It's style over substance and reminds me of the bad old days when Flash polluted every website with something snazzy but superfluous.
I don't really know how to phrase what I'm thinking. It's good to try new things, especially with stuff like CSS3 and WebGL on the horizon. But it's bad to just shoot things down. While I don't think for a second that you're promoting 3d transforms as something that everyone should be using for everything... some people out there really will latch onto it as a "cool thing" and abuse it. Which isn't your fault, it's just the way the world works.
So in summary. Awesome, love it! But I hope CSS3 doesn't become the new Flash.
I think we'll see a year or two of abuse going forward as this starts eating Flash, and people become overcome with experimentation. This seems the adaption pattern with most technology. I know I'll spend a good amount of time abusing this just to familiarize myself with the new opportunities. Things seem to balance back to a more modest (and as we say in Sweden, "lagom") state after a while.
In a way, it mimicks what Tim O'Reilly wrote on piracy earlier today:
"History shows us, again and again, that frontiers are lawless places, but that as they get richer and more settled, they join in the rule of law."
The beauty about HTML/CSS over Flash is that we can fix bad design.
Think about things like Readability that can transform horrifying websites into clean, readable articles. This is what happens when you give the entire stack to everyone, instead of hiding things behind a proprietary runtime (that crashes... and crashes... and gets hacked... and then crashes).
I'm convinced that we will always be unfortunately afflicted with some poorly-considered design/engineering fad or another. Before Flash websites, we had Java applet reflections, animated GIFs, fluorescent green on black... the list goes on. But thankfully, with HTML/CSS the client can choose to mitigate this a great deal.
I think the question is: Is it content that I still want to access in a few years?
For example, Facebook with its terrible URLs and JavaScript everywhere is very fragile. Hard to cache, hard to archive, but who cares? If the whole site went bankrupt in ten years, would many people actually export their data?
Or a blog on Rails, where every article becomes obsolete after a year. Or a restaurant website. Those sites can use all the magic they want.
But if you write about mathematics or art or other things that should pass the test of time, please make it bare-bones, semantic HTML. If I really like it, I can just archive it and show it to my children later. It's like using hover for menus, who'd guessed that this would break for millions of devices one day?
So... did it load fast? Was the content readable, selectable and natively scrollable? Did I break any of your regular habits, like 'back' or 'open in new tab' or copy/pasting links? Did you get a good sense of the site's contents and purpose from your first visit? Does everything remain accessible if you turn off JavaScript?
It's like everyone assumes nobody but them knows how to make websites.
My apologies - this site is indeed a masterpiece. The usability is much better than most HTML websites, no need to mention Flash.
But in the sense in which HTML5 is going to replace Flash, I am pessimistic that many websites will go to the same lengths. And where there is more code, there are more possibilities to break in the future.
To be nitpicky about usability of newfangled stuff: Using web fonts disables the built-in dictionary on OS X, both in Safari and in Chrome. (I am so happy that this is one thing Facebook has not yet embraced.)
I don't disagree, but I think this is a void easily fixed with the right libraries and frameworks. Remember the web before jQuery? You couldn't get most developers to touch JS with a ten foot pole...
> For example, Facebook with its terrible URLs and JavaScript everywhere is very fragile. Hard to cache, hard to archive, but who cares? If the whole site went bankrupt in ten years, would many people actually export their data?
If I had been coming up with examples of sites where people would want to export their data in such an event, Facebook would have been number 2 or 3 on my list, after an email or a document site (eg. Gmail or Google Docs).
I think I'm thinking the same thing, it's hard to put into words. I think we absolutely need people to show us the possibilities and overuse this. I hope css3 does become flash! I hope it gets stretched to its limit and overused by coders like the author here. Once that happens there will be a backlash and we'll be using it sensibly again. I think the web goes through these phases where some technologies get overused and it's how we find the best practices and proper ways to implement this sort of thing when the situation calls for it.
