“Using the Safari browser, users can pan around a 360-degree view of the entrance to Apple’s iconic Fifth Avenue store in New York City, watch an embedded trailer for the forthcoming film ‘Tron’ and manipulate scale and perspective, or flip through a gallery of photos,” Oliver reports. “‘Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac — along with the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser — supports web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript,’ the website reads. ‘These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient. They allow web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions. Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today.'”
Oliver reports, “Seven different sections of content highlight the capabilities of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.”
Full article here.
Apple’s HTML5 Showcase is here.
Also check out: developer.apple.com/safaridemos/
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “TheMightyFinder” for the heads up.]
As an owner of a web design firm, I love great options. We have about 500 websites we have created and manage. Most of them have Flash. Going forward using HTML5 is certainly something to explore. But, it is not feasible to retrofit 500 websites so they work on an iPad/Iphone. Give the consumer the option of choosing what they want to use. If HTML5 works better and more consumers use it because it prolongs their batteries or does cooler stuff, that is the test. Don’t put consumers (and designers) in the middle of a techno battle between two giant, arguably critical companies.
The statement has been made that Adobe is a lazy company. I see no basis for that comment. But, everyone has their opinion. But, isn’t it lazy to completely discontinue a technology that is pervasive among your users. Seems like that is what Apple has done.
@critic
I have the 3GS with 3.1.3 software.
@Mac-Daddio
Totally agree with your comment.
@kizedek
“I wish people would stop being down on standards because of the notable and documented failings of one or two companies who really need to answer for their arrogance.”
And I wish people would stop wishing for Flash to die just because some developers use it to create cpu-burning, 60 fps ad banners. Many of us write Flash/Flex apps that run perfecly fine in a browser and don’t spin the cpu or crash the browser any more than HTML/Javascript. I frequently come across Ajax loaded pages that become unresponsive because of massive Javascript code. But I’m not going to start a “kill Javascript” campaign because choice is good. Apple has gone too far this time in their dictating what should and should not be.
Apple places an artificial restriction on Safari on 10.5 which prevents the demos that have 3D transforms for running.
If you download and run a WebKit Nightly then you’ll be able to see all the 3D demos. I don’t know for sure, but WebKit Nightly might do 3D transforms on Windows too.
The browser sniffing that specifically looks for Safari is not cool. Chrome is technically capable of running most of these demos.
Most of the CSS tricks that Apple have used for these demos are proposed standards, and many of them have at least preliminary support in Firefox and Opera. Until the standards are finalised you need custom CSS rules for each browser – hence why you will see CSS rules prefixed by -webkit- in there.
@Hordur
OK, my bad. I looked, I thought, at a couple of the code examples, and I saw some -webkit tags. Didn’t see the Safari-only stuff yet.
Hopefully that is just temporary and that we can soon accomplish same implementations with same results for any webkit or HTML5 compliant browser.
Some stuff may be from special javascript libraries (such as Pastry or whatever it’s called) that Apple has been using to make some of its RIAs. That at least shows that Flash-like things will be possible without Flash.
I am surprised that these demos are limited to Safari. Hopefully Apple is preparing to make them more universal soon. I suppose it is a matter of the current state of HTML5 browser support, and that Apple is only guaranteeing that these demos work on Safari for the moment, and won’t speak for the other browsers.
Developers should be able to do the same things for other browsers using these or similar libraries. Personally, I hope for an HTML5 development kit (from Apple) to help me develop similar animations for my own web pages. And I would wish for a built-in cross-browser preview showing how much each of the major browsers supports the HTML5 and CCS3 that I am using.
@Xan
Even if these demos ran on all browsers other than IE, which they don’t, that means they don’t work on around 60% of the browsers out there and may work differently in the other 40%. This simply makes it not commercially viable for anything other than controlled demos, unless you can afford to code everything at least twice.
To be clear, I hope HTML5 turns out great and gets great AND CONSISTENT browser support. I’m just pointing out that it is not there yet and won’t be for quite some time.
The argument that Flash works on all platforms so it’s better to me is like saying if all users use Safari instead these different browsers than you would only need to code once. Acode works because you need to use the plugin! Why bother using your choice of browser? Why don’t you just demand everyone remove their browsers and only use Adobe AIR?
