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Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

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Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#31
Moving the left and right arrows with the cursor is a great idea, especially since they don't move until you get close. It might be nicer if they would animate to the position when you first move the cursor over, though. It's kind of jumpy as is.

That pattern just might catch on.

Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, innovation doesn't only happen in a single application and runtime (the browser). Flash has innovated as much as FF4 has. It's weird that the distribution model for the runtime defines what is innovation and what isn't. A runtime that is distributed as a plugin is inherently not innovative, while one that is a monolithic application is. Go figure. And I think the point of the original poster isn't that we shou…

because its the distribution that is innovative, its nice being able to draw text and images and move them around and stuff but that doesnt quite fall under my definition of innovative, for html and flash the features of html/css/javascript are not impressive, the fact that you can build increasingly complex application that will work on a common runtime installed on every pc and most people tablets and phones withou…

the fact that you can build increasingly complex application that will work on a common runtime installed on every pc and most people tablets and phones without (barely)any packaging or installation procedures is a modern day miracle

This requires me to install a whole browser! For some reason the HN crowd sees installing FF4 as free. Installing a plug-in as nearly the equivalent to jail time, a horrendous chore.

With all due respect to all the excitement in mobile (where Flash is nonexistent), HTML5 fundamentally won't change the desktop at all. And certainly looking at an application that I've seen high school students do in Flash is simply not exciting. I salute HTML for finally getting there, but its just not fundamentally very interesting.

Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because its the distribution that is innovative, its nice being able to draw text and images and move them around and stuff but that doesnt quite fall under my definition of innovative, for html and flash the features of html/css/javascript are not impressive, the fact that you can build increasingly complex application that will work on a common runtime installed on every pc and most people tablets and phones withou…

the fact that you can build increasingly complex application that will work on a common runtime installed on every pc and most people tablets and phones without (barely)any packaging or installation procedures is a modern day miracle This requires me to install a whole browser! For some reason the HN crowd sees installing FF4 as free. Installing a plug-in as nearly the equivalent to jail time, a horrendous chore. Wit…

Installing a plugin is generally a one click procedure and I made no reference to firefox or plugins.

I wasnt being specific to this one page (which works in chrome as well), but at the same time it can be viewed in browsers going back to mosaic with varying degrees of aesthetic.

html has already changed the desktop and it is only going to go further, there are operating systems coming out that have nothing but a browser, most phones these days come with a browser, we are still in the early stages of building the most ubiqitous and usable computing platform that has ever existed, you might not get excited about it, but I do.

Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#36

That is really awesome - but one thing (which is just an observation, not a complaint) I've noticed with all the CSS3 super-cool demos like this is that everything is very "linear". All the animation stuff happens in straight lines or repeating patterns (of circles, in the demo) which gives the page a certain feel. I wonder if it's the start of an effect that will eventually be used to carbon-date websites... "Ah loo…

That's interesting... I don't know if it's possible to animate directly on a bezier curve, though that'd be an extremely-useful thing to be able to do.

It looks like all the animatable properties just have ease-in / out timing, and go from A to B. Given that, the best you could do is animate each X/Y direction's behavior, creating a new animation at each bezier curve point, and using the bezier form of the timing function to mimic curved paths.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/css_transitions and https://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/css_transitions

Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#37
Developer here.

We are glad that many of you found our demo interesting. The point was to explore how we could apply some new browser features to present educational content in an interactive/immersive way.

Sorry about Pluto fans – we were also sad not to include it. We should have put it as an easter egg!

Thanks to people who reported typo/content errors.

We cannot fix them right now though – because we have no control over Mozilla's site. We'll push an update when we get the chance.

Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#38
It does seem a bit odd that all three major browser vendors are able to release interesting web-apps that only run at full-speed in their own browsers. Do they intentionally exploit some exclusive feature to show the other browsers up?

Re: Very impressive CSS3 demo: CSS3 Planetarium

#39
post #38

It does seem a bit odd that all three major browser vendors are able to release interesting web-apps that only run at full-speed in their own browsers. Do they intentionally exploit some exclusive feature to show the other browsers up?

There was not any attempt to make it run faster in Firefox 4. The goal is to showcase the Web as a platform and its possibilities. There is clearly no point in making it run well only in one browser.

Besides, we developed this demo on OSX, where performance is comparable among all three supported browsers.

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