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At this point I'm beginning to doubt we'll ever actually get to a fully cross-browser web. We've had two broad reboot attempts (first to "XHTML+CSS", the curren

by jarek 15y ago

At this point I'm beginning to doubt we'll ever actually get to a fully cross-browser web. We've had two broad reboot attempts (first to "XHTML+CSS", the current one to "HTML5") and both times we ended up largely with a limited list of browsers and engines supported just as we had in the days of Netscape 4.x/IE4. The supported browsers are the cool browsers/engines of the day, which we then proceed to curse in three-four years. Only the names of the browsers change. Edit: heh, didn't even notice who I was replying to.

noduerme 15y ago
The cross browser web already exists. It's called AS3. The only reason it gets a lot of bad press is that no one wants to snuggle up to Adobe. Meanwhile everybody flails around pretending that HTML5+JS will solve the problem, when that was already a dinosaur five years ago, and as you said will never be supported uniformly across browsers. Edit: Here come the fanbois to downrate me. Consider your own karma. Downrating me does not change the facts on the ground. You cannot build a 3d racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. Can you??? If you can, seriously, respond instead of hitting that little down arrow, and I would love to see what combination of technologies you employ!
- CodeMage 15y ago
  Unfortunately, you are at least partially right. HTML5+JS might be an acceptable solution to lots of problems, but I don't see web game development moving away from stuff like Flash and Unity to a W3C standard. It probably has a lot to do with having to wait forever while the W3C labors to push any damn thing out.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I think you're getting downvoted for implying that something can be "cross-browser" that is locked into a single vendor. Your point is clear, but it exploits a nerdy little loophole in the definition of "cross-brwoser".
  - evilduck 15y ago
    Not only that, but Flash isn't perfectly "cross-platform" either. It's really only a great experience on Windows and 32 bit and a crapshoot everywhere else, it's still the major cause of browser crashes everywhere else, has struggled with 64 bit implementations, has a long history of sandbox security problems, and their feigned "open source" efforts where there's proprietary parts they don't document or release garners them few OSS friends, downgrades poorly, is a significant resource requirement overhead, and isn't very accessible by default (the standard swf you encounter will not be blind-user accessible). If Flash is the answer, we're in even worse shape than using HTML/JS.
  - noduerme 15y ago
    It's totally not a nerdy loophole. If Javascript 2 / ECMA-4 was available in most browsers, it would be exactly the wide-open cross platform flash experience everyone wants. It's just that the only implementation of that, right now, happens to be done by Adobe. The specs are open, there's nothing secret about it. There are open source alternative players (gnash, flowplayer, etc), and Adobe made Flex 3 free for devs which is all you need to write any kind of app you'd like. Look, the only reason there's ANY implementation of ECMA4 in the browser, i.e. Flash, is that a company which doesn't make a browser took it upon itself to create a plugin for all browsers that runs it. Now everyone hates them because it's "closed", which is ironic because IE's implementation of for example the matrix 'filter' -- just to pick one random thing -- is so ludicrously archaic and different from anything webkit, that there's zero, zip, nada, NO HOPE of those two things ever converging in a way that would let a single piece of code skew the same image in both browsers. Anyway, to other people -- I work on mac, and I write code for both canvas and as3. I wrote this: http://strikedisplay.blogspot.com http://strikedisplay.blogspot.com. Also wrote sexypolitics. Things are...what they are. You have to face reality and use the right tool for the job. And when JS2 comes out, sure I'll be there. 'Til then, long live Adobe. Beats the alternative Mozilla/Microsoft/Google mess.
- pornel 15y ago
  > The cross browser web already exists. It's called AS3. AS3 is not cross-AS3-player. Does it have two (or more) interoperable implementations? Can it run on platforms not supported by Adobe? While single-vendor closed-source plugin is strictly speaking cross-browser, it doesn't have things we want from "cross-browser" solutions: • freedom to run it on any computing platform (people run HTML+JS on their Amigas, because they can!), now and in the future (what if Adobe decides that maintenance of Flash Player is unprofitable? How useful would be archive.org in 20 years when none of supported platforms is alive?) • competition between implementations, so that if one stars sucking or does something user-hostile, competitors will take over (You don't have browsers with hidden hard-to-delete cross-site cookies — they compete on privacy features!) > You cannot build a 3d racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. There's a quite convincing proof of concept that you can: http://helloracer.com/webgl/ http://helloracer.com/webgl/ It doesn't work on iPhone and I'm not sure if it works 64-bit Linux, but that's not a problem, right? :)
  - statictype 15y ago
    You're misappropriating the term 'cross-browser'. It does not mean open-source or open. It means the technology will run across most browsers. And Flash does that. You have some valid points but none of them seem to refute the idea that Flash isn't cross-platform.
    - jarek 15y ago
      I hereby alter my grand-grandparent post to read "platform independent" rather than "cross-browser".
    - pornel 15y ago
      Does Firefox's IETab make ActiveX cross-browser? It runs in more than one browser chrome! …except it relies on one-vendor's binaries and is limited to platforms supported by the vendor — just like Flash. Even something that is "cross-browser" can have all negative aspects of a single-browser solution. My point is that for HTML cross-browser is not the goal in itself, it's only a way to ensure that technology is freely implementable by anybody, that content doesn't rely on bugs in one implementation, that fully-functional implementations can be available 10 and 100 years from now if necessary.
- Steko 15y ago
  "You cannot build a 3d racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. Can you??? If you can, seriously, respond instead of hitting that little down arrow, and I would love to see what combination of technologies you employ!" Just curious what disqualifies the easily googlable Mario Kart and Quake HTML ports?
yuhong 15y ago
I think it is just that it takes time for any new feature to mature enough that it is implemented in browsers interoperably. For example, the first implementations of a CSS3 module generally require vendor prefixes, but eventually it makes it to candidate recommendation, which is when they must drop the prefixes, because this is required (and also that tests pass that it is implemented interoperably) for the module to move to proposed recommendation.

