Without knowing more about the extension, it's hard to say why it did what it did. All I can say is this: Youtube added MP4 versions of the files when Apple asked for a non-Flash solution. For quite some time, the MP4s were the only "high quality" Youtube files available. Even today, high quality FLVs are not always generated. Your plugin may be configured to attempt to obtain the highest quality movie. Depending on whether or not an HQ version of the FLV is available, it may end up pulling the FLV or the MP4.
The only reason it can't play it in IE8 is because the fucking website creator hasn't updated the tags.
What tags would those be? If you're thinking that the website detects the web browser, you'd be as far from wrong as you could possibly be. The site follows the standards and detects features. If the features it needs don't exist, you get redirected to that page.
Of course, the only web browser in existence capable of reading that page and simultaneously failing the test is IE. (All versions.) Which says a lot about Microsoft's "commitment to standards" (*turns head and spits*), doesn't it?
That may be because it refuses to let IE even try.
Oh, it lets IE try. IE just fails miserably. If you look at the code, you'll see that there's a check for features, not the browser. IE can't be used, because it fails at:
- DOM2 Events - Canvas support - Opacity - Speed
Technically, the game would let IE through if it could support only the first two. But it doesn't. So, the game fails it. Without the check, all you see is a user-unfriendly white screen. (Because IE doesn't support Canvas.)
What sort of fucked up crap is that?
That's an apt description of IE if I ever heard one.
Real-time Chroma-Key replacement of fire/plasma on a video? Can't say I've ever seen that. It's pretty old school prior to Flash, though. That's why I picked it.;)
dissolves/wipes/transitions are child's play
From one video to the next, without frame dropouts or odd visual artifacts? I know you can do it to Flash animations, but I've never seen it done to two videos playing in Flash. I would be dutifully impressed if you could do it. The most I've seen is performing a dissolve by fading the alpha out on one movie to let the next one take its place.
Not sure if it could be done automatically or not, as far as I know in SFX it's usually done by hand
It can be done if you have some sort of point that you're able to track. A more common example of real-time special effects would be the lines painted into football fields on TV. Through a combination of camera positioning and image analysis, they're able to make the line look incredibly natural even during fast-moving sequences.
Also that's assuming IE also adds support for these new features
There's no need to assume IE support. We're getting close to 40% alternative browsers already. With the features available in the latest batch, it's only a matter of time before sites stop providing certain features to IE users. Many websites are already allowing their sites to degrade or not operate for IE6 users, and there's a growing movement to do away with IE support altogether.
And by doing away with IE support, I mean not support any browser that doesn't have the necessary features to view the site in question. We learned enough from the last browser war to know that browser detection is a bad idea. Ergo, Microsoft could rejoin the fray if they get their standards support correct, but I just don't see it happening anytime soon. Right now Microsoft is doing everything possible to put the brakes on useful progress of standards. So much that they're willing to bleed off the home userbase in exchange for maintaining the corporate userbase. Thankfully, it's not working. Standards browsers are starting to steamroll Microsoft's marketshare. It's now only a matter of time.
I'm just allergic to bullshit so I try to combat it wherever and whenever I see it.
Which is to say that you're unwilling to see the other side of the issue. You'd rather find some way to slip an argument through the needle?
Whether or not IE's addins are good or completely suck, whether or not there exists an ad-blocker addin for IE, the simple fact of the matter is that IE *does* have addins, and *has* had addins for longer than Firefox has existed.
Only if you're nitpicking language. Firefox add-ins are technologically similar in principle to what IE is capable of, but not the same at all from a user's perspective. From a user's perspective, they open the add-on manager, search for something cool, install it, and get new features in their browser that are embedded deep into its function. With IE, they can get a toolbar installed with various software (often whether intended to install it or not) that adds more useless buttons for them to click. How is the experience even remotely comparable? And some functionality is presented as an ActiveX control or ActiveX plugin. Which is yet another different thing that the user doesn't associate.
Sort of. The price is for the development equipment + software + ongoing support. (The latter of which I believe includes regular publications from Nintendo on the latest ways to make the best use of the hardware.) It's still more expensive than iPhone development, but not really enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
The bigger issue is that Nintendo picks and chooses who can be in the program. Which limits WiiWare and DSiWare to established developers rather than Joe Blow.
However, I will expand on the topic and say that the method used in HTML5 is a lot more flexible. Basically, you dump the image data of every frame to a Canvas object, then manipulate it any way you want. You can replace the background with real-time fire/plasma, transition videos using dissolves, iris wipes, clock wipes, invisible wipes, etc., or even add special effects to the scene in real-time. (I can just see the lightsaber videos now...) Basically, the browser could end up being the next video editing studio. And it will be able to accomplish far more than Flash can today.:-)
Not in the slightest. Nintendo has been operating their Wii online store since before the iPhone App Store was a gleam in Jobs' eye. Their DSiWare track appears to be something they've been working on for some time. The iPhone App store and the DSiWare store are coincidental competitors, not reactive competitors. i.e. Nintendo no more reacted to the iPhone than Apple reacted to WiiWare.
