What is Digg?46 Comments
- Znuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Kind of impressive... Let's hope in a few years this could be the death of flash? :-)
- ubermutt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Although this is very nice for SVG; it's very simple to do a thing like that in Flash, and to think that this is the beginning of the death of Flash is a little naive. When SVG can handle audio, video and high level interaction like Flash can, then we can talk about it's death. Until then you carry on hating Flash and we'll carry on building great Flash content.
A little penis envy never killed anyone. ;) - YHCIR, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9http://www.duggmirror.com/design/Amazing_Interactive_SVG_Diagrams/
- brentcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6quick question: will IE7 support SVG?
- Dracos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Flash only has three reasons to exist: audio, video, and animation.
Most widely available cross-platform and cross-browser audio and video: Flash.
Most widely available and supported animation vehicle: Flash (animation is Flash's roots, don't forget)
Flash has a horrible user interface, no matter how pretty it's painted. Flash is a black hole as far as accessibility is concerned.
No open web standard can deliver audio and video (hopefully ogg will, eventually, once people get over their mp3 obsession). However, between SVG and the canvas element, animation is covered by web standards.
I've told people for years that excepting audio and video, 80% of what flash is used for can be done directly in the web page without any plugins. Now with AJAX, thjis percentage is even higher. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I would like to see some of this "great Flash content" you are talking about.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5no multiplatform flash player
- ldwilliams, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4yep agreed, looked impressive to me as well :)
- NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The mirror wants to serve it as text/html, which is screwing up the SVG somehow. Not to mention, that the lack of styling is somehow even uglier than what I managed to come up with... *lol*. I won't even mention how you clipped out my google ad... I mean, why bother? Everyone has adblock anyway.
:( - b7j0c, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ubermutt - i am sure svg can do better than "this version of flash does not support express install"
i would settle for ascii art - bronaugh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Where's the massive duplication of effort? Please.
Let's see. They created their own scripting language. They created their own vector language. They created their own APIs to the underlying video and sound subsystems.
#1 is already addressed by Javascript; #2 is now addressed by SVG; and #3 could be (or already is addressed by) browser plugins.
Thus duplication of effort. - Hender, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This could do even better than flash, as it can be integrated with HTML, CSS, Javascript, and all other web standards.
If you want to know why that's awesome, imagine Word's commentary feature in Writely, with lines just in between the lines of text, live editable graphs in Google Spreadsheet that you can specify colour themes for, infinitely zoomable Google Maps, etc.
The SVG spec has amazing potential, but it lacks the viewers, editors and adoption that Flash has ... the parts that actually take time. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You guys are bashing Flash for asinine reasons. What about the fact that you get animation, sound, filters, scripting, and components all in one published SWF file? How about the development environment being a lot more efficient than your mashup of technologies? And only needing one plugin for all of that? Oh, Linux is only at version 7? You don't like stick animations? And that's why everything else about Flash sucks?
- whackaxe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"who needs Flash anyway?"
people who create websites for a living. Although I'm more than sceptic about SVG ever catching up with Flash (in every respect) I'll vouch that Inkscape is a damn fine vector program, a hell of a lot more intutitive than Illustrator or Flash - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5No, but then they're not even planning on supporting CSS or DOM properly... as far as I've heard, only the worst css flaws are being fixed. Oh, and finally an actual XHR instead of activeX.
Adobe's plugin is the best to be had for IE, and making SVG that works both for it and for SVG-capable browsers like well... like nearly every other browser is a pain. Those browsers that don't have it yet? Safari, Konqueror and the rest? It's already there in beta...
IE7 does have VML which is their own vector markup. But try doing something with it. It's worthless. I don't think you can ever expect SVG in IE, and certainly neither in 7 nor 8. - theGrue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just like the crazy hairstyle you can get when you set both sliders to 100%.
- seventoes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3hopefully it wont rise up like web 2.0 has now...
- grayBot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I dont know anyone who is good in flash that continues to criticizes it - i.e can quickly create slick animation & is good w/ action script
if you are looking for a static page you obviously arent going to need flash.
But if you want a webpage that has any interactive animated elements / sound / video you are going to use flash.
Flash can be lightweight and useful for things that simply cant be done with anything else in 1/10 the time.
pandora.com - flash
vongo.com -flash
googlevideo - flash
yes some people used to make anyone 5 Mb intros to their websites - but that doesnt mean thats what flash does.
often animated interaction can be useful and more intuitive than static sites - depending on the content of course - so please save the tired critiques - dasch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What would have made this even more impressive is if he had used XForms to do the slider and data modelling -- that would also have made it easy to submit the information back to the server.
- bronaugh, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Can't you simply use Javascript to cue events in other embedded content like audio/video/etc handled by other plugins, thus making irrelevant the duplication of effort Flash has created?
The Flash way of doing things (massive duplication of effort, etc) is bad software engineering practice. It violates the concept of modularity. It also violates the common-sense rule of not reinventing the wheel. Moving to a more modular approach is a move in the right direction on the Web where common software engineering principles are simply not applied in the vast majority of projects.
