OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20312/Microsoft_Mozilla_Google_Talk_Browser_Futures Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:14:52 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com browser wars http://osnews.com/thread?331096 http://osnews.com/thread?331096 I am glad to see the recent competitiveness in the area of standards compliance (the recent buzz over Acid3) and in performance (JavaScript engines, memory fragmentation, and process isolation). This seems like a healthy marketplace. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (richmassena) Comments Javascript acid test? http://osnews.com/thread?331103 http://osnews.com/thread?331103 Seems like a Javascript acid test is necessary, to have the same JS behavior across browsers, like there is for HTML and CSS. Imagine a JS acid test that would use all JS functions and behaviors one after the other. Hum... ;)

I read "Google Talk" in the title and I wondered why ;) Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Liquidator) Comments RE: Javascript acid test? http://osnews.com/thread?331106 http://osnews.com/thread?331106 That would be Acid 3, of course. Epiphany with Gecko 1.9 gets 71/100. Epiphany with Webkit gets 97/100. I think I heard the IE8 beta 2 score is something like 17/100. You are quite correct in pointing out that javascript compatibility is the big hurdle for web apps. (And even just web sites.) Incompatible CSS behavior makes the site look odd. Incompatible javascript behavior completely breaks the site, making it unusable. Mozilla and Microsoft really need to get with the program.Edited 2008-09-23 07:19 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[2]: Javascript acid test? http://osnews.com/thread?331114 http://osnews.com/thread?331114 Scoring 100/100 on Acid3 is not really important as it tests stuff that's unlikely to being used. So firefox's 71/100 or 86/100 (latest pre-release) is accetable. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nxsty) Comments RE[3]: Javascript acid test? http://osnews.com/thread?331120 http://osnews.com/thread?331120
Scoring 100/100 on Acid3 is not really important as it tests stuff that's unlikely to being used. So firefox's 71/100 or 86/100 (latest pre-release) is accetable.


It could always be improved, although I agree that 86/100 for acid3 is getting close to the "acceptable" mark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_3

Note that only bucket 6 of acid 3 refers to ECMAscript functionality. In this bucket, gecko gets a purple, meaning this:
"All 16 subtests passed: Colored rectangle (red, orange, yellow, lime, blue, purple - for each of the six rectangles, in order)."

So gecko passes acid 3 for javascript.

These are the gecko bugs that need fixing:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=410460
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pNgBCwWdyRTT2JeiZn4B2Yw

Twenty one out of 100 (IE 8 beta 2) is, of course, absolutely atrocious. IE has a lot of catching up to do.

IE has also even yet to begin catching up with this further test suite:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/wiki/Test_Suite_Overview Edited 2008-09-23 09:45 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lemur2) Comments HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331122 http://osnews.com/thread?331122 Why don't they stick to SVG? What does canvas do that SVG doesn't? SVG is way better in my opinion. I don't see any case where canvas should be used instead of SVG. They should kill it right now IMO. If possible, they should kill flash as well and properly support SVG.Edited 2008-09-23 09:50 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (agrouf) Comments RE: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331124 http://osnews.com/thread?331124 I see you've done no Canvas programming then.
Try it sometime. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331126 http://osnews.com/thread?331126 Flash has all but killed SVG. Why? Because the numpties that drew up the specifications probably never actually tried to use the specifications to actually make any thing. If they did they would see why the geeks use SVG, and why everyone else making websites sided with Adobe and Flash. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Coxy) Comments RE[2]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331127 http://osnews.com/thread?331127 Have you used SVG or Canvas?; trying to compare it to Flash because you see two shapes on the screen and assume that Flash is better is 2-D thinking.

O, if I only had my project ready yet, I'd so prove [you] wrong. Let me just say that I'm building a couple of things that show what Canvas can do in a completely open and cross-platform compatible way.

SVG is about solving global document problems, not generating revenue for expensive tools.Edited 2008-09-23 10:51 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[3]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331129 http://osnews.com/thread?331129 Why do so many no-nothing self-employed 'web designers/developers' with only their brothers site in their portfolio think that flash is only for adverts or for media companies?

We use flash all the time, our core products use it. These are huge applications, pulling data from several hundred databases for clients. The kind of people that work in media companies as flash developers don't even get past the first screening. They haven't a clue how to do what we are doing. Neither have you.

Edited: try reading the post I was replying to, and your see why I'm talking about flash.Edited 2008-09-23 11:03 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Coxy) Comments RE[4]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331131 http://osnews.com/thread?331131 I'm sorry, but even as a web user I can tell you that Flash is at best a necessary evil, and at worst unnecessary bloat. First off, the Flash plugin is known as the "Crash Plugin" in Linux circles, and in Windows it has severe memory and CPU hogging issues, so Flash makes your website less stable and more resource-intensive. Secondly, Flash is not accessible (including to most web crawlers, with Google as the only exception). Finally, all the stuff about pulling info from databases can be done either on the server side or on the client side using XMLHttpRequest.

