Guest post by It is not a secret that Apple is showing resistance to supporting Adobe’s flash on the iPhone and that their efforts to add new features to HTML/CSS is driven towards reducing their dependence on Flash. Going further in that direction, the new hardware accelerated 3D CSS visual effects proposed for standards inclusion will be supported in Snow Leopard’s Safari (it is already available in the latest Webkit nighty builds). An new impressive demo of the technology is available at Charles Ying blog.
I’m no expert but is this really practical? While 3D effects in CSS/Javascript might be useful for some basic implementations, it seems a little too clumsy and inflexible to genuinely compete with Flash or Silverlight. Perhaps Kroc can give his take on this. Am I wrong? Am I missing the potential here?
I think the potential is not yet perceptible. We see the fancy graphics and think ^aEURoewhat real need is there for this?^aEUR. As highlighted in Thom^aEURTMs AOS4 review, when the Amiga was launched, many couldn^aEURTMt see the need for colour graphics and 3D. It was pretty, but the demos didn^aEURTMt show the practical use, it only showed the potential that developers could pick up on.
The features going into Browsers/CSS/JS now will go beyond anything the plugin prison will be capable of, but it will take creative and innovative individuals to tap that potential and put together practical real world solutions from all the whizzy examples.
3d is still very confusing for user and especially for web user. It should only be used to enhanced 2 navigation and even with that it does not enhance readability nor accessibility.
I agree that we should be less dependent on flash, but people also need to remember/define what a browser is for.
It surely looks impressive. I never imagined I would need a high end machine with good 3D accelerator to view a “simple” web page. O_o .
Let’s see how this is used in the future…
Oh boy… times change
This is great news; one should expect for a complete solution to come all at once to replace Flash. What one will see is a gradual chipping away at the reason for Flash with developers gradually realising that the reason for its existence becomes less and less a reason to continue using it.
Couple that with the fact that all this development can and will be done without the need to using expensive proprietary development tools as with the case of Flash (the developer tools, especially video compression etc) which is welded to two platforms thus cementing a duo-poly.
As a fairly frustrated developer (who does not like and does not use Flash or Silverlight), all I have to say is that if making a very simple translation will require as much code and hacks as a rounded button or a decent three-column layout, I am not going to use this.
How is it the fault of the technology if the development tools are cruddy? hopefully what we’ll see as these open standards nibble away at Silverlight and Flash, that there will be development tools that’ll rise to the occasion and make development easier.
Now, if you want to be a sadomasochist and code in vi, then go for it, but there will eventually be developer tools to make the whole exercise alot easier.
Couldn’t agree more.
The problem is that the web wasn’t made for application deployment, so Java, Flash, and Silverlight came in.
Creating layouts in desktop apps is easy. Java has Matisse, QT has Designer. I wonder how many hacks are used in Facebook to create that “Start Menu” type thing that always stays at the bottom left of the viewable screen. I’m sure the answer is “way more than should be needed”.
That said, I do agree with the first reply to this message. Wait for dev tools. I’m sure all those desktop apps are doing complicated hacks behind the scenes, its just transparent to the developer.
The problem with dev tools for the web is that you’ll always be able to look at the output and critisize it. Google has some tools with the GWT, but people will look at the results and say that its worse than what FrontPage spits out. Nobody is digging into GTK, .NET, or QT to see all the hoops they’re jumping through becuase nobody looks at their final object file. People will look at their .js, .html, .css files.
I certainly agree that developer tools hopping along will make the situation bearable. I don’t have any problems with the output being hackish, as long as my continuous interventions, debugging and headaches are not necessary for it to work.
For what it’s worth, Qt’s solution is cool enough. You could lay out the entire interface programmatically and it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as doing the same thing with CSS.
The problem, as I see it, is simply that HTML, CSS and to some extent JS were simply not made with web apps in mind. CSS is a great document layout language, but it will require a hefty amount of tools before making an ergonomic, familiar and good-looking interface for an application will be at least as painless as doing the same thing on the desktop was about ten years ago.
Edit: However, I do believe part of the problems lay in the technology and not just in the crude development tools. Anyone remembers Motif? It used to have a set of reasonably good development tools (they weren’t free, they were expensive as hell, but they did exist). Working with Motif still made me sad sometimes.
Edited 2009-07-15 22:00 UTC
The people who use Flash use one application to create it. Their data is there right along with their code. Everything in one place.
While you can create flash-like effects using this new 3d CSS look at what you’re actually doing? Look at how complicated it is. You’re using javascript to manipulate [X]HTML DOMs, to manipulate CSS properties, and to make Ajax calls.
Isn’t it great that HTML, CSS, and javascript are all separated? If you want to implement something new you now need to do it in 3 places. Whoops, forgot about that serverside ajax response… 4 places. Thats at least 4 places. If you’re using a templating language and some other framework you’ll have to edit a bunch more files.
I do see the benefits of not using flash. Search engines can crawl your content and more importantly people can scrape your content.
Okay…the grain of salt….
I have never developed flash. I barely develop any web stuff at all. I’m just saying this stuff looks pretty awkward and things like Java Applets / JavaFX / Silverlight seem much much easier to learn and develop in.
Oh man. I end up spending a fair amount of time helping our marketing dept. with their CSS… I can’t even imagine what would happen if this catches on.