Wait till web developers start removing Flash and deliver web page advertisements via image manipulation routines based on HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The rendering engines in today's browsers will never be so exercised. You'll find the resource hog has just moved, changed its strip to strips. Developers will have to program image routines for the different browser types which means you'll have a more buggy web experience. Plus to switch off the new hog and all those advertisements you'll have to tell your web browser to deny access to all web pages images because there will be no way to distinguish them from ordinary page images. Back to 80's style text browsing for many I guess. Lol!
That sounds like a layman talking about a subject he knows only snippets of or talking about other software like what we see with Scriptaculous. Most layout code in web development is ok, some browsers have quirks (mainly IE) that causes a bit of extra work. The Canvas element is a drawing element like a Flash context though so the drawing calls are going to be handled by that element and shouldn't be affected by the standard page layout issues. Now certainly some browsers won't have support for certain drawing calls but it's not much different from the situation with Flash, which just tells you to go upgrade your plugin. The Canvas Element will just halt the Javascript drawing call and render what it can.
As for the resource hog problem, yes it will be an issue at first but browser developers are the ones who will be in control of how optimized they can make the experience rather than Adobe and they have already proven they can do a better job.
That sounds like a layman talking about a subject he knows only snippets of or talking about other software like what we see with Scriptaculous. Most layout code in web development is ok, some browsers have quirks (mainly IE) that causes a bit of extra work. The Canvas element is a drawing element like a Flash context though so the drawing calls are going to be handled by that element and shouldn't be affected by the standard page layout issues. Now certainly some browsers won't have support for certain drawing calls but it's not much different from the situation with Flash, which just tells you to go upgrade your plugin. The Canvas Element will just halt the Javascript drawing call and render what it can.
As for the resource hog problem, yes it will be an issue at first but browser developers are the ones who will be in control of how optimized they can make the experience rather than Adobe and they have already proven they can do a better job.
Actually, as a web dev, i tend to agree with this guy, though as of "images", he's a bit off.
But i think he is right on mostly....
I've seen some bad code, and i can tell you, not everybody is a saint...not everybody follows best practices. Spamming with setTimeouts is one way to affect everything else...
JavaScript is single-threaded, so a hyperactive ad may well interrupt other actions on the page.
Yes, canvas can be blocked with a userscript in Firefox and Opera, and in IE it doesn't exist, SVG elements can be weeded out, VML in IE can be weeded out...
but the fact is, and the reason i posted this guy's rant, is that Flash can be easily disallowed...two or three clicks, that's all.... but DOM animation slows down other processing and can't be turned off by simply unchecking one box.
I agree though, that canvas in the least of all problems, because it's still one piece.
As much as i dislike Flash, it has its merits. Sometimes we use Flash to offload some data-intensive tasks onto a 2nd thread/process, so that Firefox wouldn't show an "unresponsive script" dialog, offering that the user kill scripts on that page...
Worse yet, in Firefox the whole browser is nearly single-threaded, so a busy process in one tab stalls the whole browser... their GUI layer is js/dom based among other things...
They've tried to fix that problem to some degree, by not showing animation in sections of the page cut off by the browser viewport, but it's still not too pleasant.
IE is good in that regard, and so is Chrome, with the non-blocking processes for each tab, but in each tab JS can only do one thing at a time....
Anyway, i hope i've been relatively clear...it's the middle of the night, and i'm sleepy...
Dan
P.S. And then there are CSS transforms and IE matrix filters...those can look more or less like canvas...and they are not guaranteed to be hardware accelerated
@DayRobot, HTML5 Web workers (Javascript) are multi threaded. Firefox already has support for some of those. If you are worried about turning it off, it will be a question of turning off Javascript which is possible even today. There are tons of HTML5 demos out there, start looking at them. Javascript has grown up.
I've seen some bad code, and i can tell you, not everybody is a saint...not everybody follows best practices. Spamming with setTimeouts is one way to affect everything else...
JavaScript is single-threaded, so a hyperactive ad may well interrupt other actions on the page.
Misuse of a type of technology doesn't imply the technology itself is bad though in the same way that nuclear energy isn't bad because of Hiroshima. Advertisers will misuse any technology they can get hold of. Being able to block advertising by turning off Flash isn't really a benefit of Flash, it's more of a side-effect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DayRobot
As much as i dislike Flash, it has its merits. Sometimes we use Flash to offload some data-intensive tasks onto a 2nd thread/process, so that Firefox wouldn't show an "unresponsive script" dialog, offering that the user kill scripts on that page...
