Won't let me use Internet Explorer...even to simply view lesson plans, attachments, and discussions....even though the browser supports all of the required features.
That's a bummer, because this defeats the anywhere/anytime nature of Udacity's system if I can't log in an do a quick lesson during a free lunch hour.
If you are using IE9 or above then you absolutely can browse the site and interact with classes (except game-dev of course, because IE9 does not support basic html5 technologies that it needs). Feel free to join our irc or post on the support forums if you think there is an issue with IE9 or above.
Really wish phone makers would take HTML5 seriously. Right now their JS engines are too slow for practical use. It would be really nice to finally have a build-once, deploy everywhere system
Me too. On the latest hardware, JS is a lot better than most people give it credit for, but it still has a long way to go. Unfortunately all the major players have incentives NOT to give us a viable, portable platform.
I hope Udacity sets up a portfolio of games created by students of this course. It would help support the efficacy of courses like this, and provide the students with more potential hiring opportunities than a completion certificate alone.
Given that you will always have to deal with service providers not supporting your browser, why do you choose to continue using it?
Usually there is an idealogical reason for this sort of stance, but Opera isn't FOSS, and that's the only reason I can think of that someone would choose to put up with an inferior software experience.
I was a long time Opera user. I loved that browser. Everything is at your fingertips. You may spend half your day in your browser, so having everything one click away is great. And if it's not one click away, you can make it so. And if you don't like they way HN looks and behaves, you can change all of that easily (once you know how to). Heck, I even worked at Opera for five years because I loved it so much.
In the end, though, compatibilty issues led me to another browser. I miss much of the functionality, but browser support trumps that.
Opera is to browsers what vim is to text editors. Great if you know how to use it properly, but horrible in some very real and recurring situations.
I put a 70 year old dude on Opera to help prevent him from getting random malware. It took less than a minute to explain to a completely computer illiterate person that he has to click the red icon instead of the blue icon to "launch the internet".
Once it's open it's not very different from other browsers other than it having extremely useful features that most browsers end up adapting months or years later!
I use Chromium, FF and Opera, but each for a specific purpose.
Opera: General browsing/research with dozens of tabs. It's so stable you can have it run for several days and don't need to worry about performance, everything runs smoothly, always. When it comes to stability, Opera is the Debian of browsers. ;)
Also it has the easiest/best implementation of incognito mode.
There are many other reason, but it's best to try it out for yourself. Not just one day or two, but several months.
FF: For development, debugging, testing and some other stuff. I prefer to use it for some darker corners of the web and websites I don't trust, as No-Script is the most advanced script blocker available.
Chromium (in specific Comodo Dragon): Almost the same as FF, but in addition I have to use it to keep track of all the cutting-edge HTML5 stuff. Sad story behind this is that many web-developers don't care about standards and only test there sites with FF/Chromium.
I like them all, I'm not an ideologist, every tool has its purpose. But Opera suits my needs the most.
Chrome isn't either, unless one is referring to Chromium and the differences between the two are more than just name[1]. Many power users like native support of some features opera has that other browser need extensions (with limitations) to have something similar. Pushing a particular browser on others is also just silly when we're all using modern browsers that make it easy to support compared to the crap we went through to work around ie6 and ie7 in the past.
I had fun using it but got a server error when I got to the loading audio portion of the lesson. It said the answer was correct but to try again. Overall I like where they are going with this. I just started on the path of HTML5 game making a few months ago so hopefully this can fill in some holes I may have.
Even Chrome has issues. I've had one answer where it said I failed so I reloaded and it said I now passed. I changed nothing. In another case the tests failed when everything looked correct so I commented out one of the methods and then it said I passed... specifically passing the test that checked for the function that I had commented out! Seems like there is some flakiness with their system.
CS291, interactive rendering (https://www.udacity.com/course/cs291), is WebGL based. The instructor is Eric Haines, one of the authors of Real-Time Rendering, so I'm guessing the course will be a solid intro to real-time graphics that goes beyond a how to use WebGL tutorial.
I would have to disagree, we are developing a fairly advanced multiplayer game using the canvas. You can see some of the gameplay at http://youtu.be/2Mskv0kdo84, we'll be launching into beta in about a month. WebGL is great, but I'd say we are still 1-2 years from being able to use it mainstream.
I've found HTML5/JS games an interesting experience. I'm currently writing an online Pictionary-type game, like Draw My Thing, with HTML5, JS, and PHP. It's been pretty smooth.
I experienced this too, but it's working for me now. Seems like a aggressive cookie / caching issue. Try clearing your cache, force-refresh, or logging out and then logging back in again.
I'm amazed to see people still doing browser detection (hint: other browsers actually do have the features you need, you just didn't think to put them in your list), and worse yet still outright blocking you when they mistakenly think your browser won't work. "We haven't tested your browser, continue at your own risk" is fine, "we won't let you look at this because we don't know your browser exists" isn't.
You will be able to easily continue into the site with an unsupported supported browser once some changes go live in the next day or two. Sorry for the current issues.
Every time I see a "your broser is not supported" message I'm getting more angry. As a developer it's your job to make things work!
Yes, I'm using Opera and yes Opera only supports the standard. But common I checked it in other browsers and I can't see what's so special about the site that a "modern" browser is needed.
That's a bummer, because this defeats the anywhere/anytime nature of Udacity's system if I can't log in an do a quick lesson during a free lunch hour.