It’s the same stupid argument you hear from bosses and IT all the time – “we must still support IE since most users still use it” – so you trick them into thinking IE is still OK by using Flash and perpetuate user ignorance and bad technology?
At some point you must stop a self-destructing addiction cold, like quit heroine or switch entirely to paper bags or biodegradable grocery bags without looking back. No, discontinuing a pervasive but old technology is not being lazy – it’s doing the right thing and being ahead of the times and the sleeping competition.
“The statement has been made that Adobe is a lazy company. I see no basis for that comment. But, everyone has their opinion. But, isn’t it lazy to completely discontinue a technology that is pervasive among your users. Seems like that is what Apple has done.”
Whoah, hang on a second. Apple hasn’t “discontinued” anything! There is no workable mobile plugin for Flash. There hasn’t been for the last three years that the iPhone has been on the market. Adobe is trying to hold up the works and slander Apple for something that is not even available. There is some kind of beta just about available now for Android (some versions of Android running on some hardware with high enough specs), but it is apparently not without its problems.
Apple (Jobs) hinted that they would have made an effort to work with Flash had there been some effort and progress from Adobe. There was little effort from Adobe on the desktop side over a number of years. Apple is no longer holding their breath for Adobe. Apple is moving forward regardless — how is that lazy of Apple? The Flash plugin is Adobe’s proprietary property and they need to work on it, especially given the trend toward mobile computing with lighter resources. Adobe apparently didn’t give a fig for the last three years with iPhone (despite its high market share of mobile browsing); now the iPad is out and Adobe see the writing on the wall and is freaking out.
Yeah, Apple were also lazy when they stopped adding floppy drives to their Macs. Poor users like me had to throw away a few dozen pieces of useless plastic. I was gutted, let me tell you. I almost went out an bought a PC out of spite
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@acid
amen. Let’s all be lazy and just perpetuate the same old status quo.
Tron?
I would have expected Toy Story 3.
http://html5readiness.com/
This should help to explain why the demos don’t work in Firefox. The diagram shows that Firefox 3.7 (which is yet to be have a stable release) doesn’t yet support things like 3D transforms and animations, and the current version of Firefox supports even less.
Not really Apple’s fault. Chrome and Safari are waiting for the other browsers to catch up
@acid
This is not an either/or situation, that is the stupidity of the whole discussion. Flash does and will continue to do a lot of things much better than HTML/CSS/Javascript. And HTML/CSS/Javascript will continue to be much better at some things than Flash. It is up to the developers/designers to choose the best tool for the job.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… A big part of why people are annoyed with Flash are the interactive, animated ad banners that are all over the place. But if you think killing Flash will get rid of that annoyance, think again, because as soon as HTML is capable enough to be used to create banners like these, it will be used for that, and it will spin your cpu faster when you get a page with a lot of those on it, and some of these things may even crash your browser because the Javascript is poorly written. And you won’t be able to turn them off conveniently with a blocker plugin as you can with Flash.
So I say be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
@TheMightyFinder
Indeed. And were you to be so bold as to try to load that site (http://html5readiness.com/) on any version of the browser that, like it or not, still makes up around 60% of the desktop browser market, you’d find that the site doesn’t work, not in IE 6, 7 or 8.
So again, this is the problem with HTML/CSS, browser vendors implement different things in different ways and they do so on different schedules. All of which means lots of pain for web developers trying to use these technologies.
We are years away from all this fancy HTML5/CSS3 stuff working consistently in the majority of browsers. That is just the way it is, like it or not.
@ jaundiced,
“All cars used to be hand cranked until the key inition was developed.”
Actually hand cranked was replaced with an on board battery and a starter or ignition button.
Then the button was replaced by a keyed ignition.
Now the keyed ignition is being replaced by a password code and a starter or ignition button.
We are now working on a digital hand crank. Just trying to take everyone back to the future.
As soon as Carbon trading gets into high gear, we will have you covered. We have digital horses on the drawing board.
TheMightyFinder wrote: Not really Apple’s fault. Chrome and Safari are waiting for the other browsers to catch up
The demos won’t load in Chrome either. Trying to hit the pages directly using Chrome just gets redirected to the html5 homepage.
