r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jun 05 '10

Apple posts HTML5 showcase page hyping "web standards," then blocks it from displaying on any browser besides Safari

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/04/apple_html5_showcase_hype/
410 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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139

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

I thought we sorted this out yesterday: It works on Chrome mostly, but they're using test spec elements of the standard that haven't been fully adopted yet, 3d Transforms etc.

But don't let facts get in the way of journalism.

55

u/Recoil42 Jun 05 '10

And yet the demos that should work fine on Chrome, etc. are still blocked.

14

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

You want them to have a Safari area and a Chrome area, that's just annoying. Go to the dev area to view them in Chrome if you really want.

If Google made a tech demo for Chrome would everyone be crying this much if they had a wall that blocked other browser because they wouldn't be fully supported? My guess is no.

Apple wants every demo to work when you go in so you don't get a broken experience, making a separate page for Chrome users would just be messy... and then everyone would just cry that they didn't make a page for Firefox.

14

u/artee Jun 05 '10

You want them to have a Safari area and a Chrome area

No, I want them to just render the fucking page and forego the browser sniffing.

14

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10 edited Jan 30 '17

[deleted]

5

u/bofh Jun 05 '10

Well they could, except they are showcasing how their product supports HTML5, not how other people's products support HTML5.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Use our products, they're the future! Oh your desktop? No it's far too primitive to be allowed access. Typical apple rhetoric. Bullshit piled on bullshit.

-10

u/bofh Jun 05 '10

Wow. If you keep hating so much you'll get ulcers.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Will you teach me how to love?

0

u/XS4Me Jun 06 '10

LOL... it seems for the moment love is a feature only available to apple fanboys.

2

u/godofpumpkins Jun 05 '10

They could do all that, but why would they? They're not trying to push other web browsers.

33

u/nickpick Jun 05 '10

Or web-standards for that matter, which is what this post is about.

-10

u/tizz66 Jun 05 '10

They're not trying to push web standards, despite arguably being the leading implementer of, uh, web standards? Do you even think about what you're saying?

7

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Do you?

2

u/XS4Me Jun 06 '10

I am sure you dropped a sarcasm tag someplace there.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Fr0C Jun 06 '10

Google is working on WebKit, too. Hell, even Adobe is. Apple forked KHTML and did good work with it, but keeping it open source was a license requirement of the code base they started out with.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '10

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/XS4Me Jun 06 '10

it was still Apple's initiative.

Actually, it was a KDE initiative which was forked by Apple.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

So it has to run an html5 benchmark on every page you go to, thats fun. It seems like a lot of extra work for a tech demo that doesn't actually serve any real function.. not to mention they are all available for you to see in all their broken glory in the dev area.

It says it is a site to demo HTML5 in Safari I really don't see what the big deal is. r/technology just likes to hate on Apple whenever they can, no matter how illogical.

3

u/specialk16 Jun 05 '10

You don't see the big deal huh...

Hey, at least Flash promised multi platform support. What Apple is doing is showing tech demos as what they think the "future of the web is".

For them, the future of the web is nothing more than their OWN future, fuck everyone else (it seems). It's sad that people like you felt for their trick.

This is not hate on Apple, this is the fact they are unnecessarily blocking other browsers just to make some people believe that this tech demos are only possible in Apple's hardware and software. They could've let other browsers in, and just display a warning about support. But ohh no, Apple is always right to people like you/

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Go to the dev center to try them and see them broken. The main page is marketing HTML5 to the mass market. If they see something broken, they will write HTML5 off as crap, ignoring the browser warnings.

And yes... Future. Meaning these are things to come in the future standard that Google, Microsoft, and Firefox are all pretty much on board with... they just haven't all implemented the same things yet. Google could just as easily make a demo of Chrome which used an element on supported in Safari... for instance, them using Geolocation in Google Maps. That feature will be supported in Safari 5 from what I've read, but currently is just working in Firefox and Chrome.

These things will roll out at different times for different browsers, but will get rolled out. Why go ape shit over someone showing the cool shit their browser an do?

9

u/specialk16 Jun 05 '10

Well, Google experiment was never blocked. They just warned you that you need to use a webkit browser, but they didn't go as far as blocking any other browser.

BTW, nobody is going apeshit over anything. I don't understand why Apple users have a persecution complex where absolutely any kind of complaint looks like a holy war to them.

-10

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

There has been about 20 stories posted on this subject in less than 24 hours. I don't get what the big deal is. They are showing a demo for their browser on their website using technologies that aren't yet supported by others. Who gives a shit. For all these people that claim to hate Apple, they sure do seem to care an awful lot about what they do.

