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Firefox Internet Explorer Mozilla News

Firefox 4 Web Demos: Web O' Wonder 145

Posted by timothy from the glad-the-browser-wars-continue dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Similarly to Google with Chrome Experiments and Microsoft with Internet Explorer Test Drive, Mozilla has developed an HTML5 demo site to showcase the latest features supported by Firefox 4. Mozilla's Paul Roget writes, 'Firefox 4 is almost here, and comes with a huge list of awesome features for web developers. In order to illustrate all these new technical features, we put together several Web demos. You'll see a couple of demos released every week until the final version of Firefox 4. You can see the first 3 demos online now on our brand new demo web site: Web O' Wonder. Unlike certain other HTML5 demo sites, Mozilla's site works in any browser that supports the features used in the demo."
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Firefox 4 Web Demos: Web O' Wonder More

Firefox 4 Web Demos: Web O' Wonder

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  • slow, clunky and doesn't work in my browser*

    * what the average user might say

    • OTOH the websites make it pretty clear that you should download their browser ...

      • You know, it pisses me off that these sites make snarky "Download an up to date browser" comments. I mean, if I was running IE 6 or FF2 or some shit, yeah, but when I'm using the latest, bleeding edge of another browser I basically get told I'm using a piece of crap? I mean come on, this elitist asshole shit has to stop, especially on a site that claims to be open to all to try. Why not word it:"currently only browser X and Y has these features" and leave it at that?

        Sorry, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

        • Google's HTML5 demo site (from last summer) was no different. I tried multiple browsers, even Chrome, and it still kept telling me to upgrade.

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by Anne Honime ( 828246 )

          when I'm using the latest, bleeding edge of another browser I basically get told I'm using a piece of crap?

          If you're thinking about the one I'm thinking, the answer is definitely YES, It's an old fashioned steamy pile of shit, face it and be a man about it. Wishful thinking and head burying in the sand won't change this. Neither will shouting while pounding with your little pink fists on your keyboard like a baby being weaned.

    • Do you think that the website is mainly intended for

      A) The average user,
      B) The web developer.
      C) Extra answer to prevent claims of false dichotomies.

      All I keep reading in /. is complain, complain, whine, complain, troll, complain....

      We need more interesting debates and less quasi-youtube comments.

  • What an experience! (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Provos ( 20410 )

    I clicked on the link to the Web O' Wonder in Firefox 4 beta 12 on fedora 14... it crashed immediately.

    Are they attempting to say that Firefox 4 hearkens back to memories of windows 98?

  • Looks a lot like a flash site.
    :-(

    • That good then?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        Looks a lot like a flash site. :-(

        That good then?

        Hard to say, if only someone could invent simple figurative expressions to go with the text we might know the writer's feeling on the subject. That's way too complicated to ever happen though.

      • No I hate flash sites. So damn slow and baroque (gaudy). Like IMDb.com, although they have improved some.

        Also works on Opera 11

      • Well Flash has all the features of HTML5 and more AND it plays the same in every browser as long as you have a plugin ... and you still hate it ... Face it everyone; HTML5 is fixing problems that shouldn't have existed 10 years ago - and it is doing it so poorly and vaguely not even browser makers know what's going on. Divs, positioning, layering, browser specific CSS, tables inside tables inside tables, endless debugging and cross checking. Web design is a disgusting mess and the standards are so vague tha

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Lennie ( 16154 )

          Actually, HTML5 is trying to fix a lot of those problems.

          For example, it has a complete specification how to parse valid and invalid HTML.

