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CSS Animation Coming to Safari, Already in iPhone. Less Dependence on Flash?

Just a week ago I added JavaScript to all my site's MANY Flash animations, to deliver WebKit CSS animation instead for iPhone users. Some effects I wanted were glitchy and had to be avoided, but in the end the results were great.

There's no way this can do everything Flash can do--and certainly not as easily and with broad Mac-PC browser compatibility. Flash is around to stay and I'd love to see it made efficient enough for iPhone. But in the meantime, this is a nice option for your iPhone visitors!

Darkroom said:
CSS animation is suitable for fading and scrolling, the end... everything else is jagged and ugly.
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Not so. CSS in no way compares to Flash, it's merely a tool that can fill in for certain purposes. But jagged and ugly it is not. I animate bitmaps on my site, and they remain smooth--and animated at a MUCH higher frame rate than I use in Flash (because high Flash framerates put a burden on dialup and cell-modem users). CSS animated at the full speed of your device--which on the iPhone means "smooth as glass"--with little change in file size no matter how long the animation is. Flash animation files get bigger the more frames you have (except when I use code-based procedural animation--which is time-consuming to develop and only suitable for certain things).

Someone visited my site from an iPod Touch and said the animation looked better than my Flash version. They're right--although some effects I did in Flash I didn't even attempt in WebKit CSS.

It doesn't have to be either-or. Flash and CSS are both nice tools, and I hope to see both have a long (and cross-platform) future on computers and phones alike.
 
wheezy said:
*Sigh* If only M$ would jump on the technology wagon instead of being the trailer that the wagon has to kick and scream to pull along.

CSS3, HTML5 is gonna be great, the developers are taking their time to make sure they deliver a very solid future for the internet. Unfortunately, IE is still going to be the popular limited piece of crap that the majority of users are going to use. I wish M$ would just put Gecko or WebKit into IE as the rendering engine and then force an update. Why we're still fettered by IE6 is just beyond me...
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Quit making too much sense. Making the webworld a better place vs ruling the webwold are 2 different beasts. We'll have to wait for Frodo to destroy the ring before the king:apple: takes his throne.
 
As a web developer it would be nice to have more features in CSS, but like others have said I have to make a website the works and looks the same in all browsers and IE. If IE would just die my life would be so much easier, but we know that isn't going to happen so I have to keep crippling my ideas / innovation for website design because of IE.

I do think flash is pretty crap, overweight, beast... so if all browsers support a nice new CSS / HTML standard I would be in web dev heaven! :D
 
dizzy13 said:
As a web developer it would be nice to have more features in CSS, but like others have said I have to make a website the works and looks the same in all browsers and IE. If IE would just die my life would be so much easier, but we know that isn't going to happen so I have to keep crippling my ideas / innovation for website design because of IE.

I do think flash is pretty crap, overweight, beast... so if all browsers support a nice new CSS / HTML standard I would be in web dev heaven! :D
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The good news is that it is (or soon will be) part of the HTML5 SPEC. And if opera and webkit browsers start pwning mobile browsing (which they do), it will bump the overall number of people browsing with a standards compliant browser. Not because they care about HTML standards, but because the best mobile devices for web-surfing just so happen to be using a compliant browser.

That means that eventually websites will start being built to take these standards into consideration in order to produce compelling experiences on mobile devices too. Eventually MS will have to start paying attention and making IE compliant too.

Whether or not this is some kind of Flash killer, this benefits everyone.
 
Bubba Satori said:
Will this make Safari snappier ?
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Just by comparing with the ridiculously sluggish and CPU-demanding performance of Flash in both Macs and PCs, I would say that Apple is doing a great thing.

Apple is showing Adobe that they cannot continue with their incompetent, bloated and often-discriminatory coding; I more than welcome any alternative to the crap that Flash represents.
 
even as a flash site developer, you won't hear try to defend annoying flashing banner ads produced in flash. but this is not what flash is about.

i see and hear all these people talking about CSS3 and HTML5 and the bright road to the future, but the future is already happening in well developed flash sites. take a look at some of these flash sites: http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/showcase/

sure, Adobe could certainly be doing more with their $3.4 billion acquisition of macromedia's products (Flash CS4 is kinda ass), but web developers could be also be doing a hell of a lot more with the most cross-platform advanced technology that is available right now...
 
Mechcozmo said:
Right. That's because CSS will gracefully fail if your browser doesn't support a feature. You see a red box for the "bounce" style... but it isn't actually bouncing. If you use a browser that supports the bounce style, then you'll see it move around.

CSS is pretty amazing.
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Nope, I see it bounce, I see leaves fall etc.
 
