7 ms·

Makes sense. HTML/CSS/JS is not a bad way to build UI and if you're going to have an HTML rendering engine and JS VM on your machine, you might as well use it.

Makes sense. HTML/CSS/JS is not a bad way to build UI and if you're going to have an HTML rendering engine and JS VM on your machine, you might as well use it. When WebView on iOS and Android finally get WebGL support ( what's taking so slong?!!?), native app development with native SDKs will plummet.

rolleiflex 13y ago
You don't even need WebGL, plain HTML + CSS, when coupled with a JS framework like Angular can produce very nice results. I've built Aether[1] that way. Edit: The product is not the page, Aether is a desktop application. The page crashes devices low on memory because of the retina screenshots, and yes, I'm having a new site up soon. [1] http://www.getaether.net http://www.getaether.net
- tjoff 13y ago
  Don't work on latest stable Chrome in windows 7. Plain HTML (without javascript or CSS) can produce very nice results. No need for fancy animations or generated graphics.
  - rolleiflex 13y ago
    Interesting. I'm scrapping the entire thing and building from scratch, so it's long in the tooth anyway. The only animation I have in it is keyframe animation which changes the screenshot on the computer's desktop in intervals. I believe retina images are the problem rather than the transitions.
    - 0x0 13y ago
      Yep, those retina images don't look too hot on Chrome/Macbook Air/OSX 10.9: http://i.imgur.com/bzwF86C.png http://i.imgur.com/bzwF86C.png
      - magic_haze 13y ago
        Just curious, is that image really what printscreen on a mac produces?
        0x0 13y ago
        The printscreen doesn't add the laptop, if that's what you're thinking about (that's already there on the webpage). But the font in the screenshot-of-a-screenshot is completely unreadable.
- Joeri 13y ago
  Your link crashes the browser on my ipad mini. Not what I would consider a nice result.
  - rolleiflex 13y ago
    Sorry about that. Aether isn't a website, it's a desktop application. It crashes your iPad mini because it's running out of memory caused by retina screenshots. I'm planning a new website soon.
- gisenberg 13y ago
  This page is an excellent counter-point. Crashes the iPhone 4S browser and grinds Chrome beta on Android to a halt.
  - rolleiflex 13y ago
    The product isn't the page, Aether is an anonymous, peer to peer reddit-like desktop application whose UI is running on Webkit.
- _random_ 13y ago
  'retina' is a layer at the back of the eyeball that contains cells sensitive to light. What you have are unoptimized high-resolution screenshots.
kllrnohj 13y ago
> When WebView on iOS and Android finally get WebGL support, native app development will plummet. WebGL just hands you a GLES context. Nobody writing 2D native apps deals directly with GL at all, and nobody wants to. WebGL will do squat to replace native app development as a result, it's completely unrelated. The only ones dealing with GL directly do so for performance, and they sure as hell aren't going to be tempted by HTML/CSS/JS because that's all anti-performance.
- macspoofing 13y ago
  >Nobody writing 2D native apps deals directly with GL at all, and nobody wants to. Who says you need to work directly with WebGL. There are and will be some wonderful 2D frameworks that wrap WebGL. Exactly what happened with Flash's Stage3D. Starling and the Feathers UI Toolkit are great in creating smooth 60fps animations effects in AS3.
  - Touche 13y ago
    I'm not aware if any production quality UI toolkits for WebGL or even Canvas despite canvas being around for many years now. The problem is that you have to reproduce a lot of what you already get using html elements and css.
programminggeek 13y ago
No, it won't. As a iOS developer, I write native because I want to deliver the best possible user experience. I've done HTML5 with PhoneGap and it does not deliver the same experience. WebGL on iOS will not change that at all.
- shocks 13y ago
  You may be surprised to know that most in game interfaces are powered by Flash/ActionScript. Would you build a website in Flash? I doubt it - you'd probably tell me it was slow and didn't deliver the same experience.
  - badman_ting 13y ago
    Games typically have a very different set of expectations in terms of their UI than "regular" apps. So, that works for games but not in general.
  - plorkyeran 13y ago
    Games frequently have terrible UIs that have clearly had far more effort put into making them look good than being usable, especially for things not part of the actual game play.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    Many in-game interfaces are powered by Flash/ActionScript, running in things like Scaleform or various open source offshoots of gameswf but they aren't running in Adobe's actual Flash virtual machine, so any performance comparisons are pretty moot. In any case, anyone who didn't build websites in Flash because it was "slow" was misinformed. Flash/AS, especially with AS3/AVM2 was significantly faster than JavaScript (at the time Flash was relevant) if doing anything that required "Web App" style functionality, at least if the ActionScript code was written by an actual programmer and not a designer copy-pasta-ing scripts to make something work. There are/were very valid arguments against Flash (security, un-indexability, etc), but performance compared to JS wasn't really one of them. Source: used to write ActionScript apps that ran on the 350 mhz i.MX21 ARM chumby device with 64 megabytes of memory that had better performance than a lot of "native" mobile apps have today, let alone web-based mobile apps.
_random_ 13y ago
There will be a whole wave of apps that are not just crappy-looking but glitchy as well.

