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1. Initial reaction: Quick, upgrade Adobe from “Sell” to “Don’t Buy”! (This is an Arrested Development reference, but I mean it literally.) They seem to be fin

by alanh 16y ago

1. Initial reaction: Quick, upgrade Adobe from “Sell” to “Don’t Buy”! (This is an Arrested Development reference, but I mean it literally.) They seem to be finally realizing that, hey, Flash really isn’t going to be everywhere anymore. 2. The demo is in Flash, so I haven’t seen it. (EDIT: This assumption is wrong, but the observation holds:) But looking at everything else Adobe has done with “HTML5” so far, I’m going to assume it’s basically exporting Flash to <canvas>. Which is, yes, HTML5, but <canvas> is no more a replacement for real HTML — you know, tags and semantic markup — than Flash is; you miss out on accessibility (often), SEO, graceful degradation, etc., and it sucks CPU cycles almost as much as Flash, because you’re drawing individual pixels in JavaScript.

daeken 16y ago
You really should actually watch it before passing judgement. It does not seem to compile down to <canvas> -- it may use it for some bits, but they emphasize that CSS transformations and transitions are being used in a few different key places. It seems that it really does use HTML5, not just a canvas.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - cloudwalking 16y ago
    If you click the link you can watch the video. I don't think they are preventing you from watching. Edit: If you're not running Flash, you're preventing yourself from watching. Or Apple is. Either way, Adobe is offering you both the content and the decoder for free.
    - alanh 16y ago
      It’s an optional plugin, unavailable on many devices and in 64-bit browsers. Do you know which I’m using? In fact, a non-technical user just today was telling me that they can’t use YouTube in Internet Explorer because, in their words, “It says to install Flash. But then it says something about unavailable in 64-bit.” Isn’t this the whole point of Adobe starting to make tools that don’t require Flash? Going from 90%+ to 100% (of browsers)? So Adobe talking about their HTML5 future while failing to 1. Link to a movie file, 2. Use HTML5 video, or 3. Provide a text equivalent is head-in-the-sand oxymoronic activity that does prevent some users from viewing it.
      - jayphelps 16y ago
        It is quite humorous that they demo it with Flash only. Maybe they should have made their page using their own HTML5 video widget they just released? =)
    - jimbojohn 16y ago
      Apple gets the press, but there is no Flash on 98% of cellphones in the wild. Or IE8 64-bit. Or Linux in 64-bit. What about people who only own a cell phone (VERY common in other countries)? What is Adobe offering them? Stop assuming everyone is a rich technophile.
- WesleyJohnson 16y ago
  I'd have to agree, I was pretty impressed. I paused it in a couple of instances when they were showing the HTML source view and I didn't see any canvas tags. Obviously they could be added dynamically via JavaScript, but that doesn't seem to be the case as you've said. And to back up your statements, they did stress CSS transformations and there is a DOM view which clearly shows him editing DOM elements which when matched with the source code view implies pure HTML. My hope would be that they'd leverage jQuery to handle the actual dirty work of doing the transformations and focus on the tooling and timeline, though I'd imagine it's too early to know if that's case or they'll be rolling their own scripts. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't made a tool like this for jQuery. I know jQuery and jQueryUI have basic animation support and likely some plugins that build and extend those features, but a dedicated tool for creating advanced timeline and event based animations would be amazing.
  - DjDarkman 16y ago
    Until we get rid of most IE versions, we can't really reliably produce animation in web applications. I have built a very simple image cross-fade effect. I most of my time making it IE compatible.
    - WesleyJohnson 16y ago
      I would guess it depends what type of animation you're trying to tackle. jQuery has some pretty slick animation capabilities and it supports IE 6.0+. My point, though not complaint, was that it's more geared towards executing a single animation against a single DOM element or a group of DOM elements. This is incredibly powerful, but when you want to start chaining animations, or "firing" off additional animations when you're mid cycle on your first animation - it gets tricky. For example doing something like... $("#myDiv").animate({top: 50}, 1000, function(){ $("#myDiv").animate({left: 50}, 1000) }); Would move "myDiv" down from 0 to 50 over 1 second and then move it right from 0 to 50 over 1 second. But if I wanted to trigger the left -> right animation midway between the top -> bottom animation there isn't an easy way to do that as far as I know. Currently you'd have to create two top -> bottom animations and split up the distance and duration so you can interject the secondary animation. $("#myDiv").animate({top: 25}, 500, function(){ $("#myDiv").animate({left: 50}, 1000); $("#myDiv").animate({top: 50}, 500) }); That or just execute the 2nd one with a timeout independent of the first... $("#myDiv").animate({top: 50}, 1000); window.setTimeout($("#myDiv").animate({left: 50}, 1000), 500); Neither of those "solutions" are terribly difficult, but it gets more and more complex when you start building on it. If Adobe's EDGE or another set of tools would give you the ability to do this easily, I'd happily pay for it. Anyway, I suppose I'm getting off topic. :)

