@furquanatique same here, but check out your CPU usage, it is barely tapping our i7. I imagine if it did, I'd expect all 15 of the windows I opened to be running smoothly. (Not to mention chucking some of that over to my GPU...)
@furquanatique Tried some of the games (I have a core 2 duo, running firefox). The multiplayer game was laggy (although it may have to do with the location of the servers). Some of the games didn't take my key presses. The higher res examples are also a bit laggy. I remember some benchmarks that show Flash outperformed HTML5 in animation, although some optimizations may change this. Part of the problem is that javascript has to be used to drive the canvas, and javascript is slow, which means Flash may actually outperform it (despite all the hoopla being made about how inefficient Flash is). It is cool you can do this on canvas without plug-ins though.
@jakey I disagree with you on pretty much everything you said.
First what is the definition of "plugin"? If Google squeezes flash so deep in the browser, is it still a plugin?
Second javascript is not slow anymore, google did terrific job in past couple years, let's talk two years down the road how slow javascript is.
Third, HTML5 is very very new technology, flash has been out there forever. give it a year or two and then run comparisons.
Flash is terrible technology, the scripting behind it is simply horribly done, I really hope most of the websites are not going to use it for video playback in the near future. Flash is certainly not the future of the internet.
@Jimbojones Notice how you said two years. Where will Flash be in two years? It directly illustrates that point that HTML5 isn't ready yet, so why not use Flash in the mean time?
Yes, the javascript performance of the V8 engine is amazing (due to compiling to native code vs actionscript compiled to bytecode + JIT compiler introduced in Flash 9), but for the large majority of the market, the javascript is still interpreted, and that means slow code.
HTML5 is the future of the web, no one says it isn't, but the key word is future. But I want to view the web now, and that means Flash.
@Jimbojones Javascript is still slower than Actionsript though. And while JIT-compilers for JS are optimized all the time, so is Flash.
The problem is that JS in it current state has disadvantages that means that it will by nature be slower. Both JS and AS are based on ECMAScript, but JS uses an older version of the standard. It lack a lot of functionality that AS provides making it a lot less suitable for anything but small simple scripts. And it also does not have strict typing, which does help a JIT compiler a lot when it comes to delivering optimal performance. Also a JIT compiler for JS will work on the script code directly, while with Flash you first compile AS into bytecode for the Flash Player. The JIT compiler in the Flash Player will then compile machinecode from that bytecode. That also makes for better performance.
So unless JS get's updated to follow later standards of ECMAScript and is pre-compiled it just will not catch up with Flash.
The main area where a lot of these demos struggle is probably not the actual scripting though, but the rendering of graphics using canvas or SVG. That is certainly an area where browsers will improve, but currently it's obvious how much Flash rocks in that area. The rendering in the Flash Player is many times faster than competing technologies, and while they might catch up there is very little basis for assuming that will happen in the foreseeable future.
@Jimbojones Its true that most flash content on the internet today is coded apaulingly. However I somehow doubt your gonna get better results through JS once you have the same number of developers.
AS3 is a much more robust language than JS in its current state - coding in JS after learning AS3 feels like I have to revert several years into the past. I essentially have to force myself to code like I did when I first started learning AS2.
+ Like others have stated AS is developing as a language at a much faster pace, by the time JS and other related technologies catch up to the capabilities and the performance that is currently possible with flash the flash platform would have (hopefully) moved eons ahead.
Lets all hope that by the end of this decade (or maybe sooner) the need for plugins would have disappeared all together. However, right now flash is still the best solution for a good number of scenarios so I see no reason to give up on it yet.
@drh yet, to play flash items, i dont need new hardware or software
i wonder which i prefer, a software that lags the shit out of everything even once youve brought your new hardware or software, or a software that only has issues if people code it horrificly that doesnt require me to buy new hardware/software hmm... hard decision
Yep, as others have said, AS3 is really a robust an elegant modern language. I think the language it most resembles is C# and in many ways is far nicer than Java. To say the scripting behind Flash is bad is to show that you don't understand it.
Some programmers who prefer other syntactical styles (Ruby/Obj-C, Python, etc) might not like it, but from the Java/JS/ECMAScript/C++/Curly bracket/dot syntax world, it is definitely a fantastic modern language.
Some nice advantages: A good built-in event architecture, event bubbling, deep object copying, reflection, inheritance, polymorphism, elegant getters and setters (for help in encapsulation), consistent and good cohesion in the API.
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HTML5 is o.k.
It is still eons behind Flash, and when it does catch up, Flash will be used on every single device, besides Apple's of course.
@furquanatique
By the way, that "3D Molecules" demo cripples my desktop Core i7 when I open 5+ molecule windows.
@furquanatique Same here on my Core 2. And Josh complains about Flash's CPU usage...