But can someone explain to me how IE toolbars (which IE8 does support) *aren't* add-ins?
Because they don't do jack to modify the behavior of the browser?
Find me the toolbar that gives IE support for:
- Selective blocking of advertisements - Experimental 3D Canvas - DOM Inspection - Preview page on link hover - 3D Bookmark management - Sidebar preview of tabs - FTP Manager - Warning of Site Tracking scripts
These are expansions to *core* browser functionality. Toolbars don't do that. ActiveX plugins do, but there's no real ecosystem around ActiveX these days. (In fact, it seems like everyone's trying to figure out how to get rid of it.)
BTW, when did you become a Microsoft apologist Blakey? I've been noticing you coming out in support of IE at every opportunity. I can't figure out why for the life of me.
Nonsense. Every browser EXCEPT IE can play the game in my sig. That's not the only example of such complete and total rendering failures on Microsoft's part.
Why would rendering take a back seat to convenience? If you can't view the page, all the convenience in the world isn't going to help you.
You know that kid who rushes to the top of the hill, just knowing that he's finally going to win King of the Hill for the first time ever? Then when he gets to the top of the hill, he's elated when he realizes he's at the top... only to realize a few moments later that all the other kids ran up a different hill?
Actually, there was no intersection whatsoever. The closest they got was that most of the browsers would support OGG natively, and Safari would support OGG through a Quicktime plugin. There is good news, however. The spec is designed to fall back from one format to the next. So if I have an OGG video file, I can have an MP4 fallback. I'd need two video files on the server (not so different from today's FLV/MP4 situation on Youtube, but the browser would work out which video it can show.
Click "Play", then mess with the "Chroma Key", "Invert", and "Mute" buttons to your heart's delight.
(The video is a random green screen video pulled off of Youtube.)
Note that this should work in Safari 4 with the OGG plugin. Unfortunately, the OGG plugin is out of date for Windows. It would be easy to configure MP4 as a fallback for Safari, but I haven't gotten that far yet.:P
Reader Al notes too that "Google has launched Chrome Experiments, a site where Javascript coders can upload projects that make use of Chrome's speed and processing abilities. The site already features a handful of cool 'experiments' including a balls that jump between browser windows, a gravitationally-challenged version of the Google homepage and a game that runs through nine different browsers. It's cool stuff alright, but some experts wonder whether browser security might be a more important thing to focus on."
Here's my comment about real-time Chroma-Key replacement in Firefox.
That's because register-based interpreters are faster than stack-based interpreters. Generally speaking, the fewer instructions you run in a bytecode interpreter, the faster it will execute. That is the argument made in the paper posted by mj41 above.
When you throw a JIT into the mix, things change rapidly. You stop being concerned about the interpreter speed and begin worrying more about machine code optimizations. What's good for the goose may be good for the gander, but what's good for the interpreter is not always good for the JIT.
Interestingly, there is only one Javascript JIT in wide distribution at the moment. That is Chrome's V8. Tamarin is also used in Flash 9 & 10 and is expected in future versions of Firefox.
Unfortunately, JITs are much more resource intensive to develop and maintain than interpreters. Thus a small company like Opera isn't going to make a JIT their first priority. A fast interpreter makes a lot more sense from their perspective. Especially when the Javascript engine spends the vast majority of its time in native APIs.
Don't let the small video size fool you. I've managed much larger videos thanks to TraceMonkey's high performance. In doing my own experiments, I realized that they shrunk the final product so that areas where the color wasn't being properly replaced (or worse yet, reflections from poor camera technique) wouldn't be as visible.
One of the cooler ones I saw for Firefox 3.1b3 was real-time chroma-key replacement* in video. (i.e. The blue screen technique) Does anyone know if this new version of Chrome supports the video tag yet? I've been doing experiments with real-time video effects in Firefox, but I'd like to start ensuring that they're cross browser.
* I did my own version of the Chroma-Key replacement that ran a Javascript function for each pixel. It managed real-time playback even on slower PCs!
Slashdot Mirror
Without knowing more about the extension, it's hard to say why it did what it did. All I can say is this: Youtube added MP4 versions of the files when Apple asked for a non-Flash solution. For quite some time, the MP4s were the only "high quality" Youtube files available. Even today, high quality FLVs are not always generated. Your plugin may be configured to attempt to obtain the highest quality movie. Depending on whether or not an HQ version of the FLV is available, it may end up pulling the FLV or the MP4.