Sure, the whole debate about Flash vs HTML 5 has been taken to the point of dividing people into two camps and it doesn't need to be that way. Apple needed to highlight the issue here though and make it clear that Flash can only ever be a stop-gap for missing functionality and publishers need to move away from relying on it.
Right now pretty much all video and web animation is delivered using Flash. That's not as much a feather in Adobe's cap as it is a criticism of how slowly open standards have evolved to enable this in a cross-platform way and a criticism of the industry leaders who have to this point sat idly by and allowed that to happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DayRobot
P.S. And then there are CSS transforms and IE matrix filters...those can look more or less like canvas...and they are not guaranteed to be hardware accelerated
True but it's about who has the control to implement it. The browser developer can choose to implement it if they wish. With Flash, the browser developer is at the mercy of Adobe. It gives that company a level of control they shouldn't have and no company should have.
Quote:
Originally Posted by talksense101
Here is a link to get started
I think this one is the most important one that will impact web publishing and content management:
It also shows where Flash falls down because you can't directly access a MySQL database from Flash. You have to do an SQL lookup, convert to XML, send it to Flash, get XML back, parse it up and re-insert or go via Javascript, especially if you want to do it asynchronously. That's just not good enough and it's just an added layer that doesn't need to exist.
@DayRobot, HTML5 Web workers (Javascript) are multi threaded. Firefox already has support for some of those. If you are worried about turning it off, it will be a question of turning off Javascript which is possible even today. There are tons of HTML5 demos out there, start looking at them. Javascript has grown up.
I hope other browsers beyond Firefox and Chrome will adopt something along these lines.
But Firefox needs a better JS engine to be able to effectively chew thru all that data, calculations and string operations we currently offload to Flash.
Luckily, Adobe of all people, has donated to them the source code for the JiT compiler used in Flash..
So with the Tamarin project, we can finally see some improvement
Maybe so, but nobody except Adobe has the opportunity to optimize Flash. As HTML5 matures, the developer community will build increasingly superior engines.
Comments
(original image)
Wait till web developers start removing Flash and deliver web page advertisements via image manipulation routines based on HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The rendering engines in today's browsers will never be so exercised. You'll find the resource hog has just moved, changed its strip to strips. Developers will have to program image routines for the different browser types which means you'll have a more buggy web experience. Plus to switch off the new hog and all those advertisements you'll have to tell your web browser to deny access to all web pages images because there will be no way to distinguish them from ordinary page images. Back to 80's style text browsing for many I guess. Lol!
Please tell me this is better...
Dan
Please tell me this is better...
That sounds like a layman talking about a subject he knows only snippets of or talking about other software like what we see with Scriptaculous. Most layout code in web development is ok, some browsers have quirks (mainly IE) that causes a bit of extra work. The Canvas element is a drawing element like a Flash context though so the drawing calls are going to be handled by that element and shouldn't be affected by the standard page layout issues. Now certainly some browsers won't have support for certain drawing calls but it's not much different from the situation with Flash, which just tells you to go upgrade your plugin. The Canvas Element will just halt the Javascript drawing call and render what it can.
As for the resource hog problem, yes it will be an issue at first but browser developers are the ones who will be in control of how optimized they can make the experience rather than Adobe and they have already proven they can do a better job.
That sounds like a layman talking about a subject he knows only snippets of or talking about other software like what we see with Scriptaculous. Most layout code in web development is ok, some browsers have quirks (mainly IE) that causes a bit of extra work. The Canvas element is a drawing element like a Flash context though so the drawing calls are going to be handled by that element and shouldn't be affected by the standard page layout issues. Now certainly some browsers won't have support for certain drawing calls but it's not much different from the situation with Flash, which just tells you to go upgrade your plugin. The Canvas Element will just halt the Javascript drawing call and render what it can.
As for the resource hog problem, yes it will be an issue at first but browser developers are the ones who will be in control of how optimized they can make the experience rather than Adobe and they have already proven they can do a better job.
Actually, as a web dev, i tend to agree with this guy, though as of "images", he's a bit off.
But i think he is right on mostly....
I've seen some bad code, and i can tell you, not everybody is a saint...not everybody follows best practices. Spamming with setTimeouts is one way to affect everything else...
