

The HTML5 Experiments of Hakim El Hattab  - bigstorm
http://hakim.se/experiments/

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GBKS
I work with him (<http://f-i.com>) and he is an incredibly talented
interactive developer. His work, and these demos show an extreme attention to
detail and an incredibly nice, human touch to interaction and motion.

Alright, I'll stop. Just make sure to check out the demos.

Plus, here's a blog entry he wrote on HTML5 and his experiences -
[http://www.kontain.com/fi/entries/94636/thoughts-on-
html5-ca...](http://www.kontain.com/fi/entries/94636/thoughts-on-
html5-canvas/)

~~~
elblanco
These are real interesting and nice interaction models. Definitely some of the
better interactive work I've seen going on in canvas land.

These types of experiments definitely push the boundary of what we can do
today with HTML5. And as deficiencies we find at that boundary are exposed
(performance, interaction issues, audio, etc.) the spec will only get better.

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mahmud
It never really sank in with me until this: flash is dead.

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.

~~~
naturalized
Actionscript 3.0 is much more sophisticated than Javascript/HTML5. The
capabilities of HTML5 are equivalent to Actionscript1.0/Flash Player 6, circa
2004 (these demos were entirely possible even in Flash Player 5 perhaps).
Plus, Flash is reasonably cross-platform (except for iPhone/iPad of course).
On another note, making embeddable widgets (slideshows, videos with more than
just viewing functionality, like Youtube) is very hard in Javascript, since
any complex embedded Javascript would likely clash with other scripts on the
page (we have experienced this, making a complex Javascript widget, that ended
up clashing with Adsense ads of our customers, it was a nightmare to debug
that).

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).

~~~
subbu
Wait for an year or two. IMHO, HTML5 is going to evolve much faster than
ActionScript. When I saw these kind of cool animations in Flash years ago, I
wanted to play around with it but couldn't see the source. It was all hidden
behind the swf/fla files making it harder to see how things were done. If I
wanted to fiddle with it I needed Flash software. Not so with HTML5. All you
need is a text editor and a browser. I am sure whoever this link would have
tried to look at the source.

> 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.

~~~
Groxx
> _When I saw these kind of cool animations in Flash years ago, I wanted to
> play around with it but couldn't see the source._

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.

~~~
fedesilva
While I do not care for obfuscation for its IP protection function, having the
source visible and accessible is a problem for games: how can we know that top
scores are valid and a variable has not been modified? Basically, all JS games
are cheatable. John Resig talked about this <http://bit.ly/bO3bcf>

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edanm
This is beautiful.

It reminded me a lot of an online puzzle game called Auditorium. If you liked
these demos, and have even the slightest interest in puzzle games, I really
recommend checking it out (free, pretty long demo):
<http://www.playauditorium.com/>.

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Kilimanjaro
Does he need a resume when applying for a job? What if you got this from him
in your pile of resumes:

    
    
      Degree: None
      Experience: None
      Skills: Javascript ninja & rockstar, watch this [url]
    

Would you hire him?

~~~
GBKS
Short answer: Yes, after talking to him in person and making sure he's a
social fit, too.

If it's of interest, we hired him from Hyperisland
(<http://www.hyperisland.se>), a school in Sweden focused on interactive
design and development. The school is top notch and most students end up in
interactive agencies.

And if it's of further interest, our best designers and the CEO never attended
college. They simple have been passionate about design from a young age and
had enough drive to pursue their craft to master it. For the interactive
agency industry, it really just matters what you can produce, so a spectacular
portfolio without degrees to back it up can land you a job.

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eekfuh
Seems to be more like the Canvas experiments of Hakim.

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thomasfl
This reminds me of java applet and flash demos from the nineties. Except this
time it's done without any browser plugin, which is awesome.

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ck2
Wow, the monster from Fullmetal, that was freaky!

( _hold down the mouse button and drag or click across the page_ )

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Ocho-Bits
I really want to learn do to stuff like this. Could you guys give me some
pointers on where to start?

~~~
peregrine
Right click view source. Reading code and trying to understand it is key to
learning.

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kzsystems
seriously amazing!

As for flash, if it can do or does anything as gorgeous I haven't yet seen it.

Thanks to Hakim and bigstorm.

