3D CSS Effects in Snow Leopard Safari, And More on Future of Video and Flash?

[Macmoney]

Whoever think flash is bs is full of it and likes a old school static
style of browsing with no interactivity except rollovers.

This seems cool but looks a lot like 3d wall pro..same concept
except 3d wall is flash.

 

[LagunaSol]

There are so many sites I can't view on my new 3G S, it's pathetic.

Apple really must implement Flash on the iPhone ASAP, or it will be the butt of jokes again, like with copy/paste.

Flash-only sites suck. They deserve to become obsolete, just like the "IE - Windows only" sites of yesteryear.

Adobe has earned its place next to Microsoft on my DO NOT WANT list.

 

[PikachuMan]

Why should it be any other way? With all of the major video and news sites using Flash for their videos, isn't this a little like saying, "As a result, steering wheels will likely remain the dominant method for steering a car for the time being." I guarantee that the vast majority of people watching video on the internet don't know and DON'T CARE what format their videos are in. The current format works for them and they see no reason to change it. Even if a specific standard is adopted, honestly, what's the likelyhood of EVERY website with a vast collection of Flash videos putting in the time and money necessary to convert their videos to the new format?

Sorry, the world has spoken, and Flash is the prefered format for online video. And no amount of, "But...but...what about BATTERY LIFE?!" will change that.

I'm less skeptical. All it takes is one big provider (YouTube, most likely) to enable the feature and the ball gets rolling. If people find the site works better in Firefox or Safari or Chrome or whatever supports <video>, it will get word of mouth and the change over will happen even if they don't know or care about the exact details.

There isn't that much work to do to support <video> anyway. Google/YouTube already does multiple versions, including non-flash versions specifically for iPhone. All the new HD/HQ videos are in h.264 anyway; they would not need to be re-encoded for <video> support.

 

[str1f3]

No offense, but these are the same type of useless comments, that were thrown around by the faithful before the iPhone supported cut&paste ("I don't need it/I don't use it....")

Flash IS ubiquitous, and not just for video. It has a virtually 100% adoption rate around the world, which is not something that can be said of Safari.

Regardless of what a few weird nerds think about Flash, the rest of the world is using it, and enjoying it.

EVERY other major platform supports, or will support Flash:

"... Both the Windows Mobile and Android platforms also announced they'll support Flash (along with Symbian and Palm's new webOS) in 2010...."

As I said, I can just see an Android ad, showing off a great looking Flash site on the new Hero, and a nerdy Apple fanboy looking at an blank screen on their iPhone....

Who says that the rest of the world is enjoying it? Flash sucks if you're not using IE and Windows. How do you think Flash is going to run on a non IE, mobile browser with 25% of the processing power? If you think the G1s battery life sucks now, well wait 'til you see what Flash can do.

I was watching a show last week and Flash crashed Safari 4 times. Flash has almost 100% adoption. But that was because there was really no other option. This time there is.

 

[22Hz]

I too would like to watch videos on my MacBook without it sounding like a jet engine because Flash runs like crap on OSX.

Slay the beast.

 

[David G.]

Anyone know where I can get that wallpaper with two stick figures looking at the hourglass?

Yes, here's the link. It's rather lowrez tho. And watermarked.

 

[Hattig]

Clearly the solution is to CSS style your video tag with 3d transforms.

Hardware accelerated video decode, being rendered and warped by a hardware accelerated 3D engine. But all done in the browser, with plain old CSS and HTML.

The developer of this demo should just update the demo to play a video for each picture when it is zoomed in. Let's see CoolIris do that. Let's see a web developer alter the look and feel of CoolIris by editing a CSS file and changing some HTML. Remember that this was done is three evenings as well.

 

[Shookster]

Last time I checked there was one manufacturer willing to support Theora. Webkit's share in the desktop is small but so is every share compared to IE. Webkit, though, is dominant on mobile phones where Firefox has 0% marketshare and the significant part of Opera's mobile browser share is Opera Lite which is not even really a browser.

Add the number of Mobile Safari users to the number of Safari users plus the number of Chrome users and Firefox will still be far, far ahead. My point is that when a browser with a decent market share (remember - it's #2 and significantly above everyone other than IE) puts its weight behind a format, it won't die quickly, even if it does have a lower quality-per-bit than H.264.

 

[macUser2007]

...
I was watching a show last week and Flash crashed Safari 4 times. Flash has almost 100% adoption. But that was because there was really no other option. ....

Safari 4 crashes a lot, period. Both on OS X and on Windows.

The iPhone needs to support Flash. Sop whining and get your heads out of whatever dark place they are. Flash is fine, and there are too many sites that use it.

 

[TheJackal]

Yes, here's the link. It's rather lowrez tho. And watermarked.

Thanks!

 

[Eddy Munn]

All of course, apart from Internet Explorer.

 

[MySchizobuddy]

flash is losing its stranglehold as less websites are using it everyday.

Agree my granny had a website with flash video and now she has removed flash from her site

Lesson learned. Flash is loosing its stranglehold
My Granny is the one leading the way.

 

[ewoods]

That is like saying Windows is the preferred OS and the public has spoken.

Windows isn't the preferred OS? Wow, I guess I missed the news that Apple now has a larger market share than Microsoft.

The real question is, if Flash is so terrible, how did it become so widely used? Why do video hosting sites and news sites and entertainment sites continue to post their videos in Flash format? Why haven't the users of the internet stood up to protest such a horrible video format?

 

[dragossh]

Safari 4 crashes a lot, period. Both on OS X and on Windows.

Does that happen on sites that use Flash?

The iPhone needs to support Flash. Sop whining and get your heads out of whatever dark place they are. Flash is fine, and there are too many sites that use it.

