4 ms·

The article didn't seem to say where in the app they were actually using Canvas -- anyone have any idea?

• haxorize 18y ago
  According to the official Gmail blog: "The HTML5 canvas tag is used to render the progress spinner without the overhead of downloading animated GIFs to the device." http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-mobile-gmail-experience-for-iphone.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-mobile-gmail-exper...
  • adamhowell 18y ago
    Oh, jeez, maybe it's just me but that seems like technology for technology's sake. A spinner can be compressed to, what, 1k or so? I guess they should have drawn the Google logo with canvas, too.
    • teej 18y ago
      It's not only a download concern. Downloading and watching animated gifs on the iPhone is a terrible experience - it's choppy, skips frames, and just doesn't look good. Doing an animated gif wasn't an option for Google.
    • sep332 18y ago
      It's not just size, there's the issue of adding significant (potentially > 1 full second) latency to a "please wait" animation. This is about 4 times longer than the longest time a UI should take to respond to the user before the user thinks it's dead.