Honestly, if you're designing major parts of a website with Flash and not providing a decent pure-HTML alternative, you're doing it wrong, no matter how professional you consider yourself to be.Edited 2008-09-23 11:06 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (noamsml) Comments RE[5]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331132 http://osnews.com/thread?331132 The whole site is flashed based. It's a huge flash application, there is no need of an 'html site'. Flash was choosen because of what we do requres that it run in a variety of OSs and browser.

It is not publically accessable so there is no need for search engines to index it.

Until you have actually seen what we do and why we do it, you couldn't possibly know that it has been developed in the wrong way.Edited 2008-09-23 11:13 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Coxy) Comments RE[4]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331133 http://osnews.com/thread?331133 FlashPaper. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[4]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331135 http://osnews.com/thread?331135
Why do so many no-nothing self-employed 'web designers/developers' with only their brothers site in their portfolio think that flash is only for adverts or for media companies?


I don't know, but as a self-employed web designers/developers with only my brother's site in my current portfolio, I don't use flash because I don't need the complexity Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bosco_bearbank) Comments RE[6]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331140 http://osnews.com/thread?331140 Honestly, for something that big or complex, if I were starting today, I would use javascript due to the new engines, or that were completely impossible I would do silverlight. Flash would probably be the last thing I would use. I absolutely hate working with it to do anything serious, it is like trying to cram a square peg through a round hole. It was designed around interactive movies, stuff like hanging code off of "keyframes" is the opposite of what I would call a comfortable interface toolkit to work with. Even Adobe doesn't really push flash for interfaces, which is what AIR is all about.

Before you jump down my throat, I have been building enterprise webapps for about 6 years now that work with big, beefy databases on big, beefy servers, and are used by hundreds to thousands of concurrent users. I know some people like flash, but I never have, and I think that objectively there are many better alternatives for new projects in need of a rich interface.Edited 2008-09-23 12:46 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments RE[2]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331141 http://osnews.com/thread?331141 I didn't do it indeed, but I've done SVG and I don't get canvas. Elements in canvas are not identifiable. It's bad in many aspects in my opinion, starting from lack of accessiblity. A lot of people using the web are blind, or have disabilities that prevent them to use the web like the web master think they should use it. SVG is well formed XML and therefore is DOMable. That makes it way better suited for the web in my opinion. If they make canvas because it is easier to use, why don't they put energy in making tools to generate SVG instead? Cairo does it. Why can't they convert canvas to SVG?
By the way, the same is true for flash. They should convert it to SVG and be done with their opaque format.Edited 2008-09-23 13:18 UTC Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (agrouf) Comments RE[3]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331142 http://osnews.com/thread?331142 Because Canvas gives you per-pixel control and fast animation that isn't possible with SVG. Canvas display is also limited to the canvas tag it's within whereas SVG can be placed anywhere.

Emulators have been written in Canvas/JS. You can't do that in SVG at all.

Canvas is for using for non-accessibility related issues. If I'm making a game in Canvas/JS instead of Flash; why should I care about accessibility when a blind person is not going to be able to see it anyway - regardless if it was Flash or Canvas.

A 3D rendering of a product is no more or less accessible as a Canvas / PNG, Flash or Java object as long as they have relevant ALT attributes &c.

SVG is for preserving document fidelity in the future as screen resolutions increase. Canvas is for making pretty, animated things. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[7]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331143 http://osnews.com/thread?331143 I should add that using Flash, no matter how professional you may be, is like painting yourself into a corner.

If you've got a site, for example for a film release, then sure - go for Flash for all the bling; the site's unlikely to ever be updated post-launch anyway.

But if you're writing any kind of site that needs to stick around, Flash should never be used for anything more than a glorified {img} replacement.


Whoever signed up to using FlashPaper technology is now clearly understanding the short sightedness of using a closed format like that. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[4]: HTML 5 canvas? http://osnews.com/thread?331164 http://osnews.com/thread?331164 I kid of get the performance argument for canvas, although in this case I don't get the point of JS, java being superior from my point of view. It should be used where it needs to be used, but not where SVG can replace it. SVG can do pretty animations too and objects are identifiable and usable from javascript. You also have events like click events and stuff in SVG. You can use the optimizeSpeed attribute and get per-pixel precision. You can also use bitmaps in SVG. It can do much more than static scalable pictures. Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (agrouf) Comments The browser IS my canvas! http://osnews.com/thread?331305 http://osnews.com/thread?331305
Because Canvas gives you per-pixel control and fast animation that isn't possible with SVG.

SVG is an event scriptable 2D scene graph, and it can be parsed and rendered (with pixel precision if need be) as quickly as any other 2D scene graph, and faster than a 3D scene graph because 2D doesn't have to consider as many values. The problem so far has been that implementations suck.

Canvas display is also limited to the canvas tag it's within whereas SVG can be placed anywhere.

In no way, shape, or form is this an advantage.

Not only that, but an SVG element can be made to model the Canvas behavior you described simply by setting overflow:hidden, which is even the DEFAULT if I'm not mistaken. On the other hand, it is not possible to get Canvas to model the behavior an SVG element has when set to overflow: visible|auto.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the browser hasn't evolved into a generic scene graph renderer at this point. Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chaosvoyager) Comments