Notes In the summer of 2010, we created Sand Trap, a game that we entered in a competition on HTML5 games for mobile phones. But most mobile phones either displayed only part of the game or made the game too small—making it completely unplayable. So we took it upon ourselves to make the game fluidly adjust to match any resolution. After a bit of re-programming and using ideas outlined in this article, we had a game that scaled across any modern browser, whether it ran in a desktop or a mobile device. Unfurl
NotesYou've heard of CoffeeScript, and you've probably seen some code in it. But do you really know it? Unless you've written something substantial in it, I contend that you don't.Unfurl
NotesI recently learned a cool technique from Simurai about how to animate PNG sprites with the CSS3 animations' steps() property. The main idea in this technique is to "recreate" some kind of animated GIF but with the tiles of a PNG sprite.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesPart of making both Firefox OS and the web as a platform a stronger layer and alternative for developers, we are working on a number of WebAPIs. I’d like to introduce you them here!FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesSo, this is basically doing for single-page apps' index.html what we have typically done for PHP apps using index.php as a single entry point for all URL paths. But, I think it's a horrible idea.Unfurl
NotesThis is an admittedly very simple example of a green screen but you can use this little template to manipulate your webcam’s live video stream and build all kinds of fancy demos with it.FeedUnfurl
NotesFortunately, CSS3 allows us to create loading icons without images. They’re easy to create, scale, re-color, use on any background and don’t incur image downloadsFeedUnfurl
NotesI've been trying to re-implement an HTML5 image uploader like the one on the Mozilla Hacks site, but that works with WebKit browsers. Part of the task is to extract an image file from the canvas object and append it to a FormData object for upload.FeedUnfurl
NotesFor an upcoming canvas project I want to give the users the ability to upload the content of the canvas to an image sharing service. When looking for a suitable API I came across imgur.com the registration was trivial, and they support CORS and base64/dataurl uploads, perfect!FeedUnfurl
Notes Last fall, we moved all the editorial in our apps, including the magazine, into a simple RSS feed in a river of news. We dumped the digital replica. Now we're redesigning Technologyreview.com, which we made entirely free for use, and we'll follow the Financial Times in using HTML5, so that a reader will see Web pages optimized for any device, whether a desktop or laptop computer, a tablet, or a smart phone. Then we'll kill our apps, too. Unfurl
NotesBrowserQuest is a tribute to classic video-games with a multiplayer twist. You play as a young warrior driven by the thrill of adventure. No princess to save here, just a dangerous world filled with treasures to discover. And it’s all done in glorious HTML5 and JavaScript.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesIt is publishing. It is humanity. It is the vanguard of ideas clashing against the rearguard of commerce. This is not new. This is all to be expected. We must stop raising our eyebrows and chuckling at it. We must decide to accept the world as it is, or to roll up our sleeves and help. FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThe Web is singing this morning. The coming death of Flash on mobile devices has made a lot of tech pundits and developers very happy. There is a big fat "I told you so" coming from all corners the of Internet while all Adobe can do is quietly sit back and rue the day the original iPhone was announced. Unfurl
NotesA former manager and engineer of Flash at Adobe said today that when the true smartphone revolution came in 2007 with the announcement of the iPhone is 2007, Adobe ignored it. Carlos Icaza co-founded Ansca Mobile, the creators of the Corona SDK, left Adobe in 2007 when his call for embracing the touchscreen smartphone evolution was ignored by Adobe executives. Unfurl
NotesFor developers, it’s technologically more manageable to build one mobile web app than a half-dozen or even just two native apps. And given the state of mobile web standards, we’re quickly approaching a point where end users can’t tell the difference between the two. All that’s really left is a business model for mobile web apps, Sullivan contends.Unfurl
NotesYesterday, Adobe announced major job cuts and a company restructuring, and indicated that their focus on Flash may not be what it used to be, by cutting off Flash development on Android and the Playbook. Meanwhile last week, Microsoft was reluctantly admitting that Silverlight isn't a big part of their future either. The message is clear, and even if it means some relearning for long time web designers, it's time to switch to HTML5 if you haven't already.Unfurl
NotesLet me restate that simply. The Web (browser) is inside of every application instead of every application being inside the Web (browser).FeedUnfurl
Notes"Thrust was just awesome and it is that game which I have attempted to recreate here using just JavaScript and the HTML <canvas> tag. I have 'cheated' a little in that I use Scott Schiller's excellent SoundManager 2 Javascript audio manager (which in turn uses Flash) to play the sounds, but I think that is fair game in the spirit of what I am trying to do."Unfurl
Notes"Often, web applications will prompt the user to select a file, typically to upload to a server. Unless the web application makes use of a plugin, file selection occurs through an HTML input element, of the sort <input type="file"/>. Firefox 3.6 now supports much of the W3C File API, which specifies the ability to asynchronously read the selected file into memory, and perform operations on the file data within the web application (for example, to display a thumbnail preview of an image, before it is uploaded, or to look for ID3 tags within an MP3 file, or to look for EXIF data in JPEG files, all on the client side). This is a new API, and replaces the file API that was introduced in Firefox 3."FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes"While Microsoft drifts aimlessly with Windows Mobile trying to play a fruitless game of cat and mouse with Apple, and while Google – the defender of all things open and web – invests in Java with Android, one company has come out of left field with a solid vision to embrace open web technologies for its mobile platform. That company is Palm and its platform is called WebOS. And you should stand up and take notice because it is one of the most important developments in the mobile world today."Unfurl
Notes"While Microsoft drifts aimlessly with Windows Mobile trying to play a fruitless game of cat and mouse with Apple, and while Google – the defender of all things open and web – invests in Java with Android, one company has come out of left field with a solid vision to embrace open web technologies for its mobile platform. That company is Palm and its platform is called WebOS. And you should stand up and take notice because it is one of the most important developments in the mobile world today."Unfurl
NotesIt's the HTML 5 outline algorithm in JavaScript. "javascript:(function(s){ s.src = 'http://amachang.sakura.ne.jp/misc/outline/check.js'; document.body.appendChild(s) })(document.createElement('script')) "FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes"Video For Everybody is very simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a video into a website using the HTML5 <video> element which offers native playback in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3 & 4 ... In other browsers that do not support <video>, it falls back to Adobe Flash ... If Flash is not installed, QuickTime is used (which allows playback on the iPhone) ... If QuickTime is not installed then Windows Media Player is used in Internet Explorer for Windows Vista and above. ... Finally, if all else fails, a warning is issued that provides links to download the video, and links to software relevant to getting the video to play within the browser itself. ... This is all done without JavaScript and requires only two video encodes, one OGG file for Firefox 3.5, and one MP4 file for everything else (Flash / Safari / iPhone)."Unfurl
Notes"Today I gave a presentation at Google I/O explaining some of the cool ideas that lie at the heart of our upcoming extension system. For those who didn't get a chance to attend the conference, you can check out the slides"FeedUnfurl