3 ms·

Very classical material, especially if you've ever been (as the author) writing demos/intros in the 80s/90s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene http://en.wi

by unwind 15y ago

Very classical material, especially if you've ever been (as the author) writing demos/intros in the 80s/90s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene). I have many memories of writing basic programs that spat out sine tables, since it wasn't possible to compute something as complex as a sine in real-time.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
Yep, and they're still useful: I use a logarithmic computation for fading elements in and out with JavaScript, and by pre-computing the values for each step and storing them in an array, the fade still looks smooth even on older hardware.
- joahua 15y ago
  I'd love to see this in action - do you have a link? Do you literally serve a precomputed array as part of the JS and iterate over that using opacity/IE filter/whatever, or is it more nuanced than that?
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    Sure: http://shomi.associatedtechs.com/ http://shomi.associatedtechs.com/ It's not precomputed server-side, it's precomputed when the fade effect is called in the JS. The value for each step is then stored in the task object that performs the fade. Which is cheating a little bit, I suppose, but this way, I can fade from any value to any value, at what appears to be the same "speed", without any glitching.
gord 15y ago
yes, I much enjoyed flipcode.com back in the day, particularly Alex Champandards series - http://www.flipcode.com/archives/The_Art_of_Demomaking-Issue_01_Prologue.shtml http://www.flipcode.com/archives/The_Art_of_Demomaking-Issue... I played with Javascript sine animations as a way of introduce the idea of sine function in some intuitive way. Eg Two Rotating Circles - http://quantblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/adding-circles-javascript-animation-of-fourier-series/ http://quantblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/adding-circles-jav... I think Javascript hacking in a web page is todays equivalent to hacking GW-Basic, Turbo Pascal or A86 assembler for my generation.
- unwind 15y ago
  Of course, back in (my) day, the web didn't exist, so there was no flipcode.com. :| Now off to trim the lawn.

by unwind 15y ago

thaumaturgy 15y ago

Yep, and they're still useful: I use a logarithmic computation for fading elements in and out with JavaScript, and by pre-computing the values for each step and storing them in an array, the fade still looks smooth even on older hardware.

joahua 15y ago
I'd love to see this in action - do you have a link? Do you literally serve a precomputed array as part of the JS and iterate over that using opacity/IE filter/whatever, or is it more nuanced than that?
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Sure: http://shomi.associatedtechs.com/ http://shomi.associatedtechs.com/ It's not precomputed server-side, it's precomputed when the fade effect is called in the JS. The value for each step is then stored in the task object that performs the fade. Which is cheating a little bit, I suppose, but this way, I can fade from any value to any value, at what appears to be the same "speed", without any glitching.

gord 15y ago

yes, I much enjoyed flipcode.com back in the day, particularly Alex Champandards series - http://www.flipcode.com/archives/The_Art_of_Demomaking-Issue_01_Prologue.shtml http://www.flipcode.com/archives/The_Art_of_Demomaking-Issue... I played with Javascript sine animations as a way of introduce the idea of sine function in some intuitive way. Eg Two Rotating Circles - http://quantblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/adding-circles-javascript-animation-of-fourier-series/ http://quantblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/adding-circles-jav... I think Javascript hacking in a web page is todays equivalent to hacking GW-Basic, Turbo Pascal or A86 assembler for my generation.

unwind 15y ago
Of course, back in (my) day, the web didn't exist, so there was no flipcode.com. :| Now off to trim the lawn.