If only. It also uses chunks of WebGL (ArrayBuffer etc). Removing these dependencies makes it mostly work in Safari (the 404 example, for example, renders fine when using fallbacks to the standard JavaScript arrays).
My big problem with the state of web programming at the moment is that people are generating these examples which, despite being based on "standards", are virtually worthless to anyone much outside of nightly build users. Some of these "standards" (i.e. WebSockets) are so ill-concived that they get rolled into one browser release, before being rolled out of the next when found to be flawed. These things are not "standards" - they're browser makers playing around with ideas. Similarly, this example (whilst cool) is not CSS3 - it's CSS 3 plus selection of other supra-bleeding edge stuff that wasn't needed to demonstrate the issue.
Whilst I generally applaud using cutting edge technologies, the entire point of the web (to me) is interoperability. As we seem to move more and more towards "This works fine if you're in Chrome, others may vary", I'm claiming that this is not the web any more than "You need Java 1.X.Y" or "Viewed best in IE 6" was. It's a custom delivery platform for content that happens to piggy-back on HTML, draped in a guise respectability via rushed out and hacked together concepts that many will never implement (as by the time someone's finally got around to doing it, they're onto v(X + 3) of the "standard").
Sigh, I sound about 30 years older than I am. However, having been involved in real standardisation where we strive to create something stable and reusable, these types of examples make HTML 5 look a melange of disparate and barely interoperable concepts. This is not intended as specific slight to the creator of this stuff - it's a cool and admitted hack. It's more a mild rant on the state of web development and the disconect between the technorati and people who actually try and create; not even things for the IE6 users - things for users of browsers less than than 6 months old (and possibly more than 6 months into the future of the browser it currently works on).
I'm starting to move more and more away from this point of view. I can see much of the merit in it - but have come to think that drawing some kind of uncrossable line at the browser level that demands uniformity is ultimately arbitrary.
Why shouldn't browser vendors innovate at the cutting edge? Why shouldn't application developers have to make a choice between platforms just like they have to at any other layer of the big grand tree of tech?
I know it wouldn't be popular among folks who want to build enormous websites that centralise distribution of media etc... and mega-corporations that rely on such mass distribution... but I'm all for a kind of severe nominalisation of the web where technologies are allowed to freely develop to serve smaller and highly targeted niches.
I can understand the desire to have one platform that works for everything... If there was just one smartphone platform in existence at any one time that'd be great too from that point of view. Reaching the masses would then be a snap!
But I guess I've never really understood the argument for this rigorous standardisation of the web platform. At least, I've never understood what people think is special about the web such that this standardisation is an absolute must - beyond the view that people are too lazy to use multiple browsers. It's ironic because no one believes that there should be one single smartphone platform - yet it's a hell of a lot harder for people to switch platforms if there is an app on one that they particularly want to use. It takes 30 seconds to install a new browser - a couple of seconds to launch - if you need to switch.
That was the problem in reality. The proprietary extensions were almost irrelevant, unless you were a big fan of blinking text. The issue was those two stagnant browsers were strangling the web, IE & Microsoft doing so with malice.
The fact that we can even make that comparison with a straight face shows just how far we've come. You literally just tried to equate a browser market in which there are 4 very active and competitive players releasing new versions daily/weekly, to one where a near monopoly kept the same browser version on the market for six years.
Yep, why do you think the WaSP was created? AFAIK this war began with Netscape having a monopoly back in 1995, which effectively killed HTML 3.0 and resulted in 3.2.
All I have to do is check if ArrayBuffer exists, and if not fallback to normal arrays. That's not WebGL, it's typed arrays. What else does it depend on?
It depends fully on standards which are currently being implemented. It works in Firefox and Chrome, and can easily be made to work in Opera (and I think IE9 too) by using the "-o" css3 prefixes.
Sigh, I sound about 30 years older than I am. However,
having been involved in real standardisation where we
strive to create something stable and reusable, these types
of examples make HTML 5 look a melange of disparate and
barely interoperable concepts.
No, you just sound like someone who has no idea how HTML5 spec is developed and how implementations of it find their
ways to browsers.
Or would you prefer XHTML2 way: all theory, nothing in the real world ever?
So the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" strategy is the new "standards" vogue? As I tried to say, isn't this what we got up in arms against Microsoft for? Its a minor improvement as people tend to at least write up the new "standards", but the problem with IE wasn't that their additions were unreplicable - it was that they were not replicated.
Also, your example is a false dichotomy. I can be concerned about the "standardisation" process usage I'm seeing without demanding a glacial and purely theoretic process.
My big problem with the state of web programming at the moment is that people are generating these examples which, despite being based on "standards", are virtually worthless to anyone much outside of nightly build users. Some of these "standards" (i.e. WebSockets) are so ill-concived that they get rolled into one browser release, before being rolled out of the next when found to be flawed. These things are not "standards" - they're browser makers playing around with ideas. Similarly, this example (whilst cool) is not CSS3 - it's CSS 3 plus selection of other supra-bleeding edge stuff that wasn't needed to demonstrate the issue.
Whilst I generally applaud using cutting edge technologies, the entire point of the web (to me) is interoperability. As we seem to move more and more towards "This works fine if you're in Chrome, others may vary", I'm claiming that this is not the web any more than "You need Java 1.X.Y" or "Viewed best in IE 6" was. It's a custom delivery platform for content that happens to piggy-back on HTML, draped in a guise respectability via rushed out and hacked together concepts that many will never implement (as by the time someone's finally got around to doing it, they're onto v(X + 3) of the "standard").
Sigh, I sound about 30 years older than I am. However, having been involved in real standardisation where we strive to create something stable and reusable, these types of examples make HTML 5 look a melange of disparate and barely interoperable concepts. This is not intended as specific slight to the creator of this stuff - it's a cool and admitted hack. It's more a mild rant on the state of web development and the disconect between the technorati and people who actually try and create; not even things for the IE6 users - things for users of browsers less than than 6 months old (and possibly more than 6 months into the future of the browser it currently works on).