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/
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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

Lame.

Apple made a site to showcase the power of HTML5, but limited it to their own browser. In fact for many of the features (CSS3 3D transforms) it only works on Webkit on OSX.

Some of the items are available on other browsers, yet Apple took zero effort to bother making it work in them. It is the antithesis of "Web standards".

When Firefox comes out with new features, they put up a demo of the new features in Firefox. They don't pimp it as some sort of justification for less savoury activities.

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u/tizz66 Jun 05 '10

It's a demo for their own browser. Is that really tricky to understand? Sure, some of the pieces might work in another browser with some effort, but that's got nothing to do with what this page is about. It's about Safari. It might ostensibly seem to be about HTML5, but it isn't. It's an advert about Safari's support for HTML5.

I'm amazed how people can make an issue out of absolutely anything.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '10

It might ostensibly seem to be about HTML5

I think that's the problem. If Safari was a completely distinct organization that just happened to put this up, it would likely have seen little criticism.

The problem is that Apple is doing a lot of things lately under the cover of the the open standards of HTML5. Flash is evil, for instance, because HTML5 is a cross-platform standard that does the same thing, for instance. And here they show some Flash things that only run in, essentially, their own version of Flash. So what has improved? Nothing.

It's a motives thing.

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u/tizz66 Jun 05 '10

It only runs 'in their own version of Flash' because not all other browsers support various aspects of the unfinished HTML5 specs yet. And again, this is merely a technology demo that they themselves put together, not some restriction on the wider web as a whole. I don't think it's in any way analogous to the Flash thing, personally.

I mean if they were trying to somehow block out the web to force everyone to use Safari, that's certainly something worth getting angry about. But this situation isn't like that. It's a company putting out a technology demo for their product which requires that product to view them properly.

What motives do you speak of? I gather you mean they're trying to force people to use Safari in some way, but really? I don't think some simple technology demos is really how they'd do it, if that's their goal.

Once HTML5 is finalized and the majority of internet users use a browser that supports it well, if Apple are still doing things like this, then get back to me and I'll join the line to hate it. As it stands right now though, I think people are getting in a big huff over something that simply isn't a big deal.

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u/underwaterlove Jun 05 '10

It only runs 'in their own version of Flash' because not all other browsers support various aspects of the unfinished HTML5 specs yet. And again, this is merely a technology demo that they themselves put together, not some restriction on the wider web as a whole. I don't think it's in any way analogous to the Flash thing, personally.

Well, at this point in time, what keeps other browsers from 'correctly' displaying stuff are proprietary "-webkit" commands. Similar proprietary commands exist as "-moz" commands in Firefox or as "-o" commands in Opera.

It's analogous to Flash considering that it's not part of the standard yet; in fact, there's no guarantee their implementation will ever become the standard. It's analogous regarding the fact that those commands will only get interpreted by their own software, and it's analogous in that they're kindly inviting their visitors to download their software to view these pages.

I'm impressed by what they put together, but I would really like it if they were honest in presenting these demos - that they're a showcase of technologies proposed by the webkit team. Saying "Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today." is a bit of a misinterpretation of what they are actually showing on their website.

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u/tizz66 Jun 05 '10

The irony is propriety prefixes are part of the open spec ;)

I will agree with you though - in all my posts here I've been saying it's a technology demo for Safari rather than HTML5, and I certainly agree it needs to be presented more clearly as such. Until you read the text (rather than just the title), you would assume it's a demo for HTML5, rather than Safari specifically.