Apple’s iPad / iPhone HTML5 Bet: HTML5 Drawing App Proves Capabilities
Recently I’ve been posting on HTML5 versus Flash. Many people who are not familiar with HTML5 may not know exactly the amount of power that has been provided with the new spec. HTML 4 was nice, and a big upgrade, but I believe HTML 5 will be an even larger upgrade over HTML4.
The reason we are talking about HTML5, is Apple seems to be placing their bets on it. Apple continues to refuse to have Flash running on their controlled devices (iPhone, iPad, etc) and seems to be pushing for HTML5 to take over.
We are slowly having to rethink the capabilities of the “HTML” platform that we have grown to know over the past 15 years.
When web developers, like ourselves, plan projects we usually identify what the client wants, and suggest technologies to make it happen. Traditionally if any client had said “I want…”:
- An online drawing App
- Many tools (gradient, patterns, fill, clone, selection, cropping, text, eye dropper, etc)
- Complete Color Tool (Alpha, RGB, HSV)
- Draggable interface elements
- Application like interface
- Ability to Save the images
- Manage the history of actions
- Vector Graphics
- Online sharing of works created
Those requirements would have meant “you need an Air app” or something to do with Flash. You may even say, why not just distribute an actual offline application to meet that functionality (or buy Photoshop).
Over at mugtug.com you can see an approach in HTML5 using the almost universally applicable Canvas element.
MugTug Sketchpad: Online Vector Graphics Drawing App
There is no absolute need for Flash anymore. However, if you look at the code required to do this, we clearly need to work out some nice frameworks for HTML5. I believe this could have been executed better in Flash, although there are some capabilities that may not have been available even in Flash. This also means that JavaScript is not the dying language many of us had thought.
Thanks for all the hard work MugTug!
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3 Comments to Apple’s iPad / iPhone HTML5 Bet: HTML5 Drawing App Proves Capabilities
nice. seems to me that this is redundant to flash. wonder if js could mimic prezi.com? I like js and as, both are great languages.
February 7, 2010
I see no reason why JS couldn’t implement prezi.com. I’m not sure if HTML 5 has fully vector / scalable fonts — or if its more like the fonts we know now. That could be a big differentiator.
August 7, 2010
This is really cool but… Doesn’t HTML5 have the same problem as JavaScript, as in no security, someone can just view source and take your code like the App you show, not to mention general security issues… So even if it can make amazing games and applications it has security issues which really limit its use, unless there’s a way to protect these things or maybe I’m thinking about it the wrong way? At least with Flash you have some layer of protection, even though it can be decompiled, you can encrypt it. I don’t see how people think this is a threat to serious Flash apps/games, at least not in the near future. Might be a threat to Flash ads and small little baby apps/functionality but that’s about it. 
If they can secure it then Flash will have some competition, but still not much until an HTML5 IDE comes out that compares to the Flash IDE right? Plus with HTML5 it’s up to the browser to implement it correctly isn’t it? With the history of inconsistencies in Firefox vs. IE. vs Opera vs Every other browser I don’t see that as being to likely either, where as Flash is the same for everyone.
Also if I make a Flash game I can store ALL the resources in the swf, where do I store them if I make an HTML5 game or app? On the server where they’re accessible by anyone?
If I have to go through this:
http://heideri.ch/jso/
Everytime I want to make an HTML5 app secure, I think I’ll stick to Flash for serious stuff for the foreseeable future.
Still its really cool to see the amazing things HTML can do now, just think we went from BLINK and MARQUEE to this, lol. 
P.S. I just looked at the source of that app and now my brain hurts.
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February 7, 2010