putting new features into it.

However the reality of the world is that what with Apple refusing point blank to put anything like it onto iOS and the current fetish with making everything run on mobiles even where it doesn't make sense, we're going to be stuck with what HTML 5 can provide for the immediate future. The reality of course is that what HTML 5 is capable of isn't really all that much more than what HTML 4 could do, even if the browser in question fully supports it, so it's really rather pointless.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hunting around for a restaurant to go and have some wings a while back that wasn't Hooters. I found their main competitor's website and the menu was in Silverlight. I chuckled and ended up going to Hooters. Nice going guys.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Paradigma11]

http://www.tryfsharp.org/Tutorials.aspx

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, a passive aggressive reader on Slashdot. I take it you are a Linux "user", yes?

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

which meant I couldn't see any of their crap on the interweb. Their local over the air transmitter is an old RCA tube type beast installed somewhere between 1950 and 1955, and even though it has an output of 600kW, its performance is very up and down. They are the *LAST* major local station to roll out HD digital (not yet..... no time in sight), and I think they are going to kill the other local station they bought a few years ago (ACCESS), because they are too cheap to put up a transmitter for it, or even a digital sub-channel (although to be fair, they are mandated to broadcast in HD, so that means they need another channel for the other station, which the still don't want to do. I watched the olympics on a crappy old analogue transmitter from the early 1950's, couldn't watch their content on the web. CTV really does stand for crummy t.v.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[marcello_dl]

BBC is not RAI, Rai is controlled by the government, the government is controlled by Berlusconi, Berlusconi has interests in broadcast TV which are in conflict with the entertainment value offered by internet, therefore Rai can use silverlight.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[marcello_dl]

Ah, a troll. I take you didn't learn what happens when your data is under control of proprietary formats and plugins, yes?

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have come across several websites that use silverlight. Unfortunately, I do not remember what they are, since I promptly navigated away and never went back.

I know huh? Im certain the manager of the resturant that the website was for scoured the server logs and found your visit only hit the silverlight detection landing page, he then correlated that directly to a loss of business. Based on your actions he was going to fund the re-development of the website to be done in Flash, but of course he knows that Flash is an evil technology even though it would mean 90%+ of his potential customers could view the site so he looked at HTML5, then he remembered it's not a standard and the majority of browsers don't support it anyway. He looked then at a HTML4 implementation however that would give him an uninteresting, uninteractive and uncompetitive presence on the web, so he decided to stick with silverlight in the knowledge that most desktops (Win and OSX) have silverlight plugins available and Linux has Moonlight also that there are a myriad of resturant review apps on mobile platforms for his resturant to get exposure on. He decided he could do without the business of zealots who whinge and cry about the technology on which the website for a resturant is based.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have come across several websites that use silverlight. Unfortunately, I do not remember what they are, since I promptly navigated away and never went back.

Hell hath no fury like an opinionated, basement-dwelling nerd scorned.

OSS

[martiniturbide]

Since it is Open Source it just can't die like happened with IBM HotMedia.

What a clusterfuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

A Java server application generating javascript that generates javascript that will typically leverage javascript libraries. The world just can't fucking wait until all webpages are bloated the way java is and require 1MB of script frameworks to do things that could be done in 30 characters with a hyperlink. To celebrate the release of this wonderful tool, I'm going to the local shops via antartica where I'll buy hundreds of gallons of mouthwash (celebrating with liquor would be too damn convienient). Viva "Web 2.0" and kudos to the developers.

Re:What a clusterfuck!

[Eskarel]

Generally speaking, Developers have very little to do with what your referring to. Wrapping basic information in 300 MB of images and stupid glitzy effects is a marketing thing.

Re:What a clusterfuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally speaking, Developers have very little to do with what your referring to. Wrapping basic information in [...] stupid glitzy effects is a marketing thing.

Thanks for explaining. The problem with this explaination is that now sites reliant on scripting or plugins for basic info or functionality (eg: slashdots d2) make even less sense.

Re:What a clusterfuck!

[Eskarel]

Note, I'm not talking about stuff like RIA, or instances of what might be referred to a "gold plating", I'm talking about when you have three paragraphs of text and have to get through a gigantic flash animation to get there.

The reality of life is that the internet has moved on quite a bit from the old plain old text days, and they're not coming back.

Some people don't like that, but it's the truth. AJAX isn't going anywhere.

Desktop edition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't they make a desktop version that's faster.

Dead wrong sunshine

[Anonymous Coward]

None of my system have Slitherblight installed and they never will. I use a mix of Windows, OSX & Linux.
Until Microsoft understand that the real world is no longer MS Centric and makes it available for every platform commonly in use they won't get the market share/locking they desire. This will however requie a lot of pain on MS's part. After all Linux is evil isn't it?