This is why an approach using standards-based technology and integration of modules using Javascript is a better approach. It preserves modularity and doesn't reinvent the wheel.
Oh yeah; now that Javascript support's getting good, it's turning out that Javascript is a killer language in which you can do all sorts of kinky stuff, like create anonymous functions, closures, curry arguments, etc. - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In opera 9 beta, it just makes him completely bald. Whenever 2 clippath child elements overlap, it still should be clipped, it's OR not XOR. Firefox has some sort of rendering bug though. And I can't figure out a decent workaround.
- NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm still working on Xforms myself... even the sliders I have there are borrowed. Still, it's simple to submit back to the server... as you update the graphics, just update a hidden input. Sloppy, but it works.
Eventually I'd like to do a proper Xform/XBL/SVG slider, and maybe a few other widgets too, but I'm learning this myself too. - requiem18th, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I can't believe how short-sighted these people are!
Yes, flash delivers today what svg is still on the way to implement, but relying in a proprietary monoculture platform forever and ever isn't very smart.
We are not talking about dropping all flash files this very minute and substitute it with yet-to-be-perfected SVG content everywhere.
This is about building a better upgrade path, free, unrestricted, extensible. This is about the future.
since when developing open standards became penis envy?
So... short-sighted...
And yes, flash is a accessibility hell. This is not asinine flash bashing.
Flash is continuously used to defy the user. Google and youtube doesn't use it because you can't embed videos on pages, you can, video plug-ins for browsers are older than flash.
They use it so it makes it harder to download these videos.
It was also used to feed ads to people with images disabled. Yes we have flashblock now but things weren't always like this.
So please let us work for a better future, don't be a short-sighted dim wit. - nickganga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Inkscape is a pretty cool app. I just took a digital multimedia class and we used Inkscape for the SVG portion. Very cool!
- sembetu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4You should direct your nose toward your fourth point of contact, and inhale the airy flatulence passing from your bowels. SVG is, indeed, impressive and amazing. Were there ample browser support for SVG, the web could be a much richer place.
- SnakeO, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Do people bash on Flash because they don't want to learn how to use it?
If this SVG example were ported to flash (which can be done rather quickly), would the average user even know / care what it was done it? - CaughtThinking, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2SVG as it currently is is Flash about 6-7 years ago. Just some ugly alpha in someones basement.
Meanwhile Flash today can put navigational elements and stoppoints inside movies which themselves can be rendered in a 3d environment.
There's no comparison. - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All of which I have to whitelist in flashblock, or I don't bother to see.
SVG is past "ugly alpha" stage, even if I'm not talented enough to demonstrate that. It's at least in "homely beta" stage.
I swear, for as bad as the flash-bashers are, the apologists are even worse. Take another hit off the flashcrackpipe, you can stop any time you want to, eh? - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Lies. I use linux myself, and it works perfectly in two of the browsers I test on. On Opera 8 or Konqueror 3.x you can expect to see the SVG images, but they won't be interactive. On the Opera 9 beta that I listed as being supported, it works *even better* than on Firefox 1.5, since ff1.5 has a rendering bug.
Konqueror 4 should also be able to see all this fine, but I'm not able to build KDE4 on this machine. Safari with the latest beta webkit should be able to see the SVG images as static, no scripting again. But both these browsers will support it soon enough, and it will take awhile to learn things.
Netscape 9 will have SVG support when it comes out, and since it's gecko based you can expect it to work identically compared to Firefox.
All of this is true whether you are using Linux or OSX, as long as you use a supported browser. Chances are even if you use a currently unsupported browser, it's going to catch up with you anyway, in the next year.
The only browser that you can count on this never working in would be IE, which is hardly a browser at all. And looking at my logs and statistics, it would seem that maybe 10% of you are using that painful pile of crap.
Still AaronD12 is correct, I urge you to go spend $300 on macrodobe's software, just so you can cute little widgets. - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You talk about ignorance and fail to realize that actionscript *IS* javascript with a few flash hooks? It's a direct implementation of ECMAscript, Mr. Flash Weenie, look it up.
So, if you look at it that way, I already know it you dolt. I just used javascript on my own demo, and while I'm far from being a js guru, I've at least shown that I can be a clever tinkerer. And unlike the apologists, I used the browsers implementation. I'm coding for more than one platform, and having at least some small success. Why do you have to trash me?
I tell you what, go ahead and buy me a laptop so I can have a machine with windows on it. And buy me a license for whatever in the hell the flash development tools are called. I'll convert, and take cheap potshots at everyone that tries to do something a different way, because lord forbid we should have options or point out the abysmal state that IE is in. - bennybertow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, you can have multimedia in SVG, kinda. Just use SMIL ( http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/ )
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.design-sites.net promotion and design site - what you think about site?
- SnakeO, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Read some of the above comments.
