
Famo.us is now open source - Allstar
https://github.com/famous/famous
======
zol
We participated in the private beta and wrote up a simple (I hope) post of the
basics of developing a Famo.us app here -
[http://blog.percolatestudio.com/engineering/the-future-of-
ja...](http://blog.percolatestudio.com/engineering/the-future-of-javascript-
animation-with-famous/)

The closed nature of their 'open source' project can be frustrating at times.
Having said that and despite all the hype, famo.us is sitting in a pretty
unique position in the html mobile web scene and frankly I'm more excited
about it than any of the alternatives (sencha, jquery mobile, etc).

It's early days, I wouldn't write it off yet...

~~~
chevreuil
I like how you sumed it up

> Famo.us is built around a neat idea: by directly using the CSS matrix3d
> transform in combination with the window.requestAnimationFrame function, you
> can describe the complete layout and animation of your app in a way that’s
> hardware accelerated with consistent performance.

> It’s a stroke of genius, but in order to implement that simple idea you need
> a sophisticated math library to help translate your app’s UI into the series
> of matrix transformations that get pushed to the GPU. This library is
> Famo.us.

~~~
robterrell
It's a stroke of genius, yes, that others have had before now. Lime.js did
this three years ago (mapping animations to hardware-accelerated CSS).
Cocos2Dx-Javascript does this one step better by bridging into actually-native
rendering code. Three.js has DOM-with-CSS-transformations. IIRC someone
implemented hardware-accelerated CoreAnimation in Cappuccino using CSS
transformations. So, not really new. I'm curious to see what new ideas they DO
bring.

------
Andrex
I hate to be "that guy," but what is Famous? [http://famo.us](http://famo.us)
doesn't say anything on the index, and the About page is broken. Is it just a
library? Toolchain? A real product?

~~~
joeblau
It's a platform that is supposed to solve the problem that HTML5 promised by
subverting the DOM with a custom rendering engine (A port of the Unity Engine
to JavaScript). It basically allows you to run a web app at native app
performance, cross platform all in your web browser.

Demos - [http://demo.famo.us/](http://demo.famo.us/)

Codepen Examples -
[http://www.codepen.io/befamous/](http://www.codepen.io/befamous/)

edit: Also found this - [http://famo.us/about](http://famo.us/about)

~~~
CmonDev
"allows you to run a web app at native app performance"

I would say "promises" instead of "allows". It is still experimental.

~~~
joeblau
I've been at every event since early Dec and I was in the private beta and
while they are still working some things out, you wouldn't really be able to
tell if some of these demos were obj-c or .js from what they have built.

I feel like the engine reminds me more of the slickness and responsiveness of
a Window Mobile 8 interface as opposed to an iOS interface with how smooth
some of the scrolling is.

~~~
chrisdevereux
For those of us who haven't used WM, is that a good thing or not?

------
dfc
The about section of the website is completely blank for me in the latest
firefox. The docs and the guides pages on famo.us redirect me to a login page.
Am I missing something?

~~~
camus2
No you're not.It's pure hypeware, after 3 years of development and 5+ millions
in VC funding they cant set up a simple gh-page with a basic tutorial and
exemple on launch day... Big backlash against this framework starts in
3,2,1...

~~~
simple10
It's not hype. They just want to control the on-boarding of the open source
community. The apps at the launch event tonight show a lot of promise for
Famo.us being a better framework over Angular for mobile apps.

~~~
atarian
Just like their super-exclusive events in SF that you had to compete for
tickets online in order to see the SDK early. Or their beta signup form that I
tried years ago, which never delivered an actual beta.

Never mind that, I'll just put my name at the end of this new 74k+ long
waitlist. I'm sure this whole thing is just a really long on-boarding process.

~~~
colemorrison
Pretty much my experience too. Years ago when we we're still betting on HTML5
and not Native. Years ago when users weren't statistically spending more time
in apps than browser for mobile.

------
amasad
Great news! But the fact that their own website is broken on Safari on iOS7
doesn't give me much hope that this is easy to develop for
[http://famo.us/](http://famo.us/)

~~~
joeblau
That site is using just a plain express app on node.js, it's not using famous.

[http://dotheyusenode.herokuapp.com/?url=famo.us](http://dotheyusenode.herokuapp.com/?url=famo.us)

~~~
shaunoconnor
The site does use Famo.us, it's a ‘front-end’ framework.

[http://famo.us/assets/famous.js](http://famo.us/assets/famous.js)

------
DigitalSea
It is about time. I've been looking forward to trying out Famo.us' Javascript
engine to see what all of the hype was about and how they were achieving those
remarkable benchmark scores on mobile. I am going to dig into the code tonight
and find out what makes it really tick. Fantastic and exciting.

~~~
paulftw
don't forget to share your findings )

~~~
DigitalSea
I was planning on writing up a little blog post after I've finished peeking
under the good definitely!

