Browserscene: Creating demos on the Web

NE CE S b R e E W S he W on t O os kes R m B de Ro bH aw ing at CreHi, I’m Rob Hawkes and I’m here tonight to talk a little about creating demos using the latestWeb technologies.I call it the browserscene, but feel free to call it the demoscene on the Web.

If you don’t already know, I work at Mozilla.My official job title is Technical Evangelist, but I prefer Rawket Scientist, which is what it sayson my business card.Part of my job is to engage with people like you and me about cool new technologies on theWeb.

Created by Phil Banks (@emirpprime)Aside from that I spend most of my time experimenting with HTML5 and other cooltechnologies.I basically have an addiction to visual programming and hacking around with code.It’s fun!

I’ve never been to Finland before, and for some reason I thought it would be really cold overhere.Turns out it’s hotter than England, and way ﬂatter than I imagined!

yo u r fo xists dy rea hnolog ye are he tec sers T row BOver the past few years browsers have come on leaps and bounds with the types of thingsthat they can do.What’s been particularly interesting is the focus on audio and visual media with theintroduction of HTML5 and JavaScript APIs.This now allows us to create things like this…

This is No Comply, a WebGL and audio demo created by Mozilla volunteers to show off thetechnologies.http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/03/nocomply/

s? g ie o lo rs c hn ow se e br e t da y’s th res in to are tu at Fea WhLet’s run through some of the most interesting of these new technologies, the kind of onesyou might want to use.

GL eb & W phics vas 3D gra an and C 2DCanvas & WebGLhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/html/canvashttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/WebGL

eo Vid ti on ipula an dm an ck ba lay op VideVideo APIhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_audio_and_video_in_Firefox

a ta io D ud ation & A an ipul dio an dm Au ba ck play dio AuAudio API + the Audio Data APIhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_audio_and_video_in_Firefoxhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/Introducing_the_Audio_API_Extension

ion t ca are eolo ou G herey tw ou ing FindGeolocationhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_geolocation

e ts ock bS ation e W omm un ic ec l-tim ReaWebSocketshttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/WebSockets

n ts Fo eb ap hy & W typo gr S3 sa nd CS he et tyles ds de gra UpCSS3 & Web Fontshttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSShttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/@font-face

D B xed de ws er & In the bro age ta in tor ring da al S Sto oc LLocal Storage & IndexedDBhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Storagehttps://developer.mozilla.org/en/IndexedDB

s? gie olo ns chn freaso te so ese Lot th use hy WSo these technologies are cool and all, but why should you be using them over others, likeFlash?

o l g co thin s now e m The timei f so ld o o resh ThIn short, the time is now; we’re on the threshold of something awesome.We can now create amazing demos, visualisations, and games with nothing more than thetechnologies we would normally use to build a website.This is deﬁnitely a good time to be developing on the Web.

um inim ght a m ei tw igh s to ode isl ing he c th T ing eep KThe code and assets are inherently lightweight.Text and image ﬁles don’t take up much space.

in s g lu ork n p o tw nce hings jus lia T o re NYou don’t have to download and install anything for a demo to run; it just works.It’s just HTML and JavaScript.

ree is f n t ch e m er and spee lop eve as in be D FreeDevelopment can be completely free.You don’t need to pay for any editing tools.You could easily use a simple text editor, or the browser itself.

e n idd r h ve d o he lo pile Sharin gt com ’t e isn od CNo compilation; the code is completely open for others to look at and learn from.I ﬁnd this kind of open development gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, but thatmight just be because I’m slightly crazy.

o s d em ed n e at rs ce lready cre se ea row ersh av g b oth at tin Wh ExisNow, let’s take a look at some of the cool demos that others have put together with thesetechnologies.

Flight of the Navigatorhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/ﬂight-of-the-navigator

Globe Tweeterhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/globetweeter

Rofoxhttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/rofox-css3-animation-by-anthony-calzadilla

CSS Nyan Cathttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/css-nyan-cat

Slamdown from the Mozilla Flame Party Helsinkihttp://traction.untergrund.net/slamdown/

Inﬁnite beanstalkhttp://www.inear.se/2011/07/the-beanstalk/

WebGL spidershttp://oos.moxiecode.com/js_webgl/spiders/index.html

Silkhttp://weavesilk.com

Romehttp://ro.me

WebGL photo particleshttp://lab.aerotwist.com/webgl/photoparticles/

HelloRacerhttp://helloracer.com/webgl/

Keylighthttp://hakim.se/experiments/html5/keylight/

This is something I made especially for Assembly.It’s an audio visualiser that uses WebGL and HTML5 Audio.If you stick around for my seminar at 1pm I’ll be running through the code behind this.

os d em m e r he o th ated t ot o f dic d s es de dre eb sit un arew H Th ereThese are really just a few demos that are out there right now, and the list is growing everyday!There are some great sites to keep track of the latest ones.

