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FYI, this demo silently fails on the current Safari version in OS X 10.6.7. On Chrome and Firefox it renders a mesh in the top right hand corner of the page. Wh

FYI, this demo silently fails on the current Safari version in OS X 10.6.7. On Chrome and Firefox it renders a mesh in the top right hand corner of the page. Whilst I acknowledge the authors says "Various browsers will have glitches with this hack, as it's really a severe and gross hack", I'm getting rather tired of these examples that are, at best, domain specific browser kludges rather than general interesting cases of HTML/JS usage. By these standards, the much derided IE specific features were a great thing for the web. Welcome to HTML 5, where "Best viewed in XXX" is the old new rage. I thought we'd left this behind in 2005?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jlongster 15y ago
It simply uses CSS3 properties according to the standard. As CSS3 is not fully supported yet, this hasn't been fully tested across browsers, and just needs whatever proprietary tags to work (-webkit-*, etc.).
- archgrove 15y ago
  If only. It also uses chunks of WebGL (ArrayBuffer etc). Removing these dependencies makes it mostly work in Safari (the 404 example, for example, renders fine when using fallbacks to the standard JavaScript arrays). My big problem with the state of web programming at the moment is that people are generating these examples which, despite being based on "standards", are virtually worthless to anyone much outside of nightly build users. Some of these "standards" (i.e. WebSockets) are so ill-concived that they get rolled into one browser release, before being rolled out of the next when found to be flawed. These things are not "standards" - they're browser makers playing around with ideas. Similarly, this example (whilst cool) is not CSS3 - it's CSS 3 plus selection of other supra-bleeding edge stuff that wasn't needed to demonstrate the issue. Whilst I generally applaud using cutting edge technologies, the entire point of the web (to me) is interoperability. As we seem to move more and more towards "This works fine if you're in Chrome, others may vary", I'm claiming that this is not the web any more than "You need Java 1.X.Y" or "Viewed best in IE 6" was. It's a custom delivery platform for content that happens to piggy-back on HTML, draped in a guise respectability via rushed out and hacked together concepts that many will never implement (as by the time someone's finally got around to doing it, they're onto v(X + 3) of the "standard"). Sigh, I sound about 30 years older than I am. However, having been involved in real standardisation where we strive to create something stable and reusable, these types of examples make HTML 5 look a melange of disparate and barely interoperable concepts. This is not intended as specific slight to the creator of this stuff - it's a cool and admitted hack. It's more a mild rant on the state of web development and the disconect between the technorati and people who actually try and create; not even things for the IE6 users - things for users of browsers less than than 6 months old (and possibly more than 6 months into the future of the browser it currently works on).
  - jlongster 15y ago
    All I have to do is check if ArrayBuffer exists, and if not fallback to normal arrays. That's not WebGL, it's typed arrays. What else does it depend on? It depends fully on standards which are currently being implemented. It works in Firefox and Chrome, and can easily be made to work in Opera (and I think IE9 too) by using the "-o" css3 prefixes.
  - daleharvey 15y ago
    its impossible to progress without breaking standards, tech demos are the perfect place to do that.
  - grovulent 15y ago
    I'm starting to move more and more away from this point of view. I can see much of the merit in it - but have come to think that drawing some kind of uncrossable line at the browser level that demands uniformity is ultimately arbitrary. Why shouldn't browser vendors innovate at the cutting edge? Why shouldn't application developers have to make a choice between platforms just like they have to at any other layer of the big grand tree of tech? I know it wouldn't be popular among folks who want to build enormous websites that centralise distribution of media etc... and mega-corporations that rely on such mass distribution... but I'm all for a kind of severe nominalisation of the web where technologies are allowed to freely develop to serve smaller and highly targeted niches. I can understand the desire to have one platform that works for everything... If there was just one smartphone platform in existence at any one time that'd be great too from that point of view. Reaching the masses would then be a snap! But I guess I've never really understood the argument for this rigorous standardisation of the web platform. At least, I've never understood what people think is special about the web such that this standardisation is an absolute must - beyond the view that people are too lazy to use multiple browsers. It's ironic because no one believes that there should be one single smartphone platform - yet it's a hell of a lot harder for people to switch platforms if there is an app on one that they particularly want to use. It takes 30 seconds to install a new browser - a couple of seconds to launch - if you need to switch. What am I not getting here?
    - yuhong 15y ago
duopixel 15y ago
Make sure you check the SVG/Raphael link on the top right corner, which is the same sample done with SVG.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jlongster 15y ago
I just added Safari support, btw. It just took a couple minutes to use to "-webkit-gradient" property instead and check for types array support in the vector library. Opera support is coming in the next minute, too.
- jlongster 15y ago
  And Opera support is done.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jlongster 15y ago

