This is amazing. HTML5. No Flash. No Java. Works on iPhone. | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing. HTML5. No Flash. No Java. Works on iPhone.

cimota.com

135 pointsmikecane59 comments

Nice design, the brush shapes are pretty.

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

But it requires flash player :P

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.

to be fair when Flash came out no browser is capable of drawing anything well.

I believe IE4 had Direct Animation support.

this is the kind of argument which was used to demonstrate how inadequate pcs where compares to mainframes in the 80's.

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.

this is the kind of argument which was used to demonstrate how inadequate pcs where compares to mainframes in the 80's.

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.

no I mean that flash is a proprietary runtime that can change at the whim of a company, is badly supported on niche platforms, and is terribly hard to introspect.

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.

Pavlov wasn't arguing against the development of Canvas. He was merely pointing out that, while impressive, Canvas has a -long- way to go before it's a viable platform for full-scale multimedia work on the web.

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.

It seems "disruptive innovation" has gone lately from being an overused buzzword to being an entirely forgotten concept.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

I probably should have mentioned it myself but disruptive innovation / innovators dilemma / christienssen was exactly what I was alluding to, cheers.

Certainly not a forgotten concept. Flash itself was a highly disruptive technology: originally a vector painting engine created for mid-'90s pen computing, it sneaked under the radar for years under the guise of a harmless animation plugin.

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.

> no I mean that flash is a proprietary runtime that can change at the whim of a company,

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.)

As long as the JS/HTML runtime can guarantee good performance, I can't see Apple complaining. Apple isn't going after Flash because it competes with their app store, Apple's going after Flash because it's a performance dog with near-impossible touchscreen usability and little to no ability for Apple to create a better runtime for.

I am pretty sure since apple are one of a few companies really pushing html5 and javascript right now, the html5 support for mobile webkit is pretty top notch.

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.

> I dont undestand why people think the appstore is apples business,

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.

Finally I will be able to use the algorithms I learned in my Computer Graphics class back in 1996. Line-drawing, here I come.

Meanwhile in 2010, Flash Player 10 can render 300K 3D particles in software.

Sweet, that has totally been missing from my web experience.

Flash 64k demo

http://http.de.scene.org/pub/parties/2009/assembly09/in64/pr...

FYI, its a link to a zip file, and the contents use a packer that will trigger anti-virus/overzealous corporate proxy filters.

try this link then

http://media-001.yo2cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/74/7487/2009/...

99.99% of people that use Flash don't need 300K 3D particles rendered. Most people use it to design good looking websites. This tool lets you do the same thing, and:

- 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.

Doesn't work for me so no Flash can't render 300k 3d particles.

That is some amazing blog spam.

http://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/harmony/

I made the koolaide dude without really thinking about what I was getting into at first. http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/437605692/i-made-the-koolai...

Evidently the admins disapprove of your Koolaide dude.

Sometimes you need to suffer for your art

I went with a shoe, also without really thinking about it:

http://twitpic.com/17mpg5

It's quite nice to doodle mindlessly with http://i43.tinypic.com/svgk5c.png

How about letting you draw with white on the right click?

oh the possibilities that you can come up with this tool, like this procedurally generated leaves for example http://bit.ly/arVgfS

I find this tool excels at drawing bacon.

http://i.imgur.com/3uDPO.png

nice! I'm adding this to my iphone right next to sketchpro :) http://bit.ly/bw6JDW

The actual item (link is a blog with a couple of screenshots and no content other than the title): http://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/harmony/

Here's the actual author's original blog post:

http://mrdoob.com/blog/post/689

Yes, I did that so people could see what the app was before deciding if they wanted to try it. And since someone here has reported a connection error, it seems the app itself is getting hammered.

Actually, it looks like the blog is having problems. The direct link seems to load fine.

Yeah, the guy just told me his blog is not responding now. Oops! I must rethink speedbumping like that in future.

Speedbumping?

I was hoping that people would see the screensnap at that blog and THEN decide if they'd go on to the site itself. It never occurred to me there'd be a flood of people who'd click through and kill the site I pointed to. Plus, I figured some people might be on a mobile device and not see the site itself, so they could at least look at a screensnap. I will never do that again.

No worries, don't beat yourself up, you didn't do anything wrong. I was just wondering what you meant by speedbumping.

I am beating myself up. I didn't mean to kill his blog!

Interesting metaphor. At least speed bumps often increase the safety of some group of people. This sort of speed bump does nothing but infuriate those who pass over it, and perhaps inflate the ego of the owner of the bump -- or, in this case, crash the bump, er, blog.

This is nice, but there are many more HTML5 examples at http://www.chromeexperiments.com , and most of them are much more "amazing" than the linked app.

One of the top 4 (not sure if it's 2nd or 4th) by rating for me is the linked demo in the OP, FWIW.

There are lots of very nice examples, yes, but they seem to have hired YouTube commenters to provide ... um ... expert commentary.

"Error Establishing a Database Connection"

I don't know about the amazing part, but you're right, it does work without flash or java! :)

Please don't downvote for posting what I found, only for disagreeing with my upcoming opinion: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /blog/2010/03/09/amazing/ on this server.

I hate it when I get this message. HN should kill links with server errors.

If I still had edit access to the submission, I would have changed the link to go directly to the site (see Comment below). It seems his site has been taken offline temporarily due to bandwidth issues/costs. head desk

This is the most usable drawing/painting app I've ever tried. There's something in its constrained, simple functionality that's very freeing. I've been playing with this for hours. All I need to do now is hack it to add colors.

Really? A Permissions error with HTML 5? Let me in on your secret!!!!

It also works on other touch-screen devices with recent WebKit builds too that support touch events, such as Android. I helped mrdoob by suggesting various improvements including the usage of touch events.

You guys have BUSTED the site at the link!!

And I can't edit this post. Use THIS link:

http://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/harmony/

Try it in Firefox and then in Chrome - really shows the JS speed advantages of Google's browser (at least for this).

Don't confuse "No Java" with "No Javascript".

I feel like this post is trying to be tricky in its wording.

It would be cool if it was possible to automatically save to an image host.

Site won't load for me -- is it iPhone only?

It's being served from an iPhone. :)

It worked for me eventually -- actually pretty awesome and I made some killer sketches in under 5 minutes each.

This is not amazing.

Site is not loading

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