But honestly, this is the kind of application which used to be provided as a demonstration of Turbo Pascal's graphics library in 1990... Multiplying some lines into a greyscale buffer on mouse events was perfectly feasible on a 286 + VGA.
Meanwhile in 2010, Flash Player 10 can render 300K 3D particles in software: http://www.unitzeroone.com/labs/alchemyPushingPixels
Apologies for any snarkiness :) but we are going to hear about how much canvas sucks compares to opengl whatever until it surpasses it, and probably still then.
So you mean '80s mainframes were actually PCs, but they had a faster virtual machine, better language support and a more expansive standard library? Because, you know, both the Canvas demo and the Flash demo run on the same hardware...
Don't get me wrong, I really like Canvas. But it's harmful to pretend that it's a Flash replacement, when Flash still does a lot more and also has authoring tools that allow actual content to be produced by design professionals.
building open standards is an order of magnitude harder, on the face flash may seem so much more powerful, but taking into account the massive implications of open vs propietary its easy to understand why it is that way, and why its worth pushing things like canvas to be half as powerful as flash is now.
Being viable is a combination of performance, authoring tools, and reach. Of course, there are lots of reasons to hate Flash, but you need to recognize what Flash does well to be able to beat it. Today, Flash beats Canvas at everything that matters on the web. Tomorrow, Canvas will have to exceed Flash at those things to be the winner. And even then, Adobe isn't going down without a fight.
Short version: it is not always necessary to be better at everything to be a threat to an established product.
For an example see the case of mainframes vs. mini-computers which was brought up (and sneered at) above.
Who could have foreseen in 1998 that Flash would replace not only Shockwave and Java, but also QuickTime and Windows Media on the web?
Sun, Apple and Microsoft had their lunch eaten without even noticing -- and they actively aided their fall by bundling the plugin in their products. ("It's only 100k, and advertisers like to use it for animated banners. How could it possibly threaten our business?")
IMHO, that is disruptive. In contrast, HTML 5 seems rather like a sustaining innovation that supports the existing business model of certain web giants.
Are you very sure that if JS and HTML5 authoring tools became good enough (as Flash is) to threaten Apple's business in selling and fully controlling iPhone and iPad apps, that they wouldn't or couldn't change compatibility at a whim?
Running on iPhone is the one major advantage this has. (Not being an open platform... It's anything but an advantage when it won't even run on IE in the foreseeable future.)
I dont undestand why people think the appstore is apples business, they havent made any money from the appstore, they do however make an awful lot of money selling hardware, but this is for another thread.
They sure seem fiercely intent on having total control over app developers on the platform though, don't they? Currently JS and HTML5 has very close to zero demonstrated potential to be a viable alternative to creating and distributing the kind of apps that are on the appstore. Again, are you really sure that if it matures to the point where this isn't true any more, Apple wouldn't do something about it? If you are sure, you're naive. Regardless of Apple's intentions (you can think they're Good Samaritans who want to protect users from poorly performing Flash apps if you wish), if there's one thing they've shown is that they really really want total control in that particular space.
Sweet, that has totally been missing from my web experience.
- much faster to load (especially in Chrome)
- works out of the box in all modern browsers, including iPhone (even though it's slow as hell on the my iPhone 3G).
- doesn't mess up your SEO
Which in my opinion, makes it if not a total Flash-killer, a very viable competitor at least.
http://media-001.yo2cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/74/7487/2009/...
I think the real point is that the technology is evolving in modern browsers to new points where someday in the future it will be standard and free unlike flash.