I’m all for web standards. I understand Firefox won’t support h.264 so demos won’t work in it. But if these demos can’t be seen in anything other than Safari, not even the Webkit-based Chrome, the code they’re using isn’t sufficiently standards-based.
“We are years away from all this fancy HTML5/CSS3 stuff working consistently in the majority of browsers. That is just the way it is, like it or not.”
Yes, at MS and Adobe rates of change over the last 15 years. Fortunately, technology and culture don’t stand still for dinosaurs. Jobs acknowledges that the desktop wars are over. But that’s not where it’s at any more.
The pace will quicken, even this year, as everyone wakes up and smells the coffee and sees that a smaller number of the increasing number mobile internet surfers (those using Apple products) are consistently doing the most surfing and spending the most money.
Let’s revisit this again after WWDC, after iPhone OS 4 launches and after a couple more quarterly results in the bag and more countries have the iPad.
The whole point is, these two companies are getting less relevant by the day. Everyone had to cater to IE in the past. It is getting increasingly easier to target and pick your audience, and to educate them also. Why labor over something for IE or the Flash plugin when a nice simple communication can deprecate and still show class while communicating?
And, people are having eyes opened to a number of issues they never considered before, such as what is the internet (now that Adobe is defending Flash publicly in the media and no longer taking it for granted); people are now realizing there are all kinds of good alternatives for all kinds of things, now that they think about it. For example, many are now realizing they can download an alternative browser to IE. In fact it is the major browser in some countries, such as here in Netherlands.
@Hordur
I entirely agree with you, the internet isn’t ready for a mass migration to HTML5 yet, because the browsers aren’t ready yet. But perhaps they should be. All browsers, Safari included, need to be updated far more frequently to take advantage of the ever-evolving technology behind HTML5/CSS3; at the minute the process is far too slow and it’s holding back the progress that could be made.
The problem is when it comes to web developers, someone has to make the jump first. It might be a pain, but if developers don’t start using it, no one else will. Perhaps if it wasn’t such a faff, we’d already be seeing a lot more HTML5 content. Until browsers get up to speed though, we aren’t going to see this.
The internet, sadly, isn’t able to survive without Flash for the time being, but in the not too distant future, it will be. And that should be a very exciting time for developers who don’t have to use Adobe’s horrible bloatware.
“Apple.com posts cool new HTML5 Showcase”… that only works on Apple products? Go figure. If only the world would just give all of their money, attention, direction, and focus to Apple’s way of doing things, the web would be a lot easier. Actually you can skip the attention, direction and focus… just the money will suffice.
@mossman
Fair point, I see no reason for at least some of the demos to work in at least Chrome, that just strikes me as Apple trying to get more people to download Safari, and in the process they’re blocking people from seeing the really nice things HTML5 can do.
But the point does still stand that IE, Firefox et al need to do some catching up.
Even if the latest web standards don’t work natively in every browser, they make a great basis for code that does work in every browser.
For example, CSS3 has many great features for selecting parts of a web page. The jQuery has for years made CSS3 selectors available to web developers in all browsers. It allows me and many other developers to write code based on the web standards, and takes care of the a lot of the messiness of browser support.
I’d like to see more web tools built this way. With the right software, developers can write code following the latest web standards, and have old browser / flash / microsoft compatibility generated automatically.
This from John Gruber (http://daringfireball.com):
UPDATE: If you go to http://developer.apple.com/safaridemos/ instead of http://www.apple.com/html5/, you can use Chrome to try the demos. Some work, but the 3D ones don’t. It still browser-sniffs to block other browsers. If you diddle with the current version of Firefox to masquerade its user agent string as Safari, two of the demos work: “Audio” and “360°”.
@kizedek
Standard= what is most widely used and accepted.
While I agree with you on Microsoft, my employer doesn’t pay me to give them a lecture on who’s right or wrong.
Your 4th and 5th paragraph, I never said standards don’t work. That is an argument you made up in your head.
Hordur: “Of course, if these demos had been built with Flash they would have worked flawlessly and identically in close to 100% of the worlds desktop browsers. As it is, they are Safari only and that says all that needs to be said about the current state of HTML5 browser support.
Rock on Adobe !!”
