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Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

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Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#131
post #9

I feel like that web only is a positive way forward. If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server I think it would gain a lot more trust. Though companies who want to see your data might not be so keen. On my phone, but will try it out when I get home.

In what way? Good luck using this thing if the network is down, or if the website is down, or if DNS is down, or if the domain expires, or if the author disappears. A program you download and run is yours forever, a website can disappear tomorrow, or get acquired and get enshittified. It happens every single time, and then there's a thousand-comment thread here, until the next web app that everyone loves, and the cycle repeats itself. Do we never learn? Am I taking crazy pills?

Break the cycle.

Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#132

Very cool! Although other more complex open source solutions exist, for me the sweet spot between capable and not overwhelming is perfect. I prefer Photopea over Photoshop for that same reason (..just don't go crazy on the anti-adblocker like Photopea did)

Which open source solutions exists as an alternative to After Effects?

AFAIK, the only thing that can even be stretched in a motion direction is Blender, but an AE alternative it is not.

Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#133
post #52
post #9

I feel like that web only is a positive way forward. If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server I think it would gain a lot more trust. Though companies who want to see your data might not be so keen. On my phone, but will try it out when I get home.

What about just turning off your network?

What about programs that run on your computer so you don't even need the Internet for them?

Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#135
post #81
post #9

I feel like that web only is a positive way forward. If only it was possible to prove nothing goes back to the server I think it would gain a lot more trust. Though companies who want to see your data might not be so keen. On my phone, but will try it out when I get home.

Why do you think web only is positive? 15 years from now, will this site still be up? Will you be able to open your projects from today, then? I think web only is a really compelling way to get someone to try a product, but I’d much rather install a tool like this. Unless you could host the site yourself, of course.

I see what you mean, but I'm not using anything from 15 years ago today apart from Linux.

Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#136

Can you please clarify, which exactly key features are missing from Firefox that make this app say 'use Chrome or Edge'?

IME the features are often mostly there same but there are small implementation differences/bugs at least in the newer APIs. Firefox is no more buggy (often less), but it's easier to code for one set of bugs. Safari is by far the worst.

I use Firefox for all my browsing, but do web app development with and for Chromium. I'd gladly do it for Firefox, but people, especially users, suck and sometimes one has to accept this.

Glad to see no time is wasted for Safari/iOS support. It's a huge waste of time and people using Apple devices are to blame.

Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#137
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long wished for something like OpenBSDs pledge to be available in browsers, ideally both through meta tags and through JS APIs. Once a pledge is made, the resource will be unavailable to the page until it's closed, like: - I pledge to only make network connections to X, Y and Z - I pledge to only make GET requests to http://example.com/foo/ * - I pledge not to use canvas, iFrames or storage APIs This info wouldn…

What you are describing are essentially an extended version of various security http headers. * first requirement can already be done using Content-Security-Policy header * haven't found a suitable header for the second requirement * third requirement can be done with Permissions-Policy header

That's partially true, but it would be important for this to both work without a server, and at runtime.

Not relying on a server makes this functionality available for downloaded sites. I'm a big fan of offering single file builds for web utilities, and the pledge should be part of that build instead of something the user supplies.

Having this as a runtime API would enable easier integration - say I'm developing a video editor that needs some WASM blobs. It might be a lot easier to load the blobs and pledge no further network access than having the URLs known on the server-side.

Re: Show HN: I created an After Effects alternative

#139
This is excellent!

Several years ago I built a prototype of a video renderer on nodejs (v0.8-ish). It's a silly thing to do, rendering video in javascript (especially a decade ago), but it worked well enough to prove that it could be done and a startup pivot was born - one that was eventually acquired by Vimeo.

While a colleague (and now friend) was working on porting my silly little renderer to C/C++ to try to get closer to real-time, I built out a UI to allow us to "templatize" dynamic video for our users. This made it possible for our designers to design the video experience for the videos that were dynamically generated for our users' content.

That UI very much resembled Flash. Since then I've always wanted to do what you've done here. Before acquisition, I was asking our designers to walk me through how they use After Effects, in the hopes of building our tools in that direction, but then Vimeo showed up and... not too long after I left to start a travel startup. I haven't revisited the video space since.

I love this. I _knew_ that it could be done - especially now that WASM is stable - and I'm excited to see someone has done it. And free, no less!

Edit: Thought it was open source - thanks for the correction. Also I was way off on the node version.

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