        • I was in agreement with you until around a year ago. I've developed a ~lot~ in flash over the years and, although I liked the ease of use (gui) and headache-less (all-browser-compatible) coding, I could never get it out of my head that flash was basically DHTML within a proprietary framework. Today, thanks to javascript libraries such as jQuery (that takes care of cross-browser issues by itself), it is becoming almost (but not quite) as easy to manipulate graphics and text as using flash. jQuery is already

          • Ok, have you used CS5/Flash 10/AS3? Did you realize you can do theming within flash inside CSS files now? Have you ever done multilingual sites/localization? Have you ever built interfaces as SWC libraries and then used those in pure AS3? Ever dealt with binary data in AS3 vs JS? I've used jQuery, it doesn't come close to the features available in Flash/AS3 and you're either fooling yourself or just doing things that don't require the advanced features provided by Flash. You mention SVG - all those features
  • "Unlike certain other HTML5 demo sites, Mozilla's site works in any browser that supports the features used in the demo."

    What is that about? The "other demo site" also worked in any browser that supported the features used int the demo. Same difference.

    • Oh really?

      http://www.apple.com/html5/ [apple.com]

      I get an error for all of them saying I need to download Safari to view them.

      • Yeah, it doesn't even say to get n up-to-date browser. It comes right out and says you need Safari or you can't even click through to see the demo.

      • Thats odd. I have to problem viewing those demos with the latest version of Chromium

  • Blink (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Blink

  • Ironic (Score:3)

    by Haedrian ( 1676506 ) on Thursday March 03, 2011 @08:28PM (#35375364)

    Was quite enjoying the experience, then it crashed my firefox 4. Go figure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nickd ( 58841 )

      At least you got that far, in chrome on the mac it completely hard locked my machine. And again after a fresh restart. HTML5 demos, now fucking your machine harder than flash.

  • What's the status of Web Sockets in Firefox 4?

    I heard that there were concerns about whether the technology was mature enough, but it sounds like a very important web tech so I really hope it makes it.

    If it doesn't get into Firefox 4 that takes all pressure off of MS to include it, and it will probably be years before it gets widely deployed.

    • WebSockets is currently supported in Firefox 4 and Opera, but disabled by default in both.

      • ...because the specification has a significant security hole, IIUC

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Aikar ( 1158019 )
          No, it does not. Some inexperienced "security researcher" posted an invalid PDF document placing the fault on WebSockets for a vulnerability in other software. And some Mozilla exec blindly skimmed the document and accepted it as fact and had websockets disabled. But in reality, there fault has absolutely nothing to do with WebSockets, and the fault CAN NOT be fixed in WebSockets. Mozillas suggestion to the problem simply removes the ability to use WebSockets as a vector for the attack, but the attack is

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Lennie ( 16154 )

            Do other software is:
            Transparant caching proxies that do not properly implement HTTP.

            Websites can silently inject fake data in the cache of such a proxy.

            The reason for it being disabled is because Mozilla and atleast Opera wants to implement a version of the protocol which can not be abused this way.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Disabled by default for security reasons [mozilla.org]

  • Interesting link on the history of HTML5 (Score:5, Informative)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday March 03, 2011 @08:31PM (#35375394)

    And why HTML, XHTML, XML, MIME is such a clusterfuck ...

    http://diveintohtml5.org/past.html [diveintohtml5.org]

  • Unfortunately, from a standpoint of marketing to those who have not tried Firefox 4Beta, it doesn't work with Firefox 3.6.

    • Let me get this straight.

      You want a website which showcases new features in firefox 4 to work with firefox 3.6?

      What would we be the point of THAT?

  • Wrong audience (Score:1, Insightful)

    by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

    "Firefox 4 is almost here, and comes with a huge list of awesome features for web developers."

    How about fewer features for web developers - and more for web users? Remember us? They guys who are the reason for all those web developers?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Draek ( 916851 )

      Those that get new features in every single release, you mean?

      Seriously, if Firefox had stagnated like IE6 did for so many years I'd understand your concern, but as it stands...

      • Seriously, if Firefox had stagnated like IE6 did for so many years

        FF1 and FF2 most certainly did stagnate for years. They are still stagnant and will forever onwards be stagnant.

        The last IE6 version was released in 2004, the first IE7 version was released in 2006. The correct argument to make is that IE6 was popular for so many years...

