Webkit 3D CSS Transformations
Hey, you can do 3D without Flash (or other runtime) now…though it locks you into Webkit-only browsers. But this might be a good possibility for the iPhone versions of 3D Web interfaces.
http://www.satine.org/archives/2009/07/11/snow-stack-is-here/
http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms/
Seems like HTML/CSS/AJAX is (slowly) catching up to what Flash can do, threatening to eliminate Flash’s advantages and force me to learn something new. Supposedly, even font choices are on the way, though the “demos” I’ve tried to view have crashed my browser. Now if only HTML could — gasp! — break free of the horizontal/vertical grid and rotate elements or align them on angles. Then Flash will truly be dead! And John Gruber will rejoice (that is, until the annoying Flash ads he hates so much utterly fail to disappear…but are merely replaced with CSS/JavaScript animation).
But it’s not as though the Flash platform is standing still. It’s long been able to do these things that “traditional” web folk are just now beginning to play with. New capabilities (like PixelBender and Text Columns) are continually being developed And it’s still a better environment to design/develop in (there’s a reason I refer to the Other Web as “Hate-ch TML”). And HTML still and always will rely on a browser to render, which makes kiosks and other outside-the-web deployments clumsy at best. (A browser in “Kiosk Mode?” Please.)
However, Flash still (still!) has issues with CPU-usage. While there are various ways to develop on Flash to make it behave, just image how much better Flash could be/perform if it tapped into the GPU like these demos.* Because, let’s be honest here, once you start animating in realtime, especially in 3D space, you’re talking about increased processing load. These CSS demos aren’t better or more efficient at it than Flash is, they just do it with the GPU, not the CPU. And not because the creators of the demos are smarter/better than Flash developers, but because Webkit itself on the iPhone/Mac offloads to the GPU.
*It might even get accepted on the iPhone.