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Nissan Leaf

nissanusa.com

151–160 of 199 posts

Re: Nissan Leaf

#151
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash is a threat to the openness of the web. I can't reliably watch video, play games, or do anything else requiring Flash on my computer because I run Linux. Requiring you run an OS of Adobe's choosing is antithetical to the basic tenets of the web.

No it's only antithetical to the tenets of Linux users. edit: Just saying, people who knowingly choose Linux don't expect to use Flash.

I disagree. The web exists because browsers and servers communicate based on open standards. The HN server doesn't know or care what OS or browser I'm using. I could be sitting here typing in my GET requests manually if I was fast enough. Nobody cares. It's a protocol.

When the web relies on a technology where the "protocol" is "first install this proprietary plugin, if it's available for your setup, and if not, screw you," it is antithetical to the protocol-based approach.

Look at how much browsers have improved in the last few years, making new things possible on sites. This happened because anybody can write a browser that conforms to HTTP protocols, Javascript specifications, etc. Do you see the same kind of improvement in Flash players? No. Because there isn't competition.

The web is better off without Flash. Or anything else that can't have 100 competing implementations.

Re: Nissan Leaf

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought of Apple killing flash just about makes me sick. I really don't want to be forced into paying the 50-100 percent Apple premium for hardware just because they managed to "kill" a technology everyone decided to hate for no reason.

The _reason_ everyone decided to kill Flash, is because it, combined with pdf reading, is responsible for the majority of browser crashes. The push here is to eliminate an unnecessary layer from the web stack. And I would point out that while apple has taken the steps to rid flash from their mobile platforms, they aren't leading the charge per say, they are just a very large player in this space. Finally, just becaus…

The _reason_ everyone decided to kill Flash, is because it, combined with pdf reading, is responsible for the majority of browser crashes.

That a company with such incompetent programming and slimy marketing can come to be so ubiquitous -- this indicates something is broken in the functioning of our software market.

The last time I visited my sister, I asked her why she had Adobe Reader installed on her new 15" Macbook -- AFAIK, she doesn't need it, and Preview, which comes pre-installed, is so much more responsive. (Yes, I was watching her wait for a PDF to come up.) She just pretended I didn't ask. I wonder what trick they pulled?

Once, a few years ago, I started snooping around my old work laptop. Some background process was soaking up large amounts of CPU, even when I had no applications up. I found it was some Visual Basic background process polling so it could instantly spring into action with some Adobe Suite thing. After I deinstalled Adobe and installed Foxit Reader, my machine was much snappier!

Re: Nissan Leaf

#153

I'm surprised no one has suggested the obvious reason why making a site like this is not necessarily "wasted extra effort" for Nissan. When Apple's iAd platform was unveiled, they demoed... a Nissan Leaf ad. That ad content had to be written in javascript, so it probably wasn't a huge leap to say hey let's push that content out to the web as well.

I was a developer at the studio that did this. Brands like Nissan think much more ahead than this, and the two development efforts went on in parallel (another studio did the iAd work.) In fact, if I'm not mistaken the leaf site launched before the iAd did, or at least really close together.

Re: Nissan Leaf

#154
post #38

it probably took the team 10x the time to do that this way instead of flash. it will not work on 100% of the devices. but at least they got some clicks from us that they wouldn't otherway. Continuing with this rationale: if done in flash, it would have take the team 10x the time to that instead of plain html. or 200x the time if done in a simpler html format, like a wikipedia article. it would work on 100% of the dev…

I was a developer working at the studio that did this. Development took roughly the same amount of time in JS/HTML instead of flash.

Re: Nissan Leaf

#156

Why would a manager at Nissan allow this to be built? They now have to maintain two parallel versions of their complex site. What is the non-ideological payoff?

A couple of reasons: 1. It fits in with the brand: hip, innovative, and next-generation. 2. It launched at roughly the same time iAds did, which featured the leaf, which likely drew a ton of mobile traffic, and since this works on iPad & iPhone, it makes Nissan look fantastic. 3. They don't have to maintain two versions of the site, the studio that they paid to do the coding does.

Big brands like Nissan have a large budget to spend on the latest and greatest, and they do it. The studios that do the development are allowed to try new things, and they do. For Nissan, they get a site that looks fantastic, comes in on budget, and garners responses like this thread. The studio that does the work gets to add a site like Leaf to their portfolio of work, and their designers and developers learn a new skill that can be transferred to other high paying work. A win for everyone really.

Re: Nissan Leaf

#157
post #48

We'll need flash until we have a GOOD IDE for those technologies...

This is the biggest factor in Flash going away. In our shop, we have a guys that would never be able to code in a text editor but can bang out great looking advertising at amazing speeds (which means cheap production costs) because of the Flash IDE.

If you believe that advertisers can live without animation, you have your head in the sand.

Re: Nissan Leaf

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really that confused? I'm not talking about javascript, browser-based applications here, but rather the various apps that run on Apple's proprietary hardware. I think I made that clear, and I thought it was pretty clear that Apple is trying very hard to kill flash and replace it with its own platform that depends upon its own hardware. This seems really, really simple to understand, but let me know if it's st…

You are confusing. This discussion is about Flash and JavaScript on the web, and you're talking about iOS Apps. One has nothing to do with the other. So, you decided to take the context of the discussion (Flash on the web) and change it (Flash apps), and then limit it to specific hardware (iOS devices, as you cannot run iOS apps on Macs). On top of all of that, you are confusing how Apple is trying to kill Flash and…

You obviously understand what I'm talking about so how confusing could I honestly be? I'm pretty sure that everybody else understood me, even if they claimed otherwise, because we're not idiots here. It's a cheap tactic to pretend that I'm "incoherent" when I am certainly not.

The topic is flash. Everybody is saying that it should be replaced. Its replacements include 'X' and 'Y'. The fact that I reference 'Y' rather than 'X' is a completely natural context switch.

Re: Nissan Leaf

#159
Only on HN you submit an electric car website without further comment - and instead of discussing the car everyone starts arguing over the implementation of the website. ;-)

Re: Nissan Leaf

#160

I'm a little worried about losing what is to me one of the main advantages of Flash: that it can be blocked. So your all singing, all dancing website shuts the hell up and behaves like a sedate page full of text and static images. I mean, I can block JS, but it's irritating to have to. That's generally used for useful things like navigation. Flash marks something up as useless pizazz.

This is a worry for me too. I'm a long-term ClickToFlash user. I've enjoyed my time in a flash/ad/animation-free web but am horribly aware that it is temporary. As HTML5 takes over we will see more unstoppable content - pop-up panels, intrusive advertising etc. I just wish we could pay for the web without all this crap.

Just use a hosts file that redirects known ad sites to 127.0.0.1 if you're worried about ads. It blocks everything, though occasionally it breaks things or causes weird behavior (like silent, blank ad pages on the NPR player).
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