        Damn IE6 for not having any successful competition for so many years (this is coming from a long-time Opera user.. so dont even try to claim that I am an IE fan-boy, like the guy in my signature was)

    • addons.mozilla.org and userscripts.org has a nice selection for such features.

      Firefox is the base on which webpages and addons run.

    • You mean all those features that Firefox set out to remove from SeaMonkey because it was too bloody bloated and develop a nice fast browser that just browsed and let you add your own bloatware to after they had made it good at what it did?

      Wow, it's like people forget what Phoenix was forked for ...

      Just stop adding crap to Firefox and tighten up the code, remove the bugs and have the rendering engine improve to keep pace with new developments in HTML (non)standards.
      Or you could put an HTML editor, IRC a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aikar ( 1158019 )
      ... the new features for DEVELOPERS are so we developers can give more features to you USERS... You get better stuff when we get the features instead of you.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Aikar ( 1158019 )
        You wouldn't want to get a new browser that still runs the same old kind of websites would you?
    • As a web developer, I can turn any one of the features for me into useful features for users.

  • Otherwise I don't give a crap about stuff that will make life easier for the people who create mostly lame websites. The URL bar is slow as an evil year and would be wonderful if it was fast. But it isn't.

    • Pretty much everything is faster. A good hunk of the UI is written in JS, and the JS engine got a significant speed boost this release.

      When I highlight a URL in the AwesomeBar and hit a key, the time to display the drop-down box full of results is imperceptible on my machine.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BZ ( 40346 )

        For what it's worth, while the url bar is indeed a lot faster, that's not really related to the JS changes.

        In fact, the new method jit isn't even enabled for chrome JS by default in Firefox yet. You can flip a pref to thus enable it.

  • release that delayed.delayed thing already, the chrome mind block function will wear out soon..

  • I ran 1-2 tests from the demos.mozilla.org site and they did not seem to work as intended (especially the Remixing Reality one). My guess was that maybe WebGL was not working properly on my system and I ran the webgl-conformance-tests suite found at https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/registry/trunk/public/webgl/sdk/tests/webgl-conformance-tests.html [khronos.org]. Results were 5389 of 5468 tests passed, 1 timed out. Same results with latest Minefield.

    Now I'm a bit at loss: the above tests (the failure of which may or may

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lennie ( 16154 )

      WebGL is probably the hardest part to get right of all the specifications, because it so depends very much on other parts of the system.

      The page was mostly for developers and knowledgable users I would guess.

      But luckily WebGL is only a very small part of all the new stuff. IE9 will not support it, so that might be a reason people won't be using it much.

      The specification has been made and people are doing testing because if you don't do that, the problems will not be found and fixed and it will never advance

  • Crazy Flash-like shit is not content (Score:3)

    by dirkdodgers ( 1642627 ) on Friday March 04, 2011 @02:55AM (#35377184)

    Look, look with your special eyes:
    https://demos.mozilla.org/en-US/#dashboard [mozilla.org]

    I don't know what to do here. I don't even know what I'm looking at here. I move the mouse around the screen and things glow and whir and slide, but none of it makes any sense to my mind. HTML 5 apparently means "Hey now I can do that crazy shit I used to do with Flash, right in my HTML."

    Yeah, and now instead of that crazy Flash shit being isolated to a little box of your page that I could disable, now your entire page is rendered a confusing mess of utter unusability to anyone over the age of 30.

    When will web site designers learn that people don't come to their websites for their crazy Flash shit or really anything they do. They come to their web site for their CONTENT. Content doesn't mean what your web site designer does. Content means what's between the covers of a book. Content means a video. Content means user discussion boards.

    Great technical browser implementation, guys. You're doing good work, but this crazy Flash-like shit shouldn't be the poster child for your work.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Lennie ( 16154 )

      Web site designers usually are users too and fully agree with you. But marketing seems to keep asking for it and I guess some people comply because they want to keep their job.

      I think it is the job of browser vendors to make it easier for the user to remove/disable certain style types/elements so all that is left is the real content.