Wait. What? I have no idea what you're talking about. Sounds like an IE8 feature gone wrong to me.
What tags would those be? If you're thinking that the website detects the web browser, you'd be as far from wrong as you could possibly be. The site follows the standards and detects features. If the features it needs don't exist, you get redirected to that page.
Of course, the only web browser in existence capable of reading that page and simultaneously failing the test is IE. (All versions.) Which says a lot about Microsoft's "commitment to standards" (*turns head and spits*), doesn't it?
Oh, it lets IE try. IE just fails miserably. If you look at the code, you'll see that there's a check for features, not the browser. IE can't be used, because it fails at:
- DOM2 Events
- Canvas support
- Opacity
- Speed
Technically, the game would let IE through if it could support only the first two. But it doesn't. So, the game fails it. Without the check, all you see is a user-unfriendly white screen. (Because IE doesn't support Canvas.)
That's an apt description of IE if I ever heard one.
Real-time Chroma-Key replacement of fire/plasma on a video? Can't say I've ever seen that. It's pretty old school prior to Flash, though. That's why I picked it. ;)
From one video to the next, without frame dropouts or odd visual artifacts? I know you can do it to Flash animations, but I've never seen it done to two videos playing in Flash. I would be dutifully impressed if you could do it. The most I've seen is performing a dissolve by fading the alpha out on one movie to let the next one take its place.
It can be done if you have some sort of point that you're able to track. A more common example of real-time special effects would be the lines painted into football fields on TV. Through a combination of camera positioning and image analysis, they're able to make the line look incredibly natural even during fast-moving sequences.
There's no need to assume IE support. We're getting close to 40% alternative browsers already. With the features available in the latest batch, it's only a matter of time before sites stop providing certain features to IE users. Many websites are already allowing their sites to degrade or not operate for IE6 users, and there's a growing movement to do away with IE support altogether.
And by doing away with IE support, I mean not support any browser that doesn't have the necessary features to view the site in question. We learned enough from the last browser war to know that browser detection is a bad idea. Ergo, Microsoft could rejoin the fray if they get their standards support correct, but I just don't see it happening anytime soon. Right now Microsoft is doing everything possible to put the brakes on useful progress of standards. So much that they're willing to bleed off the home userbase in exchange for maintaining the corporate userbase. Thankfully, it's not working. Standards browsers are starting to steamroll Microsoft's marketshare. It's now only a matter of time.
Nope. It comes with the DSi. What you can't do is run the old version that required the memory cartridge.
Then again, why would you want to?
Which is to say that you're unwilling to see the other side of the issue. You'd rather find some way to slip an argument through the needle?
Only if you're nitpicking language. Firefox add-ins are technologically similar in principle to what IE is capable of, but not the same at all from a user's perspective. From a user's perspective, they open the add-on manager, search for something cool, install it, and get new features in their browser that are embedded deep into its function. With IE, they can get a toolbar installed with various software (often whether intended to install it or not) that adds more useless buttons for them to click. How is the experience even remotely comparable? And some functionality is presented as an ActiveX control or ActiveX plugin. Which is yet another different thing that the user doesn't associate.
Basically, Internet Explorer has nothing like this catalog: https://addons.mozilla.org/
That's what a user believes. And they're more or less correct from the perspective they're looking at it.
Slight misspeak on my part. It's 3D Tab Management I was thinking of.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8879
3D bookmark management is a different browser. ;-)
Works fine on the Mac. And since it uses OGG, it should work fine on Linux, too.
Sort of. The price is for the development equipment + software + ongoing support. (The latter of which I believe includes regular publications from Nintendo on the latest ways to make the best use of the hardware.) It's still more expensive than iPhone development, but not really enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
The bigger issue is that Nintendo picks and chooses who can be in the program. Which limits WiiWare and DSiWare to established developers rather than Joe Blow.
Fair enough. Thanks for pointing that out!
However, I will expand on the topic and say that the method used in HTML5 is a lot more flexible. Basically, you dump the image data of every frame to a Canvas object, then manipulate it any way you want. You can replace the background with real-time fire/plasma, transition videos using dissolves, iris wipes, clock wipes, invisible wipes, etc., or even add special effects to the scene in real-time. (I can just see the lightsaber videos now...) Basically, the browser could end up being the next video editing studio. And it will be able to accomplish far more than Flash can today. :-)
~$2,000 last I checked. The price isn't the problem, it's getting into the program that's the problem.
Sorry about that. One of these days I should really add the ability to redefine the keys.