------
tbolse
It’s very interesting to see this being announced now. The space of “native-
to-the-web”-frameworks is very noisy lately. I wonder which moves the other
developers of frameworks, especially in regards to Web3D games, will make
next: Artillery? Goo Technologies? Scirra? Ludei? PlayCanvas? Impact? ...?

There is quite a bunch of free engines already out there: Babylon.js,
Copperlicht, CubicVR, TheeJS, ...

The native engine builders: Epic, Crytek and Unity are also adding some more
pressure on the game sector in this field with their announcements to also
move into the web and alter their price schemes.

------
msoad
I like Famous but there is so much buzz around it. ThreeJS had CSS and SVG
rendered before they even started.

Some projects, thanks to VCs gets too much marketing that put main players
under their shadows. MeteorJS is the same.

~~~
gaimozo
It would be unfair to call Meteor's and Famous' marketing "the same". Some
facts:

\- Nobody knew about Meteor before their HN launch[0]

\- Famous appeared at conferences, TechCrunch Disrupt and others with demos of
periodic table[1] (which was a ported example from ThreeJS)

\- Meteor launched on HN, people loved it, and only then they raised VC and
announced it [2]

\- Famous announced their funding and sometimes dropped news of various
partnerships with "hardware partners" they cannot disclosure. [3]

\- Meteor was open-sourced and available with documentation since the launch.
They changed their licensing from GPLv2 to MIT later but it all was open[4].

\- Famous is open-sourcing their 1-commit repo after 2 years of private beta
and now their documentation is in private beta as well.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824908)

[1]:
[http://gigaom.com/2012/11/25/famous/](http://gigaom.com/2012/11/25/famous/)

[2]: [https://www.meteor.com/blog/2012/07/25/meteors-
new-112-milli...](https://www.meteor.com/blog/2012/07/25/meteors-
new-112-million-development-budget)

[3]: [http://us5.campaign-
archive1.com/?u=4656ba2b0a364690c8530bc1...](http://us5.campaign-
archive1.com/?u=4656ba2b0a364690c8530bc1e&id=5a55fd61fa)

[4]: [https://www.meteor.com/blog/2012/04/20/mit-license-http-
requ...](https://www.meteor.com/blog/2012/04/20/mit-license-http-request-
package-made-with-meteor)

~~~
malandrew
Releasing collapsed git histories when going public is not without precedence.
See the initial public commits from meteor, react and angular:

[https://github.com/meteor/meteor/commit/d69c2d1f198ab08a26a2...](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/commit/d69c2d1f198ab08a26a2b3bad07ccfa6f31d37da)
[https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/75897c2dcd1dd3a6ca4...](https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/75897c2dcd1dd3a6ca46284dd37e13d22b4b16b4)
[https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/c9c176a53b1632c...](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/c9c176a53b1632ca2b1c6ed27382ab72ac21d45d)

We had a reason for doing so. From now on all future development will be out
in the open. The docs specifically were supposed to be made available without
logging in, but we were short on time. They nicely designed docs will be made
available tomorrow. In the meantime, there are guides available in the
[https://github.com/famous/guides](https://github.com/famous/guides) repo and
all the source is JSdoc-ed. Check out the code and try making something with
it.

disclaimer: I work for famo.us.

------
neoveller
Glad to see this out. I've been waiting on famo.us to become available for
quite a while now. Exciting stuff.

Now, where is the documentation? The readme from the repo points to a docs
folder that does not exist, and links to the online versions of documentation
lead me to login-only pages... registering only puts me in line for access.

------
aantix
Such a strange "launch" presentation; 3d is an obvious center piece and 40
minutes in, zero real demonstrations of the actual tech. No, the simple
examples in "famo.us school" don't count. It looked similar jquery easing.

No visuals, just a bunch of beta devs talking about how great everything
looks..

~~~
joeblau
Here are a few links to some demos and some code examples on Code Pen.

Demos: [http://demo.famo.us/](http://demo.famo.us/)

Codepen: [http://www.codepen.io/befamous/](http://www.codepen.io/befamous/)

------
zoomerang
Is there anywhere to actually get a real demo of this product? Something that
isn't a WebGL tech demo, but an actual example of an actual app written using
this?

~~~
dydx
I think the closest thing to that would be their "Tweetus" demo.
[http://demo.famo.us/tweetus/](http://demo.famo.us/tweetus/)

~~~
cnp
Wow, that Tweetus demo is SO clunky, like a bad Flash site :/

~~~
vqc
what browser are you using?

~~~
zo1
So famous is only for fast javascript browsers? That says it all... damn
#hipstercoders.

And yes, it works fast on chrome, dog slow on Firefox. Since when did we
decide to collectively ignore Firefox users because we want to use some fancy
shmancy JS framework so we can write our code using an "opinionated" approach?
And I quote "opinionated" as that is precisely how the readme describes the
"famou.us" way of building "rich, fast web applications".