Mozilla Demo Studiohttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/

Chrome Experimentshttp://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Creative JShttp://creativejs.com

fo r u t h o rs a tc st othe o w ong s t ty, am ing pa tib ili Th rcom se BrowCreating demos with these technologies is great, but there are a few things to watch out for.

nce a rm ration fo cele e r s p ac va and an at ion C tim is OpCanvas performance and support.requestAnimationFrame, hardware acceleration, etc.

o rt p p su it GL ha ve eb sers W brow all NotLack of WebGL support in some browsers.It’s not on IE, Opera, iOS, or Android… yet.

o rt p p I s u ve it AP ers ha ata row s io D ta ll b d No AuLack of Audio Data API support in browsers.Right now, only Firefox and Chrome have some sort of Audio Data API.

o rt pp su it e ts ha ve ock brows ers bS all We NotAnd again lack of support, this time with WebSockets.

n e sc e s e r rces ro w res ou e b sa nd g th utorial rnin T LeaIf you want to learn more about the browserscene and these technologies then you can ﬁndall you need online.Here are just a few of them…

Mozilla Developer Networkhttps://developer.mozilla.org

Paul Lewishttp://aerotwist.com/lab/

HTML5 Rockshttp://www.html5rocks.com/en/

o rks e w nt ra m pm e d f evelo an gu pd ies eedin rar Sp LibYou don’t always have to roll your own solutions, though.There are a variety of libraries and frameworks out there that provide basic functionality andgenerally speed up development.I’m going to go over just a few of them, but I advise you to look for more if these don’t fulﬁlyour requirements; there are a lot more out there.

jQuery

Three.js

Socket.IO

Box2dWeb

Gaming engines, like Impact and Isogenic Engine.

ld? ho ture g soon e fu f comin th ol stuf oes Co t d ha WSo what does the future hold for the browserscene?

ro ls n t co rd tick keyboa ys ea nd Jo us o orem NomJoystick DOM events so you can get a console-like experience.

PIs e A evic bcam D and we ne ho icrop them sing cces ADevices API to access data from peripherals, like a microphone or webcam.http://www.w3.org/2009/dap/http://mozillalabs.com/rainbow/2011/08/04/whats-next-rainbow-and-webrtc/

io n ra t c e le ou nd a c ea ll r ar e rm a nc rdw pe rfo Ha Be tterBetter hardware acceleration and performance in all areas.

ROB HAWKES @robhawkes Rawkes.com Personal website and blog RECENT PROJECTS MORE COOL STUFF Twitter sentiment analysis Mozilla Technical Evangelist Delving into your soul. My job Rawkets.com ExplicitWeb.co.uk HTML5 & WebSockets game. Web development podcast.Twitter - @robhawkesRawkes - http://rawkes.com

DEV DERBY Experimenting with the latest Web technologies Every month This month is the History API Manipulate browser history Win prizes (like an Android) Next month is Geolocation DEVELOPER.MOZILLA.ORG/EN-US/DEMOS/DEVDERBYAlso, you should deﬁnitely take part in the Dev Derby, which is a monthly competition run bythe Mozilla Developer Network to see what can be done with the latest Web technologies.This month the focus is on the History API, which allows you to manipulate the history of thebrowser so things like AJAX don’t break anything.The winners get cool prizes, like an Android phone. It’s a great excuse to play around withthese technologies.https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/devderby

FOUNDATION HTML5 CANVASMy amazing book on canvas, animation, and making games. Out now Paperback and digital formats Become a canvas master Learn how to animate Make two cool space games RAWKES.COM/FOUNDATIONCANVAS

O U Y s? K tion N ues A yq TH An R b es wk es Ha wk ob ha ro @Thank you.If you have any questions feel free to grab me on Twitter (@robhawkes), or emailrob@rawkes.com

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Browserscene: Creating demos on the Web

by Rob Hawkes on Aug 04, 2011

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Browserscene: Creating demos on the Web — Document Transcript