IMO, outside the US Silverlight has very little take up. I won't visit a site that requires it and I am not alone in telling the owners of those sites that they have lost a customer.
Not that Flash is any better. I also avoid flash ridden sites. I have even been known to resort to a text based browser to use a few sites.

Re:Dead wrong sunshine

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Microsoft understand that the real world is no longer MS Centric and makes it available for every platform commonly in use they won't get the market share/locking they desire. This will however requie a lot of pain on MS's part. After all Linux is evil isn't it?

Why don't you just say 'OSS Fail'? MS develops the runtime for their platform, Novell/OSS develops the runtime for linux.

Re:Dead wrong sunshine

[Anonymous Coward]

None of my system have Slitherblight installed and they never will. I use a mix of Windows, OSX & Linux.

That idiotic absolutist attitude is what inhibits progress, why should they cater to you when you clearly have no interest in them for no rational reason anyway?

I won't visit a site that requires it and I am not alone in telling the owners of those sites that they have lost a customer.

Well with both of you doing it surely one day someone will notice.

I also avoid flash ridden sites.

Good for you.

I have even been known to resort to a text based browser to use a few sites.

wow, you've actually been known to do that?!

Amaya someone?

[Herve5]

Er, do I understand correctly that this "maquetta" is a closed version of the open, W3C-compliant Amaya software that exists since 1996?
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

Re:Amaya someone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since it isn't closed, that part of the statement is wrong.

One could make the argument that it is similar in intent and that the javascript/html5 implementation is not so important. I do get the feeling that this "Maquetta" might have a bit more explicit focus on the more 'dynamic' aspects of pages (i.e. the javascript 'magic' in conjunction with canvases and such) than Amaya has had, hence drawing the comparison to Flash and Silverlight based tools. In essence, a whole lot of people were declaring near irrelevance of Flash in the face of HTML5+Javascript, but mostly without a credible open development environment to back it up, and this purports to be that environment.

File handling security

[kiwix]

I don't want any web page to be allowed to read all my files!

My browser is allowed to read my files, but code from a third-party (Flash, Javascript, Java, or anything else) should always go through a trusted dialog to let me select with files it can read. If the Flash plugin actually allows third party code to manipulate files, I'm going to remove it right away...

IBM lose its balls or what?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

We should try an IBM service when its not being slashdotted... IBM, self proclaimed enterprise, cloud, IT leader... Is that a joke?

Re:IBM lose its balls or what?

[Cryacin]

No, a joke is, how do you spell IBM?

b-o-a-t-space-a-n-c-h-o-r

Yes, but

[HermDog]

is it genuine Microsoft Native HTML5?

Safari?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't seem to work on Safari at all. Won't load images. Broken URLS for the tools, and it won't even load the samples

answer to flash?

[perryizgr8]

is this supposed to be an answer to flash? if yes, then these guys have utterly failed. flash is orders of magnitude easier than this, faster than this and does things these guys can't even attempt to imagine. in flash when i create a new file, i get a toolbox on the left (like photoshop), i can select the paintbrush tool, right click on it to change its size and start drawing. i can click on the next frame and draw again, create a tween between them. honestly, this maqetta thing doesn't seem to be built with the purpose of replacing flash.

Flash vs HTML5

[itsdapead]

What people dont understand is that HTML5 is great for video, but when it comes to complex interactive video/animation (what flash is good at doing) you will need to have javascript in order to handle it.

That's what I meant by "What's lacking currently is (a) nice development tools similar to Flash Pro or Flex". HTML5+DOM+ECMAScript+SVG+AJAX should be able to deliver similar functionality to the Flash player - but currently you do have to code it from scratch in Javascript (although libraries like Dojo already do a lot of the heavy lifting) and browser support (esp. for SVG) is still a pain.

Of course, even in Flash you still end up needing to code the clever stuff in ActionScript - which is a descendant of Javascript (ActionScript 1 was ECMAScript but its diverged since, but mainly with syntactic sugar for pseudo-class-based OOP). True, Flash's bulit-in objects are higher-level and easier to use than the HTML/SVG DOM, but later releases of Flash seem to have added more ActionScript-based application framework stuff over that, so its more analogous to using something like Dojo on top of "HTML5". In fact, what has ticked me off is Adobe's tendency to ship a half-baked Actionscript Application Framework with one release and then, rather than fully baking it in the next release, come up with a new half baked AF, probably dependent on a new, not-entirely-backwards-compatible version of Actionscript. That, and using a different AF for Flex (so its a pain to mix Flex and Flash)...

Re: consistency of Flash

[neonsignal]

Consistent across all platforms that start with 'W'.