~~~
Twirrim
It's working fast on firefox for me.. but that means it arguably says worse
things about the framework if performance can be so drastically variable from
one person and browser to the next.

Didn't famo.us show off some fancy spinning sphere thing a year or so back? I
seem to recall that working wonderfully smoothly on my (Galaxy Nexus) cell
phone. The demos all available now are terribly slow and jerky and really
don't sell the tech in the slightest.

~~~
jamii
It seems to heavily rely on graphics card support. Enabling linux graphic
drivers in chromium changed it from barely working to silky smooth for me. I
haven't figured out how to do the same in firefox yet though.

------
DocSavage
A lot of the links from the repo README are broken or in an invite-only area.
The main docs I've seen are the markdown guides here:

[https://github.com/Famous/guides](https://github.com/Famous/guides)

The biggest disappointment is what seems like less-than-rock-solid desktop
browser support. Support for iOS and Android only with "Broader support for
more browsers is coming"?? (After all the discussion of not releasing until
everything is rock solid?) I noticed it with some of the initial demos that
didn't allow you to rotate the element chart using your mouse, but it worked
fine on an iPad. For all the talk of 3d, I don't see anything on par with a
three.js in the source.

Seems like React + a physics engine...

~~~
oldgun
Desktop? I thought they were building for phones.

[http://m.infoworld.com/t/mobile-development/famous-were-
buil...](http://m.infoworld.com/t/mobile-development/famous-were-building-
better-phonegap-236267?source=footer)

~~~
DocSavage
Their marketing: "Famo.us provides a powerful JavaScript framework and
developer tools designed to build rich, fast web applications." Yeah, it looks
like it's mainly targeted toward mobile devices, not that it was clear before
today. Earlier reports mentioned desktops together with mobile, like this one:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/10/famo-us-is-a-gaming-
engine-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/10/famo-us-is-a-gaming-engine-
for-3d-interfaces/) "...it works on nearly any platform, including desktops,
Android, and iOS."

------
jmspring
The dynamics of which technologies find longevity on the front page is always
intriguing. Erlang/OTP 17 was top for a short while, this random javascript
framework hitting the top?

How is this more useful than a language/platform rev?

~~~
argonaut
It's not a random framework. It's been worked on and talked about for 1-2
years now.

~~~
jmspring
Maybe I gloss over most JavaScript framework posts, but first I've seen (and
remember) for this one in the last year or so.

My general point is genericX.js seems to get a lot of up votes here relative
to other language/framework topics .

~~~
rralian
Well, I think it's because mobile web is still a huge opportunity, and mobile
website rendering still leaves a lot to be desired. If they deliver a simple-
to-use framework that enables a superior UX on phones (looks like it, though
we still need to see more), then that's naturally going to be very interesting
to a startup/entrepreneurial crowd like hacker news. I've been following them
since the periodic table example and am still eager to see it fully open up.

I also totally dig meteor as a huge step-up in how to build web applications.
I think they solve a big problem that most people are still working on (react
also looks interesting)... not having to duplicate your business logic and
rendering code. I think that's a huge benefit to getting things done quickly.
Plus you get real-time rendering of data changes in your app, largely for
free.

So I wouldn't call these genericX.js libraries. I think they are enabling new
opportunities and are worth the interest they're generating.

------
chrisb808
More demos are at: [http://demo.famo.us/](http://demo.famo.us/)

Facebook Paper: [http://demo.famo.us/paper/](http://demo.famo.us/paper/)

Yahoo Weather:
[http://disrupt.famo.us/1022e61cbff3fe1fc382a81a2d6e2396078a6...](http://disrupt.famo.us/1022e61cbff3fe1fc382a81a2d6e2396078a6731e64a1da228ac1ac32a609ed1bbdfecaebd0a123a20e202c39ce607778a89fa91763100a3fa24520bf5e8f758/)

Rise: [http://demo.famo.us/rise/](http://demo.famo.us/rise/)

~~~
chevreuil
The Paper demo is quite impressive on my phone (iPhone 5s). Anyone who
struggled with touch events in an HTML app should be impressed.

------
simple10
Famo.us announced two things at the launch event tonight:

\- github repo is now public

\- they're letting in the first 75k devs to famo.us community website tonight

The first 75k devs will get 3 invites.

The website contains what they're calling Famo.us University. Tutorials,
forums, IRC, etc.

The explanation for letting in 75k devs at a time is to not overwhelm the
community with new devs. They want to be responsive to the first batch and
train them so the first batch can support other batches. It's pretty brilliant
community management and a sane approach to being able to actually deliver on
the hype over time.