Darkroom said:
even as a flash site developer, you won't hear try to defend annoying flashing banner ads produced in flash. but this is not what flash is about.

i see and hear all these people talking about CSS3 and HTML5 and the bright road to the future, but the future is already happening in well developed flash sites. take a look at some of these flash sites: http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/showcase/

sure, Adobe could certainly be doing more with their $3.4 billion acquisition of macromedia's products, but web developers could be doing a hell of a lot more as well.
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It's not just for websites - look at the functionality Flex and AIR bring to the Flash platform. These are, to all extents and purposes, desktop applications offering desktop levels of functionality and the ease of development of a consistent platform. Not to mention the opening of the format and performance in Flash 10.

Browsers, Javascript, CSS are literally a quagmire of incompatibility problems and this just adds to the pile.

If the browser, js and css are really so great, why do I need a YouTube app, a Facebook app or an eBay app for my iPhone? These should be serving up the appropriate content directly through Safari.
 
Gah!

Great. Glad they're putting all this effort into CSS Animations, to bring us even more annoying advertising.

Now if only they could figure out how to get safari to OPEN NEW LINKS IN TABS!!!

The whole point of tabbed browsing is so you don't have to hunt around through a half dozen windows. Why in the hell would you want tabbed browsing that still opens new windows every time you click a link. It's as if they simply threw some tack-on code in there so they could say "Tabbed browsing, oh yes we have that." even though they don't expect anyone to be able to use it.

Gee it's so convenient. To actually use tabbed browing,

I can (starting with the mouse) right click on the link, select copy link, (move to keyboard) hit command + t simultaneously to open a new blank tab, (move back to mouse) get the cursor into the address bar, (move back to keyboard) paste the link in with command + v, and hit enter.

Or I can do it all with the mouse, and can open a web page in only seven clicks, where firefox & iExploder take a whopping one.

Awesome.

WTF.
 
ThunderSkunk said:
Great. Glad they're putting all this effort into CSS Animations, to bring us even more annoying advertising.

Now if only they could figure out how to get safari to OPEN NEW LINKS IN TABS!!!

The whole point of tabbed browsing is so you don't have to hunt around through a half dozen windows. Why in the hell would you want tabbed browsing that still opens new windows every time you click a link. It's as if they simply threw some tack-on code in there so they could say "Tabbed browsing, oh yes we have that." even though they don't expect anyone to be able to use it.

Gee it's so convenient. To actually use tabbed browing,

I can (starting with the mouse) right click on the link, select copy link, (move to keyboard) hit command + t simultaneously to open a new blank tab, (move back to mouse) get the cursor into the address bar, (move back to keyboard) paste the link in with command + v, and hit enter.

Or I can do it all with the mouse, and can open a web page in only seven clicks, where firefox & iExploder take a whopping one.

Awesome.

WTF.
Click to expand...

Have you tried middle clicking links? I can't recall if it's an option you have to set in Preferences or not but I just click the nub in my Mighty Mouse to open links in a new tab.
 
garybUK said:
don't you just love apple apologists who think that because the iphone is too underpowered to support flash then flash is evil.... hahaha flash has some very useful functions.
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Isn't that kind of like M$ telling so many PC owners who can't run Vista their PC is under powered. Apple's approach to finding the best way to write code enables not only my 8 Core Mac Pro but also an ancient iBook G4 to run OS X Leopard.
 
garybUK said:
don't you just love apple apologists who think that because the iphone is too underpowered to support flash then flash is evil.... hahaha flash has some very useful functions.
Click to expand...

No, I think the fact that the iPhone is perfectly capable of displaying video, audio, animation, etc. but not flash means that flash is a bloated, inefficient pig of an animation system. If flash was actually optimized, less people would hate it.

Geez, it even causes the fans of my MacBook to spin up just leaving a window with flash open - it's ridiculous the amount of CPU and RAM it takes.
 
Is it just me or are all these things strictly for webkit and future webkit browsers? A major reason people code in flash is for cross-platform availability. Flash tends to look the same in IE, FireFox, Safari, Opera, etc... Apple needs to come down from it's high horse. Honestly, either everyone must support your new additions, or use what the rest of the people already do use. I guess that's just my two cents though. Sadly, most of the people I know and myself use FireFox on thier Apples. ;)
 
garybUK said:
don't you just love apple apologists who think that because the iphone is too underpowered to support flash then flash is evil.... hahaha flash has some very useful functions.
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with being an Apple apologist. I hate moving, blinking, animated web pages. It doesn't matter if it is on a desktop computer, a notebook computer, an iPhone, an iPod Touch, a Mac or Windows. Glitz glares.

Red text on green backgrounds is another awful experience. Busy backgrounds destroy web pages too. People need to do better design rather than making up for poor design with glitz.
 
garybUK said:
don't you just love apple apologists who think that because the iphone is too underpowered to support flash then flash is evil.... hahaha flash has some very useful functions.
Click to expand...

Have you seen THE REST of the iPhone UI? You know, the one the competition is scrambling to imitate (poorly)??

Flash is really nothing special compared to what you get as a total package in the iPhone.
 
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