      Like so:
      https://www.readability.com/ [readability.com]

      I think Safari implements something like that as well ?

    • Under 30 can hardly use the site ether, I got a headache after looking at that remixing reality one.

    • I think you're missing the point of what a demo is. This is to demonstrate the new features that HTML5 will enable for web developers. Just because the demo has spinning icons, scrolling bars, music, video, 3D, etc, all packed into a couple of pages, does not at all mean that this is how most future pages will look or behave. The point is that some of these features will be useful for different applications.

      A couple of decades ago, the demoscene was making programs that didn't do anything but show 3D object

  • The following does make me worry:

    we dynamically set the cache size based on how much space is free on an end-user’s hard drive.

    I hope they also check the quota. Not everyone is sitting at a single-user system, after all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      The vast majority of users who's hard drive free space is going to be used up by the browsers cache should have cleaned out their disk long ago.

      In this third millennium it's a non issue.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BZ ( 40346 )

      I'm pretty sure that quota is not in fact checked yet. For one thing, I'm not sure there are reliable ways to check quotas in all cases (short of trying to write and failing)...

  • One thing I don't understand (Score:3)

    by aaaaaaargh! ( 1150173 ) on Friday March 04, 2011 @06:04AM (#35377728)

    On the website there is a showcase of the HTML5 capabilities of rendering 3D graphics in the browser. But, hey, I remember for sure that browsers had this ability in the nineties and already then nobody cared about it.

    Another thing I don't understand is why there is a constant need for new standards...HTML3, XHTML, CSS, HTML4, HTML5, etc. etc. Why? To keep committees busy? To piss of browser and web developers? To make sure that overlay ads can be displayed in any browser?

    I understand the benefits of XHTML over HTML. However, wouldn't it be wise at some point to just freeze the features and perhaps focus on the content instead?

    If this trend of turning my browser into a slow, clunky meta operating system continues, I will revenge myself by writing my own proprietary, slick binary web protocol, implement my own browser, and distribute it among friends. And others will likely do that, too. Goodbye HTML!

    You have been warned! ;-)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Lennie ( 16154 )

      Actually, HTML5 is kind of a revolt against the ideas of XHTML.

      XHTML specifies if their is a single mistake on the XML you should stop rendering and only display a warning, this is not acceptable for (read: useful to) the user.

      So maybe XML is technically better, but HTML is more useable in practise.

      The reason we are now getting all these new specs the W3C is because W3C wanted XML-syntax for HTML and all these 'innovations' got delayed.

      Have a look at the longer story:

      http://diveintohtml5.org/past.html#timel [diveintohtml5.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BZ ( 40346 )

      > Another thing I don't understand is why there is a
      > constant need for new standards

      Some of the new standards are web developers keep asking for new features. Part of this is an expanding set of use cases, and part is expanding demographics. Now some of these revisions are more substantive than others...

      For example, HTML3 introduced the and tags because authors wanted those capabilities. HTML4 introduced and various other things. XHTML introduced an XML formulation of HTML. HTML5 introduces n

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Lennie ( 16154 )

      If you want to parse HTML as XML, just use HTMLTidy. I know it can create proper XHTML-document (thus XML) of pretty much any HTML4-document. I guess it can handle HTML5 too, but haven't tested it.

  • I checked it with Chrome 10-beta on Kubuntu 10.10. It crashed Chrome AND X, leaving me with a few seconds of black screen followed by a login prompt.

    When I reloaded Chrome, it came up without the tabs I'd been looking at.

    Impressive.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by BZ ( 40346 )

      May I recommend filing a bug on your X package with Ubuntu, since it's clearly buggy?

      Might want to file one on Chrome too, in case they want to work around the bugs, I suppose... This sort of thing is why Firefox is shipping with WebGL disabled on most Linux graphics setups. :(

  • Bloat (Score:3)

    by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Friday March 04, 2011 @02:12PM (#35381856) Homepage

    And to think, the original purpose forking Firefox from Netscape was to remove the bloat.

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