Mozilla Launches Online Game Using HTML5, WebSockets

[exfileme]

Mozilla has launched an HTML5-based MMOG demo which relies on WebSockets.

Mozilla Launches Online Game Using HTML5, WebSockets : Read more

 

[dameon51]

Its cool and all, and I like that web tech is becoming more powerful, but at the same time it seems lackluster because these sort of thing has been around using different technologies. I get the web is open and cross platform, but I'm finding it more and more difficult to get excited about these little HTML 5/javascript tech demos.

 

[esrever]

I can just imagine people making lots of money off something like this for mobile devices and web. Extremely large user base with lots of possible income and being easily amused. Get them hocked on an mmo and it will prints money.

 

[killerclick]

We have (had) a great casual gaming platform - Adobe Flash - but it was destroyed by then Apple CEO and current corpse Steve Jobs because Adobe once stopped developing software for the Mac and Jobs held a grudge. Now we have this ugly, jerky crap, that's progess I guess.

 

[prophetzarquon]

@killerclick Adobe destroyed Flash. Macromedia made an amazing tool and Adobe filled it with bloat and bugs until it became useless on all but brand new Core based PCs. The prophesied Flash web-game era never arrived because Android has no way to Point (hover) without Clicking, and nearly all Flash games rely on a pointer, not tap-zones. Flash sites like YouTube and Netflix run video more slowly than ever, thanks to revamped interfaces loaded with DRM and excess decoration that has nothing to do with your content.

Frankly, the whole web has been moving to an idiot-box / WebTV style that eschews real functionality and streamlining in favor of unnecessary animations, transparencies, extra objects and buffer methods that throw away video content on each mode change, creating an unreliable, slow, less-compatible net that - for the user - is patently inferior to that offered in 2001.

HTML5 is the only web technology I see moving us toward compatibility and efficiency. Don't even get me started on HDMI vs VGA (15pin D-sub) vs SDI.

 

[obsama1]

Actually, Netflix doesn't use Flash, they use Silverlight which plain sucks. For content like games/video HTML sucks, but for regular old webpages, it's amazing. HTML5 YouTube runs terrible on my quad-core computer with 6Mb connection speed. However, 720p Flash videos play beautifully.

 

[killerclick]

[citation][nom]prophetzarquon[/nom]@killerclick Adobe destroyed Flash. Macromedia made an amazing tool and Adobe filled it with bloat and bugs until it became useless on all but brand new Core based PCs.[/citation]

Sure Adobe Flash has bugs, but so does every single platform out there.

As a games platform, Adobe Flash has more players than DirectX, since pretty much every Facebook game uses it (Rovio, Microsoft, Nintendo and others can only dream about the kind of user base Zynga has). Furthermore, a lot of desktop casual (Big Fish Games etc) games use Flash, but you can't see it because it's nicely packaged into an exe.

There is really no substitute for Flash at the moment. HTML5 is immature, has poor support and market penetration compared to Flash and most importantly, it can't do a lot of things that Flash can. There is not even a HTML5 standard and you can't count on major browsers supporting the same features (HTML5 video on my web site needs 3 video files for every video, because of inconsistent HTML5 video support). YouTube still considers HTML5 support experimental after two years, because it's not as good and reliable as Flash.

It was just an example of Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field. Apple has less than 10% of usage share and he went up against a standard that has 95% market penetration. Now that he's dead and gone, maybe we can step back, ignore the con job he pulled, and let the free market do its thing. As long as Flash games have hundreds of millions of players, Flash is here to stay, bugs and all.

HTML5 is ultimately the way to go but it's years away from being ready.