It's pretty clear that it's flash bashing, although I'm all for non-proprietary software just because software is proprietary doesn't make it evil or less capable than its counterpart. In fact most of the time it's the other way around (Photoshop vs Gimpshop anyone?) - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"often animated interaction can be useful and more intuitive than static sites - depending on the content of course - so please save the tired critiques"
I agree. So why does it have to be Flash? I admit I was being a little bit sassy when I wrote up the story for Digg, but I've had alot of luck doing things that others said could only be done in Flash, and some have been very quick to build. Inkscape, a free editor, and nano are the only tools I've needed (well, a slight fib, one of my more ambitious SVG applets uses PNGs rendered with Blender, and I may have used Gimp on those for post-processing). Who wants to pay whatever in the hell it is that Macrodobe asks for the flash development tools? Why should we let a single company dictate how all the interactive/animated content on the web is created and viewed? SVG is superior in alot of ways, and even your arguments about it not being practical won't hold forever.
We just need to convince homestarrunner.com to switch, and it will be the end of Flash for good. ;) - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I don't know why others bash flash.
Me, I realized these things could be done in flash several years ago, or barring that, in java if I absolutely had to. I put off building my website for that reason. Now that real web browsers are starting to support SVG, there is no need.
Flashblock won't block this, though if weenies make annoying SVG stuff, someone will come up with an SVGblock extension soon enough.
It's a nice open standard. If someone wants to see what makes it work, notepad is all they need.
What tools are necessary to do it, are free.
It's something new.
There are dozens of implementations of it, rather than just one controlled by a company that gives us any goodwill only grudgingly.
So, I think there are at least a few reasons... kinda funny that you think it's flash-bashing to suggest that we don't *need* it anymore. - sembetu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2There is no such thing as Flash Content. Only Flash Design, or you could say Flash Designed Content. Since Flash only exists as either a A) Viewer or B) Vector/Animation Tool, you can not call something "Flash Content". The "Content" is what you embed WITHIN the Flash Files as part of your Flash Design.
- primitivehuman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0requiem18th is absolutely right. Flash is used to keep people from downloading content. Although I've authored some pretty decent websites and CD-ROMs using flash, I still don't like to see it used in webpages because of its inaccessibility and I don't feel that you should need a plug-in to browse the web.
This is just all of my opinions so don't take this as me bashing flash or Adobe....
It is also unfortunate to see that Adobe might be deprecating their support for SVG although it seems that they never really followed the specification very well to begin with. I've had basic SVG (tiny svg 1.1) files (created in Autocad) that were misinterpreted by Illustrator CS2 and yet Inkscape was able to read them just fine.
Even though Inkscape doesn't follow the W3C specs perfectly, it seems to be the editor of choice for SVG. XStudio 6 by EvolGrafx is also nice, but, even though it is a "stable" version, I've experienced alot of crashes with it. If only they could implement some of the cool features (like the DOM - Document Object Model) of XStudio into Inkscape, then it could be even nicer. My Wacom tablet seems to freak out with it alot as well. Regardless, It's definitely impressive for open source software to say the least. - lava, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5***** that. The core libraries for flash are MUCH MUCH more advanced than anything else javascript or svg has.
I deem you a loser. - lava, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3What the ***** is this "massive duplication of effort" that you're talking about?
- jdgiotta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Check out Osflash.org.
P.S. - I know just as much about JavaScript then I know about ActionScript (which is a lot). You're not informing me of anything new. - jdgiotta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Don't bother to try and argue about Flash.
Its obvious that Flash naysayers can't for the life of them actually build an application with an interface.
Saying Flash is bad is like saying Java is bad. I have had the debate before and until someone learns how to program in ActionScript they we will be as hard to convince has a faith-crazed religious zealot.
Nothing any one can whine about after my post will change the fact that I've convinced probably some of the best in the business that ActionScript is worth more then plain ignorance. - kevincannon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Why, what's wrong with Flash?
- AaronD12, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1FYI: Linux and Mac users viewing this site will see only the static graphics, even with Adobe's SVG viewer installed, and each of the four SVG files will be downloaded. This is obviously not what the author intended, but it's a real reason why not to use SVG and to use Flash instead.
- ubermutt, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Do this in SVG:
http://www.x-menthelaststand.com/
Remember! Time is money... I'm sure you can do this in ASCII art, but there's a client, there are scopes there are goals. Developing for the web is a lot less geeky then you'd like it to be. SVG is nice, but it's not where close to Flash. The stuff that I can do with Flash in a short time is amazing.
And what do Google use for their Video? What do youtube use? The amount of Flash hatred is amazing considering the fact that there is more work that developers and the need for Flash just goes up. Lemme guess, you guys hate iPods too right?
Still the penis envy lives on. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2What the fak was so impressive/amazing about what? Am I supposed to see a change in the guy's baldness??? This POS doesn't even work.
pffffftt....i fart on this so called SVG crap.
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