It simply uses CSS3 properties according to the standard. As CSS3 is not fully supported yet, this hasn't been fully tested across browsers, and just needs whatever proprietary tags to work (-webkit-*, etc.).

archgrove 15y ago
If only. It also uses chunks of WebGL (ArrayBuffer etc). Removing these dependencies makes it mostly work in Safari (the 404 example, for example, renders fine when using fallbacks to the standard JavaScript arrays). My big problem with the state of web programming at the moment is that people are generating these examples which, despite being based on "standards", are virtually worthless to anyone much outside of nightly build users. Some of these "standards" (i.e. WebSockets) are so ill-concived that they get rolled into one browser release, before being rolled out of the next when found to be flawed. These things are not "standards" - they're browser makers playing around with ideas. Similarly, this example (whilst cool) is not CSS3 - it's CSS 3 plus selection of other supra-bleeding edge stuff that wasn't needed to demonstrate the issue. Whilst I generally applaud using cutting edge technologies, the entire point of the web (to me) is interoperability. As we seem to move more and more towards "This works fine if you're in Chrome, others may vary", I'm claiming that this is not the web any more than "You need Java 1.X.Y" or "Viewed best in IE 6" was. It's a custom delivery platform for content that happens to piggy-back on HTML, draped in a guise respectability via rushed out and hacked together concepts that many will never implement (as by the time someone's finally got around to doing it, they're onto v(X + 3) of the "standard"). Sigh, I sound about 30 years older than I am. However, having been involved in real standardisation where we strive to create something stable and reusable, these types of examples make HTML 5 look a melange of disparate and barely interoperable concepts. This is not intended as specific slight to the creator of this stuff - it's a cool and admitted hack. It's more a mild rant on the state of web development and the disconect between the technorati and people who actually try and create; not even things for the IE6 users - things for users of browsers less than than 6 months old (and possibly more than 6 months into the future of the browser it currently works on).
- jlongster 15y ago
  All I have to do is check if ArrayBuffer exists, and if not fallback to normal arrays. That's not WebGL, it's typed arrays. What else does it depend on? It depends fully on standards which are currently being implemented. It works in Firefox and Chrome, and can easily be made to work in Opera (and I think IE9 too) by using the "-o" css3 prefixes.
- daleharvey 15y ago
  its impossible to progress without breaking standards, tech demos are the perfect place to do that.
- grovulent 15y ago
  I'm starting to move more and more away from this point of view. I can see much of the merit in it - but have come to think that drawing some kind of uncrossable line at the browser level that demands uniformity is ultimately arbitrary. Why shouldn't browser vendors innovate at the cutting edge? Why shouldn't application developers have to make a choice between platforms just like they have to at any other layer of the big grand tree of tech? I know it wouldn't be popular among folks who want to build enormous websites that centralise distribution of media etc... and mega-corporations that rely on such mass distribution... but I'm all for a kind of severe nominalisation of the web where technologies are allowed to freely develop to serve smaller and highly targeted niches. I can understand the desire to have one platform that works for everything... If there was just one smartphone platform in existence at any one time that'd be great too from that point of view. Reaching the masses would then be a snap! But I guess I've never really understood the argument for this rigorous standardisation of the web platform. At least, I've never understood what people think is special about the web such that this standardisation is an absolute must - beyond the view that people are too lazy to use multiple browsers. It's ironic because no one believes that there should be one single smartphone platform - yet it's a hell of a lot harder for people to switch platforms if there is an app on one that they particularly want to use. It takes 30 seconds to install a new browser - a couple of seconds to launch - if you need to switch. What am I not getting here?
  - yuhong 15y ago

duopixel 15y ago

Make sure you check the SVG/Raphael link on the top right corner, which is the same sample done with SVG.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jlongster 15y ago

I just added Safari support, btw. It just took a couple minutes to use to "-webkit-gradient" property instead and check for types array support in the vector library. Opera support is coming in the next minute, too.

jlongster 15y ago
And Opera support is done.