by alanh 16y ago

daeken 16y ago

You really should actually watch it before passing judgement. It does not seem to compile down to <canvas> -- it may use it for some bits, but they emphasize that CSS transformations and transitions are being used in a few different key places. It seems that it really does use HTML5, not just a canvas.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- cloudwalking 16y ago
  If you click the link you can watch the video. I don't think they are preventing you from watching. Edit: If you're not running Flash, you're preventing yourself from watching. Or Apple is. Either way, Adobe is offering you both the content and the decoder for free.
  - alanh 16y ago
    It’s an optional plugin, unavailable on many devices and in 64-bit browsers. Do you know which I’m using? In fact, a non-technical user just today was telling me that they can’t use YouTube in Internet Explorer because, in their words, “It says to install Flash. But then it says something about unavailable in 64-bit.” Isn’t this the whole point of Adobe starting to make tools that don’t require Flash? Going from 90%+ to 100% (of browsers)? So Adobe talking about their HTML5 future while failing to 1. Link to a movie file, 2. Use HTML5 video, or 3. Provide a text equivalent is head-in-the-sand oxymoronic activity that does prevent some users from viewing it.
    - jayphelps 16y ago
      It is quite humorous that they demo it with Flash only. Maybe they should have made their page using their own HTML5 video widget they just released? =)
  - jimbojohn 16y ago
    Apple gets the press, but there is no Flash on 98% of cellphones in the wild. Or IE8 64-bit. Or Linux in 64-bit. What about people who only own a cell phone (VERY common in other countries)? What is Adobe offering them? Stop assuming everyone is a rich technophile.
WesleyJohnson 16y ago
I'd have to agree, I was pretty impressed. I paused it in a couple of instances when they were showing the HTML source view and I didn't see any canvas tags. Obviously they could be added dynamically via JavaScript, but that doesn't seem to be the case as you've said. And to back up your statements, they did stress CSS transformations and there is a DOM view which clearly shows him editing DOM elements which when matched with the source code view implies pure HTML. My hope would be that they'd leverage jQuery to handle the actual dirty work of doing the transformations and focus on the tooling and timeline, though I'd imagine it's too early to know if that's case or they'll be rolling their own scripts. I'm actually surprised someone hasn't made a tool like this for jQuery. I know jQuery and jQueryUI have basic animation support and likely some plugins that build and extend those features, but a dedicated tool for creating advanced timeline and event based animations would be amazing.
- DjDarkman 16y ago
  Until we get rid of most IE versions, we can't really reliably produce animation in web applications. I have built a very simple image cross-fade effect. I most of my time making it IE compatible.
  - WesleyJohnson 16y ago
    I would guess it depends what type of animation you're trying to tackle. jQuery has some pretty slick animation capabilities and it supports IE 6.0+. My point, though not complaint, was that it's more geared towards executing a single animation against a single DOM element or a group of DOM elements. This is incredibly powerful, but when you want to start chaining animations, or "firing" off additional animations when you're mid cycle on your first animation - it gets tricky. For example doing something like... $("#myDiv").animate({top: 50}, 1000, function(){ $("#myDiv").animate({left: 50}, 1000) }); Would move "myDiv" down from 0 to 50 over 1 second and then move it right from 0 to 50 over 1 second. But if I wanted to trigger the left -> right animation midway between the top -> bottom animation there isn't an easy way to do that as far as I know. Currently you'd have to create two top -> bottom animations and split up the distance and duration so you can interject the secondary animation. $("#myDiv").animate({top: 25}, 500, function(){ $("#myDiv").animate({left: 50}, 1000); $("#myDiv").animate({top: 50}, 500) }); That or just execute the 2nd one with a timeout independent of the first... $("#myDiv").animate({top: 50}, 1000); window.setTimeout($("#myDiv").animate({left: 50}, 1000), 500); Neither of those "solutions" are terribly difficult, but it gets more and more complex when you start building on it. If Adobe's EDGE or another set of tools would give you the ability to do this easily, I'd happily pay for it. Anyway, I suppose I'm getting off topic. :)