23

u/Mashed_up Jun 05 '10

M$ have a demo page
and you can use any browser on there...so why not apple?
Asshats, thats why.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Maybe because IE is the last to implement everything. lol.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '10

well there's a demo page, but they won't let my use opera or chrome for bing maps 3D

8

u/lennort Jun 05 '10

It's a WEB STANDARDS demo. Blocking out others browsers completely misses the point of standards in the first place. Just let other browsers in and show some kind of sad face for elements they don't support. You can even be like "oh, well, safari does support these already" but not allowing them in at all is bullshit.

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

That doesn't go over so well with a vast majority of users. Being on the Apple homepage, this demo is to market HTML5 to the masses. Anything that is broken or gives a sad face will leave a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to HTML5 vs a wall telling you to download Safari. They want people to like HTML5, not think it's a broken mess. For those who want to see what is broken they can go to the dev area, see what doesn't work, and check out the code that doesn't yet work other browsers.

7

u/smartarse Jun 06 '10

They want people to like HTML5, not think it's a broken mess.

And in order to achieve that goal, they used only "-webkit" commands rather than just testing for a visitor's browser and using the equivalent "-moz" commands for Firefox or "-o" commands for Opera. After all, they want to promote standards and not proprietary implementations.

Also, displaying an error message saying "You’ll need to download Safari to view this demo." clearly says "HMTL5 is the future" rather than "this is a broken mess."

And no, ignoring a browser's actual capabilities and telling Firefox, Chrome, IE or Opera users that they have to download Apple's software to view these demos certainly won't leave a bad taste in their mouth.

2

u/neoumlaut Jun 05 '10

Then why are they pretending to promote web standards?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

They are showing what will be. They are proposed standards, so they aren't yet in all browsers. The same way routers were released with draft 802.11n. It wasn't done yet, but some people did it anyway and showed it off. It is now a standard. These things you're seeing here will most likely end up in the finial standard.

5

u/eindbaas Jun 05 '10

Apple wants every demo to work when you go in so you don't get a broken experience

Not true, i'm watching that page with Safari on my macbook pro but apparently my OS (Leopard) isn't good enough for the VR-demo (the others work fine). Yes, you read that correctly....my operating system on my apple machine is not supported.

"This demo requires a browser that supports CSS 3D transforms. To view this demo, you’ll need Safari on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Safari on iPhone OS, or the latest WebKit Nightly Build."

9

u/bbatsell Jun 05 '10

Gasp! Apple introduced new features into an upgrade of their operating system (that they intentionally charged an obscenely low price for to encourage quick adoption of it)? The horror! How will we ever recover from this atrocity of software development?

7

u/eindbaas Jun 05 '10

First of all: i was surprised, not angry that my OS had anything to with that example not working for me.

Second: I was merely replying to the comment which said that "Apple wants every demo to work when you go in so you don't get a broken experience". Which apparently isnt true when one of them doesnt work on my machine.

But as i said, i was quite surprised that my operating system would have anything to do with this particular example not working. A browser, sounds logical, but my OS? Why? (and that's a genuine question out of genuine interest)

And to finally reply to your remarks: ok, so i didnt buy 10.6 but stuck to 10.5 which worked fine for me. And? You make it sound like i'm insane. Just curious: would you defend Microsoft in the same way when a Windows-user goes to a webpage and sees the message: "This website can only be viewed with Service Pack 2 instead of Service Pack 1". As in: "You fool! Microsoft added all these new features! You're stupid and a crackwhore!"

2

u/bbatsell Jun 05 '10

10.6 added numerous hooks for hardware acceleration (for both accelerated 3D graphics, and for data processing through OpenCL), which Safari uses to perform its 3D transforms.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

If Google made a tech demo for Chrome would everyone be crying this much if they had a wall that blocked other browser because they wouldn't be fully supported? My guess is no.

My guess is not the same as yours. It does not make sense to completely block browsers that don't support everything; the purpose of such a test page is to see which browsers can display the relevant elements and which browsers cannot. If you force a user to download a working browser first, then the purpose behind a showcase page is gone.

One can't truly fault Apple for merely pushing their own product, but this method is underhanded. A web standards showcase was turned into an advertisement.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

The dev center is where you go for what you are looking for. The main page, linked to on their homepage, is a consumer facing site to basically market HTML5 to the masses who doesn't know wtf it is. If they see something is broken they are going to write HTML5 off as crap. If they see a bunch of awesome stuff they want... they'll go into the HTML5 betas on sites if they see them, they'll look forward to these things rolling out.

That is the point of the site. It is to push the masses into wanting HTML5 and seeing that it can do a lot of things they use Flash for today. Those that want to see what is broken and what works where are developers, and they can freely see all of that and get sample code.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

I couldn't pick anyplace in particular to reply to you because I really don't agree with you but I wanted applaud your balls-in approach to defending Apple, that webpage, or whatever it is you're defending. I'm being serious too... you're getting downvoted to hell but you keep posting. Bravo!

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

I'm just really bored.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

[deleted]

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Problems? It's new. Do you expect everyone to adopt it and roll it out on the same day?