

Ha Do That in HTML5 - kadhinn
http://dothatin.com/

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jdietrich
Will the flash button gracefully degrade if I have an obsolete version of
Flash Player, or I use a flash blocker? Can an African schoolkid see it on
their OLPC XO? Can a blind person read it with their screen reader or braille
terminal? Can I select it using a keyboard or an accessible input device? Can
I restyle it in the browser, so it's clear enough for my grandma to read
through her cataracts and big enough for her to click on despite her
arthritis?

Every time you use Flash, you're insulting the dignity of the elderly, the
disabled and any number of others. You're saying to users "if you're not a
healthy young person on a modern computer with a fast connection, you're a
second-class citizen". We shouldn't tolerate it, and in many countries the law
doesn't allow us to.

HTML works because it works for everyone, not just a fortunate few. This isn't
about technology, it's a civil rights issue. No matter how hard Adobe try,
Flash accessibility is massively inferior to HTML accessibility. They should
be ashamed that they took so long to even begin to address the needs of
disabled users and developers using their products should be ashamed for not
using the open, standards-compliant, accessible alternative.

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jbail
You can do that in HTML5. You could use CSS3 with animated gifs/pngs --- or go
straight to the canvas. Either way would get it done. I'd vote for using
canvas.

I'll leave it to someone else to implement. I've got real applications to
build today...

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hnal943
So... the point is that HTML5 can't make annoying buttons with poor usability?

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peti
Annoying? Poor usability? It looks like a button, reacts on mouseovers, and
would totally fit in some game's website. Besides, it is not the point here.

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rimantas
…takes 41KB, and does not work on systems without Flash installed.

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psadauskas
No, I don't believe I will. I'd rather my users know the button is a button,
and will behave like they expect, all without taking up 50% of my CPU...

(Aside: I went back to the page to double-check CPU usage, and the button
wasn't working this time. Yup, behold the awesome power of flash!)

~~~
White_N_Nerdy
I have seen many HTML5 demos that have taken up 50% or more of my CPU. So,
what's the difference?

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jordan0day
I think psadauskas' point was that a shiny button isn't a good benchmark for a
flash vs. html5 comparison. Or at least that they don't think that shiny
buttons make a lot of sense.

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Encosia
Well, that shouldn't be very hard to reproduce:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/360937/do-that-in-html5-fail.png>

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moxiemk1
Since I'm using an iPad at the moment, I was similarly spared from seeing what
this button looked like.

That is, until people rose to his challenge. :(

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STHayden
People who complain the button is ugly seem to be missing the point. iF there
is something that flash can do that HTML5 and the canvas can't do then it's a
bridge to be crossed.

While this might be a bad example it would be worth wile to have a list of
what flash can do that HTML5 can not yet. The we can talk about if it is or is
not worth implementing.

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zackola
That is the ugliest button I've ever seen on the internet.

~~~
jherdman
I take it this means you weren't around for The Dark Ages? The time when
animated GIFs ran amuck, standards were wept for acceptance, and the kingdom
of Geocities was strong?

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zackola
I was around for The Dark Ages for sure, and even including everything there,
this button is worse. I'd even prefer a Java applet mirror reflection button
to this thing.

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kqueue
I don't think the author knows much about html5 or the concept of canvas in
general.

If he goes to <http://www.chromeexperiments.com/>, he'll realize that all this
is doable.

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rimantas
My rought take (sure, I cheated a bit with a background too):

<http://kod.as/lab/button/>

Safari and Chrome.

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superk
I think the "gracefully" part is misleading. This could be done with
Javascript and a simple CSS class added to the <button> is both graceful and
degrades gracefully. But if we're comparing apples-to-apples, what's graceful
about the Flash solution - opening one (possible more - Photoshop, etc)
programs, learning a proprietary language (Actionscript) and exporting a
binary that's not accessible to users or search engines, etc...

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jws
From stackoverflow.com where some misguided fool wants to draw his page
background with canvas:

 _… Webkit-based browsers do allow you to use a element in the CSS background
property. Just give the canvas an id, then use "body {
background:url(#mycanvas); }" in your CSS._

Sure, that isn't in the HTML5 standard per se, but since there is no HTML5
standard we can pretend it is.

steveklabnik points out in this thread an example of someone doing it,
<http://mobdb.com/reddit/button.html> , but they use absolute positioning to
overlay the button and canvas and will surely go mad if they try to use it for
real.

I suppose, with this newfound CSS knowledge I will now have to change my home
page background to a hilbert curve.

Edit: Actually, I think I'll use the "background: -webkit-canvas(name)" and
getCSSCanvasContext() DOM function documented at
<http://webkit.org/blog/176/css-canvas-drawing/>

Upshot: No hilbert for me. Takes about 1 second to render a maximally detailed
hilbert in my browser on a core i7 processor.

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steveklabnik
Someone on Reddit did it:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/db37b/ha_do_tha...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/db37b/ha_do_that_in_html5/c0yvojd)

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seejay
Yup! guess it's time to eat his old Flash disks LOL!

~~~
confuzatron
He should have stipulated that the HTML5 version must have smooth animation,
like the Flash version.

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pedalpete
Does the author realize that the last image has Mr T. representing flash and
Rocky representing HTML5.... in the movie, I believe, Rocky won.

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wazoox
Apparently the effect loops endlessly, always the same. In fact it can be
replicated with 1995 tech, i. e. animated GIF.

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DavidBishop
(Why are there so many posts here without a comment section? Now to the topic
at hand...)

Why?

That's my first question. Why? As in why do I need this button? As in why do I
have to do this in HTML 5?

HTML 5 doesn't have to replace Flash. Flash may be great for some devices, and
the computers of today can do Flash.

Why does this argument always end up with "But I can do this wildly
unnecessary thing in Flash! I should be able to make something unequally
unnecessary in HTML 5".

Perhaps HTML 5 can't do the unnecessary. Perhaps that's all the more reason to
go to HTML 5.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. - Leonardo da Vinci

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S_A_P
He should have cleaned his room before taking a picture in it. If the debate
was so tiresome between flash/html 5, why add fuel to the fire?

I still dont see the need to justify your purchase/platform/technology. build
things that your consumers like, use VB script, Cobol, or powerbuilder for all
I care- just make it cool.

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basicxman
_yawn_ Whatever happened to use the right tool for the right job?

If you need a button like that (gaming website is about the only thing I can
think of), chances are your audience probably has Flash.

My personal opinion however is Flash is not the right tool for the particular
job of creating navigation.

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StavrosK
I can't, sorry, Flash doesn't support my OS so I can't see it.

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benologist
This should be posted as a challenge:

<http://armorgames.com/play/1716/gemcraft>

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seejay
Am I the only one who feels like this guy is just a troll???

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mvalle
Is this from Adobe, or does someone really care that much?

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9ec4c12949a4f3
ITT: People getting trolled to help him convert a website from flash to html5.