On the bright side, it will work fine on a Wii... ;-)
Not in the slightest. Nintendo has been operating their Wii online store since before the iPhone App Store was a gleam in Jobs' eye. Their DSiWare track appears to be something they've been working on for some time. The iPhone App store and the DSiWare store are coincidental competitors, not reactive competitors. i.e. Nintendo no more reacted to the iPhone than Apple reacted to WiiWare.
Because they don't do jack to modify the behavior of the browser?
Find me the toolbar that gives IE support for:
- Selective blocking of advertisements
- Experimental 3D Canvas
- DOM Inspection
- Preview page on link hover
- 3D Bookmark management
- Sidebar preview of tabs
- FTP Manager
- Warning of Site Tracking scripts
These are expansions to *core* browser functionality. Toolbars don't do that. ActiveX plugins do, but there's no real ecosystem around ActiveX these days. (In fact, it seems like everyone's trying to figure out how to get rid of it.)
BTW, when did you become a Microsoft apologist Blakey? I've been noticing you coming out in support of IE at every opportunity. I can't figure out why for the life of me.
Nonsense. Every browser EXCEPT IE can play the game in my sig. That's not the only example of such complete and total rendering failures on Microsoft's part.
Why would rendering take a back seat to convenience? If you can't view the page, all the convenience in the world isn't going to help you.
You know that kid who rushes to the top of the hill, just knowing that he's finally going to win King of the Hill for the first time ever? Then when he gets to the top of the hill, he's elated when he realizes he's at the top... only to realize a few moments later that all the other kids ran up a different hill?
That's Microsoft.
Actually, there was no intersection whatsoever. The closest they got was that most of the browsers would support OGG natively, and Safari would support OGG through a Quicktime plugin. There is good news, however. The spec is designed to fall back from one format to the next. So if I have an OGG video file, I can have an MP4 fallback. I'd need two video files on the server (not so different from today's FLV/MP4 situation on Youtube, but the browser would work out which video it can show.
If you have Firefox 3.1:
http://tinyvid.tv/
Real time Chroma-Key replacement: https://developer.mozilla.org/samples/video/chroma-key/index.xhtml
(Let's see you do THAT in Flash!)
Please be gentle with my server, but here's my own Chroma-Key experiments for Firefox 3.1b3:
http://iambatman.homeip.net/html5/index.xhtml
Click "Play", then mess with the "Chroma Key", "Invert", and "Mute" buttons to your heart's delight.
(The video is a random green screen video pulled off of Youtube.)
Note that this should work in Safari 4 with the OGG plugin. Unfortunately, the OGG plugin is out of date for Windows. It would be easy to configure MP4 as a fallback for Safari, but I haven't gotten that far yet. :P
This was reported on yesterday: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/18/2128256
Here's my comment about real-time Chroma-Key replacement in Firefox.
That's because register-based interpreters are faster than stack-based interpreters. Generally speaking, the fewer instructions you run in a bytecode interpreter, the faster it will execute. That is the argument made in the paper posted by mj41 above.
When you throw a JIT into the mix, things change rapidly. You stop being concerned about the interpreter speed and begin worrying more about machine code optimizations. What's good for the goose may be good for the gander, but what's good for the interpreter is not always good for the JIT.
Interestingly, there is only one Javascript JIT in wide distribution at the moment. That is Chrome's V8. Tamarin is also used in Flash 9 & 10 and is expected in future versions of Firefox.
Unfortunately, JITs are much more resource intensive to develop and maintain than interpreters. Thus a small company like Opera isn't going to make a JIT their first priority. A fast interpreter makes a lot more sense from their perspective. Especially when the Javascript engine spends the vast majority of its time in native APIs.
How can I be lying when there's evidence in the post immediately above you?
I looked up the Firefox 3.1b3 experiments in case anyone is interested. Here's the experiment itself:
https://developer.mozilla.org/samples/video/chroma-key/index.xhtml
Here's the page explaining the experiment:
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Manipulating_video_using_canvas
Don't let the small video size fool you. I've managed much larger videos thanks to TraceMonkey's high performance. In doing my own experiments, I realized that they shrunk the final product so that areas where the color wasn't being properly replaced (or worse yet, reflections from poor camera technique) wouldn't be as visible.
One of the cooler ones I saw for Firefox 3.1b3 was real-time chroma-key replacement* in video. (i.e. The blue screen technique) Does anyone know if this new version of Chrome supports the video tag yet? I've been doing experiments with real-time video effects in Firefox, but I'd like to start ensuring that they're cross browser.
* I did my own version of the Chroma-Key replacement that ran a Javascript function for each pixel. It managed real-time playback even on slower PCs!
I think the answer has something to do with a Poser model, a government mainframe, and a freak electrical storm...
As I recall, Que was a tech-book publisher. Not sure if they're still around or not.
In defense of your friend, I once spelled segue as segway. :-P
(But not in Scrabble.)