Python - Web Display Technology

[Heiko Wundram]

Am Donnerstag 18 Mai 2006 16:09 schrieb SamFeltus:
> I guess there isn't much to understand.

Sure, there's a lot to understand here. What I guess you can't come to terms 
with is the fact that the web (hell, the whole Internet) isn't designed for 
Windows personal computers only, but for a whole range of computer systems 
which need to interoperate. For that, you need standards. And: Flash isn't 
one, and will never become one. Simply, because it's full of bad design 
decisions, and because the company that has the "power" over Flash doesn't 
want to make it an open standard. At least I don't see that happen any time 
soon.

> If you are satisfied with a 
> text based, static image web, that is light on artistic possabilities,
> all that HTML stuff is acceptable.

Are you actually familiar with what you can do with JavaScript and HTML/CSS? 
CSS is pretty powerful. Hell, it's very powerful, even. And: why do I need 
animated graphics to convey _information_ to a user? I don't surf the web to 
have the feeling of walking through an art gallery, but rather surf the web 
to gather information I need for my daily life. And: HTML is designed for 
that explicitly. CSS too (as in proper presentation of the content you're 
trying to convey to the user). And even JavaScript is designed to deal with 
_content_, not with pretty but meaningless graphical imagery.

I'm not saying that graphics can't convey meaning. But: the tools to deal with 
images are sufficiently advanced in HTML and CSS that I can display any kind 
of graphic imagery I need to convey the information to the user.

> Perhaps the HTML/JS group will even 
> get off their rear ends and bring some decent cross platform graphics
> capabilities to the web one decade?  Perhaps even bring some 90's style
> graphics to the browser one decade?

Same as before: do you actually know what the HTML group (well, the W3C) is 
doing? They are a very active group, have designed an open format for vector 
graphics (SVG, which has been referenced here before), and actually have the 
guts to stand up to MickeySoft and their lackeys to keep the format open, and 
to keep development of further extensions open.

This is technological advancement at work. Not some company like Macromedia 
trying to design a proprietary, insufficiently engineered format, that's just 
there so that people who think they need to burry the information they are 
trying to convey to the user in graphic imagery so that noone will notice 
that there's no actual content in what they are trying to tell you.

--- Heiko.