JavaScript is single-threaded, so a hyperactive ad may well interrupt other actions on the page.
Yes, canvas can be blocked with a userscript in Firefox and Opera, and in IE it doesn't exist, SVG elements can be weeded out, VML in IE can be weeded out...
but the fact is, and the reason i posted this guy's rant, is that Flash can be easily disallowed...two or three clicks, that's all.... but DOM animation slows down other processing and can't be turned off by simply unchecking one box.
I agree though, that canvas in the least of all problems, because it's still one piece.
As much as i dislike Flash, it has its merits. Sometimes we use Flash to offload some data-intensive tasks onto a 2nd thread/process, so that Firefox wouldn't show an "unresponsive script" dialog, offering that the user kill scripts on that page...
Worse yet, in Firefox the whole browser is nearly single-threaded, so a busy process in one tab stalls the whole browser... their GUI layer is js/dom based
They've tried to fix that problem to some degree, by not showing animation in sections of the page cut off by the browser viewport, but it's still not too pleasant.
IE is good in that regard, and so is Chrome, with the non-blocking processes for each tab, but in each tab JS can only do one thing at a time....
Anyway, i hope i've been relatively clear...it's the middle of the night, and i'm sleepy...
Dan
P.S. And then there are CSS transforms and IE matrix filters...those can look more or less like canvas...and they are not guaranteed to be hardware accelerated
Here is a link to get started. http://html5demos.com/
I've seen some bad code, and i can tell you, not everybody is a saint...not everybody follows best practices. Spamming with setTimeouts is one way to affect everything else...
JavaScript is single-threaded, so a hyperactive ad may well interrupt other actions on the page.
Misuse of a type of technology doesn't imply the technology itself is bad though in the same way that nuclear energy isn't bad because of Hiroshima. Advertisers will misuse any technology they can get hold of. Being able to block advertising by turning off Flash isn't really a benefit of Flash, it's more of a side-effect.
As much as i dislike Flash, it has its merits. Sometimes we use Flash to offload some data-intensive tasks onto a 2nd thread/process, so that Firefox wouldn't show an "unresponsive script" dialog, offering that the user kill scripts on that page...
Sure, the whole debate about Flash vs HTML 5 has been taken to the point of dividing people into two camps and it doesn't need to be that way. Apple needed to highlight the issue here though and make it clear that Flash can only ever be a stop-gap for missing functionality and publishers need to move away from relying on it.
Right now pretty much all video and web animation is delivered using Flash. That's not as much a feather in Adobe's cap as it is a criticism of how slowly open standards have evolved to enable this in a cross-platform way and a criticism of the industry leaders who have to this point sat idly by and allowed that to happen.
P.S. And then there are CSS transforms and IE matrix filters...those can look more or less like canvas...and they are not guaranteed to be hardware accelerated
True but it's about who has the control to implement it. The browser developer can choose to implement it if they wish. With Flash, the browser developer is at the mercy of Adobe. It gives that company a level of control they shouldn't have and no company should have.
Here is a link to get started
I think this one is the most important one that will impact web publishing and content management:
http://html5demos.com/contenteditable
It also shows where Flash falls down because you can't directly access a MySQL database from Flash. You have to do an SQL lookup, convert to XML, send it to Flash, get XML back, parse it up and re-insert or go via Javascript, especially if you want to do it asynchronously. That's just not good enough and it's just an added layer that doesn't need to exist.
@DayRobot, HTML5 Web workers (Javascript) are multi threaded. Firefox already has support for some of those. If you are worried about turning it off, it will be a question of turning off Javascript which is possible even today. There are tons of HTML5 demos out there, start looking at them. Javascript has grown up.
Here is a link to get started. http://html5demos.com/
Yup, those are nice
I hope other browsers beyond Firefox and Chrome will adopt something along these lines.
But Firefox needs a better JS engine to be able to effectively chew thru all that data, calculations and string operations we currently offload to Flash.
Luckily, Adobe of all people, has donated to them the source code for the JiT compiler used in Flash..
So with the Tamarin project, we can finally see some improvement
Dan
(original image)
Fact check:
Flash, HTML5 comparison finds neither has performance advantage
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...advantage.html
Fact check:
Flash, HTML5 comparison finds neither has performance advantage
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...advantage.html
Maybe so, but nobody except Adobe has the opportunity to optimize Flash. As HTML5 matures, the developer community will build increasingly superior engines.