One of the reasons I liked Flash was because I could easily create 3-D interfaces. I was initially going to use it when creating the main interface for my slider puzzle program, however, it suddenly came to me that I could probably use Javascript instead. Today, after playing around a bit, I was actually surprised at what I was able to create:
http://www.patorjk.com/games/sliderpuzzles/
Note that I’ve only tested that on the latest versions of IE, Firefox, and Opera. The code for that wasn’t too hard to create (it’s still a little buggy and I’m not done with it yet though), I kind of wonder why there aren’t more 3-D Javascript interfaces for websites. I would think it would be much more practical than Flash since the user wouldn’t need a plug in, and the script could react to the browser resizing.
I think this slider puzzle app will unfortunately be one of those programs that I enjoy writing more than people enjoy using. It’s hard to get excited about doing puzzles of famous art. After thinking a bit more a Sarah Michelle Gellar puzzle gallery would be pretty cool, but I wouldn’t want to risk the copyright issues. I wonder if the gallery sites have deals with the photographers or if people just post up the images ignoring the copyright (hoping to fly under the radar).
I don’t think Flash is any more or less practical than Javascript when it comes to interfaces. I think both are pretty irritating.
Flash requires a plugin (which most people already have), but Javascript can be easily disabled. Just for a little anectdote: my box at work runs Vista and IE absolutely hates running JS. It could have been the way it was set up by Dell, but I get that yellow “need permission” bar nearly everytime I do something in Javascript (especially if I’m doing DOM-modifying stuff, it seems).
Anyway, there are a lot of emerging technologies in the web programming arena. Stuff like Silverlight and JS libraries like YUI, jQuery, etc.
hey Sloat! Cool to see you have a new site. I noticed that your old one disappeared a while ago and I wasn’t sure what happened.
As far as Flash and Javascript go, I’ve always been under the impression that more people have Javascript enabled than have the Flash plug-in, but that may have changed in the past few years. I haven’t done any real Flash development in about 2-3 years. There were several things that annoyed me about Flash when I was working with it though, all of which seem to escape me now, but it really seemed like it was made without software developers in mind as its main audience. It’s strange that IE would give so many complaints about Javascript. Everything I keep reading says it’s going to be the next big language.
Very Well done. I haven’t had time to play with AJAX much but this is great. Next step should be Omni-Directional scrolling. I.E. any direction would be valid to cause a 3D spin; up, down, bottom left, etc.
Hrm, up and down scrolling with the mouse could be a little tricky from an interface’s perspective. I’d have to figure out if I’d want it to make the pictures scroll around the x-axis or if I’d want it to cause them to tilt their rotation on the z-axis. If I did the former, and then set the images up as if they rested on the surface of a sphere, it’d probably work out pretty well. I’d need a lot of images for this type of set up though.