@furquanatique same here, but check out your CPU usage, it is barely tapping our i7. I imagine if it did, I'd expect all 15 of the windows I opened to be running smoothly. (Not to mention chucking some of that over to my GPU...)
@trong
Perhaps u guys need a new browser or new hardware :-)
@drh Core i9 and Firefox 5???
@trong I guess it was not just me who noticed John and his Flash Hate
@drh http://i47.tinypic.com/35849dd.jpg
Running a recent Core 2 with 4 GB of RAM and Chrome 6. Laptop hardware doesn't get much newer than this...
@furquanatique
Tried some of the games (I have a core 2 duo, running firefox). The multiplayer game was laggy (although it may have to do with the location of the servers). Some of the games didn't take my key presses. The higher res examples are also a bit laggy. I remember some benchmarks that show Flash outperformed HTML5 in animation, although some optimizations may change this. Part of the problem is that javascript has to be used to drive the canvas, and javascript is slow, which means Flash may actually outperform it (despite all the hoopla being made about how inefficient Flash is). It is cool you can do this on canvas without plug-ins though.
@jakey I disagree with you on pretty much everything you said.
First what is the definition of "plugin"? If Google squeezes flash so deep in the browser, is it still a plugin?
Second javascript is not slow anymore, google did terrific job in past couple years, let's talk two years down the road how slow javascript is.
Third, HTML5 is very very new technology, flash has been out there forever. give it a year or two and then run comparisons.
Flash is terrible technology, the scripting behind it is simply horribly done, I really hope most of the websites are not going to use it for video playback in the near future. Flash is certainly not the future of the internet.
@Jimbojones
Notice how you said two years. Where will Flash be in two years? It directly illustrates that point that HTML5 isn't ready yet, so why not use Flash in the mean time?
Yes, the javascript performance of the V8 engine is amazing (due to compiling to native code vs actionscript compiled to bytecode + JIT compiler introduced in Flash 9), but for the large majority of the market, the javascript is still interpreted, and that means slow code.
HTML5 is the future of the web, no one says it isn't, but the key word is future. But I want to view the web now, and that means Flash.
@Jimbojones
Javascript is still slower than Actionsript though.
And while JIT-compilers for JS are optimized all the time, so is Flash.
The problem is that JS in it current state has disadvantages that means that it will by nature be slower.
Both JS and AS are based on ECMAScript, but JS uses an older version of the standard. It lack a lot of functionality that AS provides making it a lot less suitable for anything but small simple scripts.
And it also does not have strict typing, which does help a JIT compiler a lot when it comes to delivering optimal performance. Also a JIT compiler for JS will work on the script code directly, while with Flash you first compile AS into bytecode for the Flash Player. The JIT compiler in the Flash Player will then compile machinecode from that bytecode. That also makes for better performance.
So unless JS get's updated to follow later standards of ECMAScript and is pre-compiled it just will not catch up with Flash.
The main area where a lot of these demos struggle is probably not the actual scripting though, but the rendering of graphics using canvas or SVG. That is certainly an area where browsers will improve, but currently it's obvious how much Flash rocks in that area. The rendering in the Flash Player is many times faster than competing technologies, and while they might catch up there is very little basis for assuming that will happen in the foreseeable future.
@Jimbojones Its true that most flash content on the internet today is coded apaulingly. However I somehow doubt your gonna get better results through JS once you have the same number of developers.
AS3 is a much more robust language than JS in its current state - coding in JS after learning AS3 feels like I have to revert several years into the past. I essentially have to force myself to code like I did when I first started learning AS2.
+ Like others have stated AS is developing as a language at a much faster pace, by the time JS and other related technologies catch up to the capabilities and the performance that is currently possible with flash the flash platform would have (hopefully) moved eons ahead.
Lets all hope that by the end of this decade (or maybe sooner) the need for plugins would have disappeared all together. However, right now flash is still the best solution for a good number of scenarios so I see no reason to give up on it yet.
@drh
yet, to play flash items, i dont need new hardware or software
i wonder which i prefer, a software that lags the shit out of everything even once youve brought your new hardware or software, or a software that only has issues if people code it horrificly that doesnt require me to buy new hardware/software
hmm...
hard decision
Yep, as others have said, AS3 is really a robust an elegant modern language. I think the language it most resembles is C# and in many ways is far nicer than Java. To say the scripting behind Flash is bad is to show that you don't understand it.
Some programmers who prefer other syntactical styles (Ruby/Obj-C, Python, etc) might not like it, but from the Java/JS/ECMAScript/C++/Curly bracket/dot syntax world, it is definitely a fantastic modern language.
Some nice advantages: A good built-in event architecture, event bubbling, deep object copying, reflection, inheritance, polymorphism, elegant getters and setters (for help in encapsulation), consistent and good cohesion in the API.