I think it's maybe just a bit early? You need at least a beta chrome build for it to work nicely - so stable should be nice in a few weeks... You're right though it's a little extreme, but imagine the type of data visualizations we have in store in the next few years on the web. This is really cool IMO...
I experienced jaggy scrolling too. I realized that scrolling with the cursor keys or clicking to page down in the scroll bar looks that way, yet if you select and drag the scroll bar then it is smooth.
Guys, I think a lot of you are missing the point. The purpose of this, I believe, is somewhat akin to climbing Mt Everest. It's there, he wanted to see if he could do it. He did it.
Comparing this to flash, or arguing why it doesn't work in X browser, or why it's bad UX or - is completely off base.
Despite concerns about compatibility, usability, and future accessibility, this project is ridiculously awesome simply because it pushes the boundary of what's possible in the browser. Bold strokes like this are what move technology forward.
Ran for me on Kubuntu (linux distro) using Chrome; but not on any of my other browsers nor on several browsers on WinXP under vbox. Changing page in Chrome crashed the browsers and completely filled my 2GB of swap, which is a first, usually swap is barely used.
Description of the working page/site:
The top half of the page is a series of colored streamers and the site title, giving a feel of the old "pipes" screensaver on MS Windows. A regular page view is presented towards the bottom right of the initial screen-area but tilted in perspective with the top-left corner away and the right edge towards the viewport. As one scrolls down the perspective view of the streamers alters and the page view moves in perspective until it is flat, square-on, to the viewport. It gives the feeling, to me, of moving underneath the title area in a more 3D way.
Hope that helps anyone, who was perhaps searching around to get a look at this thing, to decide if they want to see it or not. There's probably a screencap on YouTube ...
My only issue with css transforms is how unfamiliar the world of transforming/scaling/rotating/animating/etc is to the average web developer despite studying the basics of computer graphics. Whenever I look at the source, I feel like it has been written to never be read or understood again.
it is (well, in working draft) and 3d transforms are working in Firefox 10[1], but not for this site.
The author mentions he wrote it to be forward compatible as Firefox and IE10 add support, but it plainly isn't doing anything in Firefox right now...I'm curious if there's a reason or just a bug.
I normally dont comment much here, but this made me came out of my cave to type, Thanks for thinking out of the box, or at least showing me a new path to follow, as a web developer I miss the old days of "Flashy and Tacky" websites not because I miss flash, Its because of the innovation that drived that time, we all know there are some bad examples and bad implementations but when the project is right Its well worth it.
I love to see people taking things to the limit and would never harshly criticize or discourage someone from doing something like this but there's a big but coming...
But whenever you do something like this you have to be sure to test it on enough browsers and devices to be sure the vast majority of your audience won't be left with a bad taste in their mouth. Either that testing didn't happen or it was decided that the negatives were worth it in this case. The experience isn't good on iOS (iPhone and iPad) and just a little better in non-Webkit browsers. The scrolling is the big problem. It's okay for a minute but soon it's annoyance become more and more prominent in your mind.
Anyway, this is really really awesome! Having the js backup was good thinking. I hope it works out for the site. It's not something I'd use on a site with an audience that was really important to me but not everyone has the same priorities. In any case, besides the practical considerations, the effect itself is very impressive. Kudos.
Right! I'd feel the same about my personal site. See, I'm not familiar with the author so I'm not sure if it's appropriate. I think you have a point but if you have a personal site that's highly trafficked and popular then this might be a bad idea. I could do something nuts like this but imagine if PG did this to his site. I don't think he would. That's the kind of thing I'm getting at.
And I really like it... but....
It's style over substance and reminds me of the bad old days when Flash polluted every website with something snazzy but superfluous.
I don't really know how to phrase what I'm thinking. It's good to try new things, especially with stuff like CSS3 and WebGL on the horizon. But it's bad to just shoot things down. While I don't think for a second that you're promoting 3d transforms as something that everyone should be using for everything... some people out there really will latch onto it as a "cool thing" and abuse it. Which isn't your fault, it's just the way the world works.
So in summary. Awesome, love it! But I hope CSS3 doesn't become the new Flash.