rolleiflex 13y ago

You don't even need WebGL, plain HTML + CSS, when coupled with a JS framework like Angular can produce very nice results. I've built Aether[1] that way. Edit: The product is not the page, Aether is a desktop application. The page crashes devices low on memory because of the retina screenshots, and yes, I'm having a new site up soon. [1] http://www.getaether.net http://www.getaether.net

tjoff 13y ago
Don't work on latest stable Chrome in windows 7. Plain HTML (without javascript or CSS) can produce very nice results. No need for fancy animations or generated graphics.
- rolleiflex 13y ago
  Interesting. I'm scrapping the entire thing and building from scratch, so it's long in the tooth anyway. The only animation I have in it is keyframe animation which changes the screenshot on the computer's desktop in intervals. I believe retina images are the problem rather than the transitions.
  - 0x0 13y ago
    Yep, those retina images don't look too hot on Chrome/Macbook Air/OSX 10.9: http://i.imgur.com/bzwF86C.png http://i.imgur.com/bzwF86C.png
    - magic_haze 13y ago
      Just curious, is that image really what printscreen on a mac produces?
      - 0x0 13y ago
        The printscreen doesn't add the laptop, if that's what you're thinking about (that's already there on the webpage). But the font in the screenshot-of-a-screenshot is completely unreadable.
Joeri 13y ago
Your link crashes the browser on my ipad mini. Not what I would consider a nice result.
- rolleiflex 13y ago
  Sorry about that. Aether isn't a website, it's a desktop application. It crashes your iPad mini because it's running out of memory caused by retina screenshots. I'm planning a new website soon.
gisenberg 13y ago
This page is an excellent counter-point. Crashes the iPhone 4S browser and grinds Chrome beta on Android to a halt.
- rolleiflex 13y ago
  The product isn't the page, Aether is an anonymous, peer to peer reddit-like desktop application whose UI is running on Webkit.
_random_ 13y ago
'retina' is a layer at the back of the eyeball that contains cells sensitive to light. What you have are unoptimized high-resolution screenshots.

kllrnohj 13y ago

> When WebView on iOS and Android finally get WebGL support, native app development will plummet. WebGL just hands you a GLES context. Nobody writing 2D native apps deals directly with GL at all, and nobody wants to. WebGL will do squat to replace native app development as a result, it's completely unrelated. The only ones dealing with GL directly do so for performance, and they sure as hell aren't going to be tempted by HTML/CSS/JS because that's all anti-performance.

macspoofing 13y ago
>Nobody writing 2D native apps deals directly with GL at all, and nobody wants to. Who says you need to work directly with WebGL. There are and will be some wonderful 2D frameworks that wrap WebGL. Exactly what happened with Flash's Stage3D. Starling and the Feathers UI Toolkit are great in creating smooth 60fps animations effects in AS3.
- Touche 13y ago
  I'm not aware if any production quality UI toolkits for WebGL or even Canvas despite canvas being around for many years now. The problem is that you have to reproduce a lot of what you already get using html elements and css.

programminggeek 13y ago

No, it won't. As a iOS developer, I write native because I want to deliver the best possible user experience. I've done HTML5 with PhoneGap and it does not deliver the same experience. WebGL on iOS will not change that at all.

shocks 13y ago
You may be surprised to know that most in game interfaces are powered by Flash/ActionScript. Would you build a website in Flash? I doubt it - you'd probably tell me it was slow and didn't deliver the same experience.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Games typically have a very different set of expectations in terms of their UI than "regular" apps. So, that works for games but not in general.
- plorkyeran 13y ago
  Games frequently have terrible UIs that have clearly had far more effort put into making them look good than being usable, especially for things not part of the actual game play.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Many in-game interfaces are powered by Flash/ActionScript, running in things like Scaleform or various open source offshoots of gameswf but they aren't running in Adobe's actual Flash virtual machine, so any performance comparisons are pretty moot. In any case, anyone who didn't build websites in Flash because it was "slow" was misinformed. Flash/AS, especially with AS3/AVM2 was significantly faster than JavaScript (at the time Flash was relevant) if doing anything that required "Web App" style functionality, at least if the ActionScript code was written by an actual programmer and not a designer copy-pasta-ing scripts to make something work. There are/were very valid arguments against Flash (security, un-indexability, etc), but performance compared to JS wasn't really one of them. Source: used to write ActionScript apps that ran on the 350 mhz i.MX21 ARM chumby device with 64 megabytes of memory that had better performance than a lot of "native" mobile apps have today, let alone web-based mobile apps.

_random_ 13y ago

There will be a whole wave of apps that are not just crappy-looking but glitchy as well.