Flash is fine? Either you are working for Adobe, or you are working for Adobe. Tell that to my MacBook that uses its CPU to render Flash video and to my battery that drops from 3:00 remaining to 1:30.

The iPhone doesn’t need to support Flash. <video> is just fine and better for its battery life.

Windows isn't the preferred OS? Wow, I guess I missed the news that Apple now has a larger market share than Microsoft.

Windows is the most widely used OS. Windows isn’t the preferred OS.

The real question is, if Flash is so terrible, how did it become so widely used? Why do video hosting sites and news sites and entertainment sites continue to post their videos in Flash format? Why haven't the users of the internet stood up to protest such a horrible video format?

BeOS was awesome and people still used Windows. NeXTStep was awesome and it wasn’t widely used until Apple turned it into OS X. Crap technology sometimes wins over better technology.

Flash became widely used because it was a quick way to get video to people without worrying about codecs. Now that HTML5 includes a video tag, Flash is going to be irrelevant.

 

[shawnce]

Looks like a straight rip of CoolIris!

This is the same thing that i was thinking. I used cooliris duing the middle of the last school year. So this is nothing really new

Umm that looks just like cooliris to me goto cooliris.com and see for yourself.

You missed the point... this is showing that you can do something like CoolIris using CSS animations (and friends) without the need for a plugin like CoolIris.

Safari 4 crashes a lot, period. Both on OS X and on Windows.

Looking at my crash logs I see around 65% coming from the Flash plugin, 20% from Java applet runner, and the rest WebCore and JavaScript core (the latter two are part of WebKit "aka safari"). I run a mix of Safari 4.0 and WebKit nightly builds.

Note the nightly builds crash more then Safari 4.0 because of their development nature.

 

[touringsedan]

Flash is an abomination. It started as an animation suite, which was pushed into gaming by it's users. So Macromedia made it more powerful for games. Adobe has purchased it and is using Flash as it's own development environment, but it's just not that good.

It's not optimized at all either. I was realizing that while browsing the web on my battery that all these damn Flash-based ads are killing my battery. Why does this stupid 468x60 ad need so much of my processing power!? It's because the Flash developers are completely inept at making Flash hardware-friendly.

I guarantee the day Adobe makes a good version of Flash, Apple will support it. Until then, no flash on the iPhone. I'd have it completely uninstalled on my laptop, if it wasn't necessary for so much of the media on the web.

Down with Flash and Silverlight, closed, proprietary crap! We need fully accelerated API's that are OPEN!

 

[ewoods]

That's a ridiculous statement. Do you work for Adobe? You're acting like it's so incredibly difficult when YouTube did it for all their videos in a matter of months.

And yes, believe it or not battery life is incredibly important to computers and mobile phones. Yes it is important that processors don't choke on Flash.

Thanks for completely twisting my words. I never said battery life wasn't important. I never said that processing power wasn't important. I never said that content providers wouldn't switch. Believe it or not, "a matter of months" is a lot of time and money.

The problem is that the people decrying Flash as a waste of battery life and processing power are being beaten by their own arguments. If you don't visit sites that use Flash then you won't have a problem. Wait, you mean to say that MOST of the sites you visit use Flash in some form? So Flash is so widely used that it's difficult to avoid it in casual web-surfing? Wow, that DEFINITELY sounds like a problem. Let's work to get rid of this widely-used format.

 

[22Hz]

Just because it is widely used doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to kill it.

Apple is gaining more power daily and I hope that they do extinguish Flash eventually.

Terrible format.

 

[germanjulian]

apple pushing new non standard CSS... they should get slapped.

M$ is trying to make their IE8 fully HTML compliant and now apple make their own standards

we are going backwards not forwards people.

Anyway this will never go past a demo stage as nobody will ever use this as over 90% of browsers out there are IE based or firefox

 

[Stridder44]

Flash-only sites suck. They deserve to become obsolete, just like the "IE - Windows only" sites of yesteryear.

Adobe has earned its place next to Microsoft on my DO NOT WANT list.

I'm so conflicted. The first part of your post is spot on. Couldn't agree more.

Then all that went down the crapper with your next comment, which was just ignorant.

 

[b1wils1]

that is completely awesome

 

[lunarworks]

For those begging for Flash on the iPhone: How do you propose dealing with mouseover events like most Flash sites use? On the iPhone, dragging your finger scrolls the screen, and a touch is a click. Not quite the same paradigm as rolling your mouse cursor around. It would leave 90% of flash-based menus virtually unnavigable.

That's one of the prime issues for me: Touch-screen support. Right behind its voracious use of CPU power for pointless animated ads.

 

[akm3]

Ironic that this requires Flash to watch...

 

[Hattig]

The problem is that the people decrying Flash as a waste of battery life and processing power are being beaten by their own arguments. If you don't visit sites that use Flash then you won't have a problem. Wait, you mean to say that MOST of the sites you visit use Flash in some form? So Flash is so widely used that it's difficult to avoid it in casual web-surfing? Wow, that DEFINITELY sounds like a problem. Let's work to get rid of this widely-used format.

It sucks to lose battery life and performance just to get some adverts playing at you. Most flash on the web is advertising, all those animated banner adverts. The Mac sucks so hard for Flash, performance is abysmal and CPU fans come on and the system struggles, for a video that a bloody iPod can play. YouTube will switch to the video tag quickly, with a flash fallback for IE on Windows, where Flash is just about bearable.

Is there a Flashblock plugin for Safari, like the Firefox one?

What is a good, free, Safari adblock plugin?

 

[LagunaSol]

Then all that went down the crapper with your next comment, which was just ignorant.

Please elaborate.