Given how Adobe Flash runs horrendously on Mac, burning up processors, and melting batteries, crashes all browsers, and even on Windows it’s “home turf” it still crashes browsers and has numerous security problems, and it has it’s own unique cookies that are not controlled by the browser cookie system, making it a serious privacy problem…
This of course on top of the fact that it is completely owned and controlled by ONE company. Who wishes to continue to completely dominate a sector of the web for everyone in the entire world, instead of allowing it to be run by open interoperable standards.
The fact that you say it runs “flawlessly” and are openly cheering for Adobe’s continued monolithic dominance of the web, I have to conclude one of 3 possible things:
1. You are a paid shill and or employee of Adobe. The fact that you do not openly disclose this also makes you a liar.
2. You are a complete and utter clueless moron.
3. You are aware of the above issues, and do not care, and are simply egging us on: you are a troll.
It’s not impossible you fall into more than 1 of these 3 categories.
@the man,
“Standard= what is most widely used and accepted.”
“And I wish this word standards woulds stop being used. There is no “Standard”, if there was whatever you create would work across all platforms and look the same as well.”
Your two statements don’t really work together; you have some circular reasoning going on. How can there be no standard, if a standard is, well, what’s standard?
Incidentally, I disagree with your definition. If everyone did agree with your definition, then I wonder why you would want them to stop using the word? Because then there would be no discussion over standards, and what they are, and who is keeping them — religiously or not. I think you have conveniently switched over to some conception of “standard operating procedure” in your riposte.
A Standard, then, is a measure/metric or prescription that we try to meet as we operate, no matter what other people usually do or don’t do, and no matter what we usually do. We subscribe to a Standard in order to take advantage of the benefits of placing ourselves under the Standards in question.
Standards may benefit the whole population, such as electric current: a standard didn’t just evolve up until the day everyone in the US decided to use the same voltage. This helped manufacturers of electrical appliances, helped the training of electricians, and just makes sense for the sanity of everyday life.
There are Health Dept Standards for restaurants: if a restaurant wants the benefit of hanging a plaque on their wall that states they have been found to competently meet certain department of health requirements, then they may enjoy getting more clients as a result — and they may be allowed to remain in business.
Now, it may be the “standard practice” for most restaurant employees, in most restaurants, to spit in the food; but if so, then they are violating the standards of common decency, not to mention the Health Dept Standards. I don’t care how many cooks and waiters do it, they are failing to meet the required standards of their industry.
ISO Certificate Ratings are another Standard. Gaining certification in all kinds of areas is undertaken in an effort to meet a prescribed Standard. Companies strive for all kinds of standards, both internal and external; Performance Goals are another kind that people strive for. Some are attainable, some are not.
But, you know all this. The reason that you feel that “there is no “Standard”, if there was whatever you create would work across all platforms and look the same as well”, is because, as I said before, the Standard is not being met. Either the developer or the Browser is letting us down.
Giving up your power to meet a higher, universal standard is not the answer. You give up your power to strive towards a Standard, when you sink your efforts into one (or two) company’s hands which will gloss over and sanitize all (healthy) “differences” and expressions of creativity and innovation.
It is not lazy to strive toward a higher and more perfect, open and agreed-upon Standard. If someone meets that Standard better and more quickly, then I guess they have the advantage.
But no, I will be grateful for the spit in my food when I go out to my local eatery. It means my local eatery is not striving to be better than the truckstop down the road; it means they are acting just like countless other eateries around the world. Who am I to expect they should try to meet some kind of Standard or even care?
Hordur: “This is not an either/or situation, that is the stupidity of the whole discussion. Flash does and will continue to do a lot of things much better than HTML/CSS/Javascript. And HTML/CSS/Javascript will continue to be much better at some things than Flash. It is up to the developers/designers to choose the best tool for the job.”
See, this is just the stupidity of the Flash-defender’s arguments. You completely ignore all the very serious and long-standing major problems with Flash. It’s like a beaten wife staying with her abuser husband, saying “He beats me but I love him!”
Flash is an abomination, it does some things “well” if you say so, but at enormous cost to computing resources, battery life, and stability of a computer. If I told you I had a great diet that would guarantee you permanent 20 lbs weight loss, but didn’t bother telling you that I was going to chop off your foot, then I’d be withholding something important.
That’s exactly what you are doing. Flash does nothing at all well, because it cannot handle the very basics: running efficiently without crashing my browser.