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by dave_sullivan 5054 days ago
So I'll get down voted for this but it needs to be said: this is very cool and is a great proof of concept for the direction things are going. However, if you're promoting a commercial product, event, etc., you could have just used flash--it would be trivialish to implement, perform better, and have no cross browser issues--although no iOS to be fair...

As it stands, how many people will hit the site, see it's not working because they have the wrong browser version, and leave?
6 comments
ceejayoz 5054 days ago
> and have no cross browser issues--although no iOS to be fair...

I love this casual dismissal of tablet/mobile phone users as if it were a non-issue.

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dave_sullivan 5054 days ago
Hardly a non-issue, but again, judging by comments below, hardly an issue that's been solved here.

So flash or JS, certain mobile users that should be able to see it won't be able to see it.

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ceejayoz 5054 days ago
> So flash or JS, certain mobile users that should be able to see it won't be able to see it.

JS can be fixed for those users, though. Flash can't.

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Livven 5054 days ago
Umm... as if that animation even worked on iOS or Android browsers...
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da_n 5054 days ago
I can also confirm works on iOS (using iPad), has a couple of spacing glitches, however page turning animation is extremely smooth, an the actual pop-ups are exact same as on desktop, no problem and performs like a champ.
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Gormo 5054 days ago
Worked fine for me on iPad Safari.
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mikebridgman 5054 days ago
One thing to consider is that their target audience is attendees of the Front-trends conference, a conference specifically for front end developers. I think it's a safe bet that a majority of the traffic will have a compatible browser.
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dave_sullivan 5054 days ago
Ha, excellent point. Judging by some of the comments here, much of their traffic may not have a compatible browser version after all, but I'd imagine that they still have a higher tolerance for that sort of thing in the name of advancing the field.
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eridius 5054 days ago
This is a terrible attitude. Among the other things that have been pointed out, not all desktop browsers have Flash. For example, no computer I own has Flash installed on the system. If I need Flash for some reason, I keep Chrome around, but it has to be a damn good reason to bother with.
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lotyrin 5054 days ago
Yes. Because graceful degradation isn't a thing.

Obviously they didn't apply it here fully, but it would have been possible for them to reuse their text divs on text-only browsers, drop their svgs for some prerendered raster graphics on SVG-less browsers, use their SVGs but have them render flat on 3d-transform-less browsers, have static 3d copies of each page if JS isn't available but 3d was, etc., etc.

It's even possible for established sites to collect statistics on combinations of available browser features, estimate ROI vs. development effort and decide which combinations beyond the least-common-denominator are worth coding for and slowly roll them out one at a time.

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pizzatime 5054 days ago
That's not the point of the site. It's an annual meetup where people push the limits of the latest and greatest web technologies. The people visiting it will be web designers/developers, not Jane Doe who only visits facebook.
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patrickaljord 5054 days ago
They could have done it in Flash but then they would not have been featured on HN's frontpage.
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