Those were gorgeous. The mark of good software is that it inspires you think of uses for its underlying technology. As of now, I actually take "HTML5" seriously, thanks to this.
We should see more robust libraries, and even "authoring tools" in the near future.
Please don't use this as HTML5 vs Flash firewood. I do it because it's fun. Not because it's HTML5.
I hate Flash just as much as the rest of you, and I'm thoroughly impressed with these HTML5 demos, but I think it's premature to pronounce Flash dead. Just another nail in the coffin, I'd say.
His demos provoked uses cases in my head, stuff I would usually consider flash for. I am by no means anti-flash; I know the SWF and FLV specs like the back of my hand. I have annotated wireshark logs of RTP that are almost faithful to the "spec". And most importantly, I am an Adobe fan, and sided with them against Apple.
But this is one of those "top idea in your head" things. Now, after seeing those demos, my mental model of "what flash can do" has been diminished. I will still use flash for microphone capture, sockets, and persistent cookies. But I know now that I don't need flash for audio, video, and interactive eye candy.
Flash has always been a last resort, and seeing HTML5, in this light, is like discovering Qafiya in English:
I don't know what kind of work you do with video and audio, but HTML5 is so far away from being anything close to powerful when it comes to the audio and video area.
You wan't to do an interactive video in HTML5 like http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/
You really want to do complex audio tools in HTML5 like http://audiotool.com
HTML5 is still inferior to Flash.
What is great is that there is experiments being done.
But those experiments are interesting because they are done in HTML5 not because they are somehow showing that it's better than flash.
I am pretty sure most of the projects that Fantasy Interactive do can't be done in HTML5.
Incidentally, I brought up my task manager while viewing these demos, the CPU utilization jumped from 5% to 97% (Core 2 Duo, 1.66 GHz).
> making embeddable widgets is very hard in Javascript, since any complex embedded Javascript would likely clash with other scripts on the page
You can use local variables the way jQuery uses it. Something like (function($))(jQuery). If you declare all your variables and functions within this scope its easy to avoid clashes with other scripts.
While technically all JS is open-source / source-visible, just wait: where there's a market, there will be more and more sophisticated obfuscation techniques. Especially for a language like JS, where it can easily generate and modify its own code.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=swf+decompiler
If HTML5 authoring tools start appearing we'll have to make sure they use open formats and runtimes.
As written, this statement is wrong.
Adroit developers are picking up HTML5's JS API's with more enthusiasm than they have ActionScript, and they'll push those API's to their limits, as they have done with the DOM API's. But the technology itself--the underlying standards--must necessarily evolve at a slower pace than a proprietary language like ActionScript. Browser vendors haven't quite caught up with HTML5's growth yet; once the the spec's final, W3C won't be moving the goalpost out any further for a long time.
You're wrong, html5 is supposed to be the last final big version, it is agreed that html5 will continue to be incremently improved from now on (it was posted recently on HN).
That said, I would like to read that article/thread. Do you have a link, or remember its title? I can't seem to hit upon the right combination of Google keywords. ;) Thanks.
You don't need HTML5 to do vector graphics in a browser.
Except that it sucks rocks on everything besides x86 and Windows. OS X? Linux? amd64? ARM? There's a reason it's not on iOS devices. Adobe has consistently failed to make a compelling offering for anything except 32-bit Windows.
(I know it runs on amd64 machines, but it's not 64-bit: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html)
I'll take a truly portable Flash 5 equivalent over Flash 9 or 10 where everything outside Windows/x86 is a second class citizen.
CPU usage is still pretty high with this stuff, but there are plans to accelerate it and improve performance. What's the plan for Flash? Who knows because it's proprietary^ and there's a single entity that can fix things. And HTML5 performance isn't much worse than Flash on OS X or Linux. Windows is completely irrelevant to a lot of us.
^ Now someone's going to point to the spec and mumble something about Flash being an open standard. Show me a single open and viable alternative implementation, then we'll talk about it being open. Till then we're Adobe's pawns.
It's a powerful platform, and I will accept the author's desire to avoid using his demos in "HTML5 vs Flash" punditry; but it's apparent where HTML5 is headed, and I can't help but notice its competence, in domains where flash is usually considered the only option.
"Changed to flash audio to reduce bandwidth consumption."