~~~
Tango3
I think they are only letting 500 people in. There are 75k on the list. I
signed up 2 years ago and I am number 74606. Looks like it will be at least a
few months till I can look at the documentation

~~~
malandrew
500 or so per day. This number may be adjusted up or down depending on whether
we are feeling overwhelmed. However I expect it to rise over time as those
that get in early help those that get in later (IRC, forums, etc.). We're
planning on getting everyone access within 40 days or so.

~~~
Tango3
Had hoped to give this a try for our new product. Too many uncertain timelines
I think to give it a try.

------
d0m
Do we have more details on what is famo.us? It says "opinionated approach"..
How does it compare to ionicframework.com for instance?

~~~
Pixelicious
It reminds me a lot of writing Cocoa applications but with javascript instead
of Objective C.

~~~
ams6110
I thought that was Cappuccino?

[http://www.cappuccino-project.org/](http://www.cappuccino-project.org/)

~~~
camus2
I love Cappuccino ! i really wish it'd take off, but the objective-J thing is
a bit hard.Why not provide a pure JS interface?

~~~
lechevalierd3on
Have you heard of MontageJS [http://montagejs.org](http://montagejs.org) it
takes most of its inspiration from cocoa.

------
marknow
Er, fail? No examples still at link given, and About page also blank, as
others mentioned. Would like to try this, but not sure I want to invest the
time without seeing some working examples first...

~~~
trekforever
You can see some examples here [http://demo.famo.us/](http://demo.famo.us/)
and [http://www.codepen.io/befamous/](http://www.codepen.io/befamous/)

------
thefreeman
How frustrating is the registration + queue to read the docs =(

~~~
moondowner
The docs (gudes) are on GitHub too:
[https://github.com/Famous/guides/tree/master/dev](https://github.com/Famous/guides/tree/master/dev)

------
dcsan
for those unclear, the countdown is just for their University, forum etc. The
code itself is all out there. Clone the repo, init and update the submodules,
and go!

They also have a yeoman generator

[https://github.com/Famous/generator-
famous](https://github.com/Famous/generator-famous)

------
trekforever
I've been stuck at position 79992 for the past 10 minutes ... I just want to
see the docs and guides!

~~~
XaspR8d
This is a countdown? I haven't seen the number change at all; I was under the
impression it was just your fixed user number. Then again mine is lower
(758xx) and I only just signed up... I could've really used some hints here.

EDIT: The "mystery" over a lot of this is just making me less interested at
this point. Sorry, marketers.

~~~
zoomerang
> EDIT: The "mystery" over a lot of this is just making me less interested at
> this point. Sorry, marketers.

Yeah it's really starting to like this is more of a marketing company than a
technology company, trying to milk some publicity but doing a really bad job
of it.

------
moondowner
The render tree document is pretty interesting
[https://github.com/Famous/guides/blob/master/dev/2014-04-09-...](https://github.com/Famous/guides/blob/master/dev/2014-04-09-render-
tree.md)

------
malandrew
Beepe was built in famous:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beepe-
phone/hcfncm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beepe-
phone/hcfncmkiaffeiicmpkaajdibigffgnfc?hl=en-US)

------
NicoJuicy
I can't seem to get paste the fact that the UX seems confusing to me...

A lot of progressbars for animation also don't include visual feedback (except
a number changing).

------
vivekchand19
Seriously Javascript? Pretty much everything is broken, try submitting on the
register page without any fields ... the bad request is not handled :P

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Can someone explain why this is better than threejs?

~~~
yosun
three is a 3d engine (ish) - famo.us tries to also provide ui layers and such
in a complete framework (that allegedly also includes physics, the works, etc)

~~~
SchizoDuckie
If that's so the code looks like a mess.

------
prostoalex
Launch video from tonight

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQMVjCVZBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQMVjCVZBo)

------
eldude
Seriously, check out the demos, [http://demo.famo.us/](http://demo.famo.us/).
Pretty impressive.

~~~
rplnt
Tried the first three, neither worked in Opera (Desktop or Mobile, the normal
ones). Like.. at all. No fallback, nothing. I read the disclaimer that they
are experimental, but still. The framework itself should cover you here and
provide some sort of fallback (or better yet work).

~~~
muyuu
Same here.

Makes it too hard to find what is it really about, how good it really is, and
whether it is for you or not.

------
ewang1
Anyone know why the text is so blurry in Chrome?

~~~
meemoo
Half pixels; the dreaded "dubstep effect." They should be rounding the
translation values before applying the matrix, at least on elements with text
at screen depth.

------
imikushin
Wow! The demos are just bloody mindblowing

------
yawz
_> Small examples of using each component are available at examples repo_

The link gives a 404.

------
taskstrike
Why is there a line for material that is openly accessible in github? This
seems stupid.

All their audience are developers who can basically get it off of github.