by jarek 15y ago

noduerme 15y ago

The cross browser web already exists. It's called AS3. The only reason it gets a lot of bad press is that no one wants to snuggle up to Adobe. Meanwhile everybody flails around pretending that HTML5+JS will solve the problem, when that was already a dinosaur five years ago, and as you said will never be supported uniformly across browsers. Edit: Here come the fanbois to downrate me. Consider your own karma. Downrating me does not change the facts on the ground. You cannot build a 3d racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. Can you??? If you can, seriously, respond instead of hitting that little down arrow, and I would love to see what combination of technologies you employ!

CodeMage 15y ago
Unfortunately, you are at least partially right. HTML5+JS might be an acceptable solution to lots of problems, but I don't see web game development moving away from stuff like Flash and Unity to a W3C standard. It probably has a lot to do with having to wait forever while the W3C labors to push any damn thing out.
tptacek 15y ago
I think you're getting downvoted for implying that something can be "cross-browser" that is locked into a single vendor. Your point is clear, but it exploits a nerdy little loophole in the definition of "cross-brwoser".
- evilduck 15y ago
  Not only that, but Flash isn't perfectly "cross-platform" either. It's really only a great experience on Windows and 32 bit and a crapshoot everywhere else, it's still the major cause of browser crashes everywhere else, has struggled with 64 bit implementations, has a long history of sandbox security problems, and their feigned "open source" efforts where there's proprietary parts they don't document or release garners them few OSS friends, downgrades poorly, is a significant resource requirement overhead, and isn't very accessible by default (the standard swf you encounter will not be blind-user accessible). If Flash is the answer, we're in even worse shape than using HTML/JS.
- noduerme 15y ago
  It's totally not a nerdy loophole. If Javascript 2 / ECMA-4 was available in most browsers, it would be exactly the wide-open cross platform flash experience everyone wants. It's just that the only implementation of that, right now, happens to be done by Adobe. The specs are open, there's nothing secret about it. There are open source alternative players (gnash, flowplayer, etc), and Adobe made Flex 3 free for devs which is all you need to write any kind of app you'd like. Look, the only reason there's ANY implementation of ECMA4 in the browser, i.e. Flash, is that a company which doesn't make a browser took it upon itself to create a plugin for all browsers that runs it. Now everyone hates them because it's "closed", which is ironic because IE's implementation of for example the matrix 'filter' -- just to pick one random thing -- is so ludicrously archaic and different from anything webkit, that there's zero, zip, nada, NO HOPE of those two things ever converging in a way that would let a single piece of code skew the same image in both browsers. Anyway, to other people -- I work on mac, and I write code for both canvas and as3. I wrote this: http://strikedisplay.blogspot.com http://strikedisplay.blogspot.com. Also wrote sexypolitics. Things are...what they are. You have to face reality and use the right tool for the job. And when JS2 comes out, sure I'll be there. 'Til then, long live Adobe. Beats the alternative Mozilla/Microsoft/Google mess.
pornel 15y ago
> The cross browser web already exists. It's called AS3. AS3 is not cross-AS3-player. Does it have two (or more) interoperable implementations? Can it run on platforms not supported by Adobe? While single-vendor closed-source plugin is strictly speaking cross-browser, it doesn't have things we want from "cross-browser" solutions: • freedom to run it on any computing platform (people run HTML+JS on their Amigas, because they can!), now and in the future (what if Adobe decides that maintenance of Flash Player is unprofitable? How useful would be archive.org in 20 years when none of supported platforms is alive?) • competition between implementations, so that if one stars sucking or does something user-hostile, competitors will take over (You don't have browsers with hidden hard-to-delete cross-site cookies — they compete on privacy features!) > You cannot build a 3d racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. There's a quite convincing proof of concept that you can: http://helloracer.com/webgl/ http://helloracer.com/webgl/ It doesn't work on iPhone and I'm not sure if it works 64-bit Linux, but that's not a problem, right? :)
- statictype 15y ago
  You're misappropriating the term 'cross-browser'. It does not mean open-source or open. It means the technology will run across most browsers. And Flash does that. You have some valid points but none of them seem to refute the idea that Flash isn't cross-platform.
  - jarek 15y ago
    I hereby alter my grand-grandparent post to read "platform independent" rather than "cross-browser".
  - pornel 15y ago
    Does Firefox's IETab make ActiveX cross-browser? It runs in more than one browser chrome! …except it relies on one-vendor's binaries and is limited to platforms supported by the vendor — just like Flash. Even something that is "cross-browser" can have all negative aspects of a single-browser solution. My point is that for HTML cross-browser is not the goal in itself, it's only a way to ensure that technology is freely implementable by anybody, that content doesn't rely on bugs in one implementation, that fully-functional implementations can be available 10 and 100 years from now if necessary.
Steko 15y ago
"You cannot build a 3d racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. Can you??? If you can, seriously, respond instead of hitting that little down arrow, and I would love to see what combination of technologies you employ!" Just curious what disqualifies the easily googlable Mario Kart and Quake HTML ports?

yuhong 15y ago

I think it is just that it takes time for any new feature to mature enough that it is implemented in browsers interoperably. For example, the first implementations of a CSS3 module generally require vendor prefixes, but eventually it makes it to candidate recommendation, which is when they must drop the prefixes, because this is required (and also that tests pass that it is implemented interoperably) for the module to move to proposed recommendation.