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I'm working on a javascript profiler for Mozilla Firefox, that would let me obtain all available information about the execution of the script on the page (DOM object calls, events, calls to functions like Math.random(), document and navigator object calls, as well as code's own execution tree with arguments etc etc).
Currently, I think that the best way to implement this sort of profiler is by modifying Firefoxe's own source code.
One way to go about it is to find all implementations for corresponding method calls and add profiler log calls there. But there are 2 problems with this approach:
The methods and objects are widely scattered, and I'm not really familiar with the source code at this moment. Tracking down all the functions and making sure that the profiler works as intended will take A LOT of time
When created in this way, the profiler is going to be difficult to maintain when Firefox source code evolves with time.
So I was wondering, if there is a single class/a small group of key classes in firefox source, that could be modified to allow me to collect the information I want? Or is there a better way of doing what I need to do?
The latest Aurora release of Firefox has a basic profiler built into its developer tools, or you can download a more advanced interface from the Mozilla Add-ons site which works with Firefox 16 or later.
I have been following the usage of JavaScript for the past few years, and with the release of extremely fast scripting engines (V8, SquirrelFish Extrene, TraceMonkey, etc.) the possibilities of JavaScript have increased dramatically. However, the usage share of Internet Explorer coupled with it's total lack of support for recent standards makes me want to drop a bomb on Microsoft's HQ, as it creates a huge amount of problems for any website.
The game will need to be pretty dynamic client-side, with animations and other eye-candy things, but not a full-blown game like those that run directly in the OS using DirectX or OpenGL. However, this might be a little stretch for JavaScript and will certainly feel extremely slow in Internet Explorer (given that the current IE engine can be hundreds of times slower than SFX; gotta see what IE9 will bring), would it be better to just do the whole thing in Flash? I know this means requiring the plug-in AND I have no experience whatsoever with Flash (other than browsing YouTube :P). It also means I can't just output directly from PHP, I would have to use XML or some other format to pass data to it (JSON is directly integrated in JS and PHP can deal with it easily).
Another idea would be to provide an alternative interface just for IE, though I don't know how (ActiveX maybe? or with Flash, then why not just provide it to all browsers) or totally not supporting it and requiring the use of other browsers, although this is plain stupid from a business perspective.
So here am I, wondering what approach to take and thus asking for your advice. How should I build the client-side? AJAX in all browsers, Flash in all browsers or a mix (AJAX for "modern" browsers and something else for the "grandpa": IE).
I recommend a plug-in platform (Flash, Silverlight, or Java) over AJAX. Having a clean layer of abstraction between your game and the client's browser is a big advantage. In any non-trivial AJAX game look forward to endless corner-cases where browsers differ in performance or implementation.
Personally, I think Flash is easy to learn if you are coming from AJAX experience. Flash is currently the most widely installed and proven plug-in for browser games. However, Silverlight and Java are both building momentum. Also, the Unity engine has become a popular choice for commercial browser games.
I think you shouldn't leave Java out of the equation. It's a powerful, fast language, and with Java applets, you can do almost anything. If you want hardware-accelerated graphics via OpenGL, JOGL can do it, even in an applet.
On the other hand, it might not be right for you. But at this early stage, I think you should evaluate all of your options, and since you have no experience with Flash but sound like you've got a bit of programming experience, you might feel more at-home with Java.
I believe the current answer is Flash game.
Alternatives:
Java Applet: getting less and less common those days and it is not commonly installed as a plugin on many computers.
SilverLight: too new and might vary and change in time. not commonly installed on many computers and it's Microsoft (whom tends to change technology every 2 years ...)
JavaScript / AJAX: Still a new kid on the block, it's on the rise it is true with many nice features, but still lack of good cross browser for IE even IE8, can not play sounds internally, still slower than the others, and you don't know where will it evolves.
Eventually probably the best solution for now is Flash development:
Cross platform. Works fast. Long time already alive and have a lot of support.
I hope this answer will change in the next year. Happy Peasach.
Check out Jmonkey. The "plugin" loads if you have Java on your machine. Once it's cached, the next time the visitor goes to the page, it your game loads very quick. Check out their website for demos and see what I mean: http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/
Oh, I forgot to say, it's a 3D scenegraph Java engine. I just tried it again, and it loaded in linux. Looks they've put in some good work.
Don't do it with javascript in the browser. And Flash really can be a pain just because it's closed source and you don't know if you've made a mistake or found a bug - speaking from experience. I'd never want to make another Flash game again.
How about using RaphaelJs , it is a Javascript library that make dinamyc images using SVG, and for IE, it try to make those images using the IE alternative: VML. Im using it on my own WebGame, but i dont really make complex graphics in it. The most complex thing done on RapahelJs was a heath map (20 * 20 tiles ) with a dinamyc opacity slider. An it work with jquery without any problem or configuration!
Suppose I'm writing a 2d tile based MMORPG.
Furthermore suppose I hate flash.
Lastly, suppose I only need my code to run in the latest safari, latest firefox, and latest chrome.
What are the limits to what I can and can't do? (Are there examples of good game engines that only require a recent web browser)?
Look into HTML5 Canvas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element
The latest versions of the browsers you mention already support it.
Check out the Unity3D engine: http://www.unity3d.com
Cross-browser, cross-platform, although your users would have to download the unity browser plugin...
There's also the Raphaël javascript library...it does a very nice job of abstracting a lot of the heavy lifting you'd have to do otherwise! The memory footprint seems decently light as well (from my small-scale playing around with it anyway).
For something that works for the user, OOBE (without add-ins etc); Javascript is probably the only unified functionality that exists between all browsers.
The browser is surprisingly quite capable (at least Chrome is), this is something that Google Chrome is attempting to promote (see http://www.chromeexperiments.com/). Notice some however, that experiments are often laggy or unworkable in other web browsers.
As for a list of things that are and aren't capable; that would take a fair while to compile.
In regards specifically to a 2D tile based game, I wouldn't say it isn't possible, but it may be quite difficult to create. As mentioned before, most browsers (apart from the stand-out; Google Chrome), suffer from limited resources. Therefore resources wise, it may be difficult to implement and would defiantly require a lot of requirement fore planning.
Java applets are also possible...
You could also move to 3D. While it does require a plug-in (although is being integrated into Chrome), the results are undeniable.
"O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser." http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/. The video is quite amazing actually -- especially the live map editing (e.g. removing sprites).
I was checking out the TIBCO GI the other day and I was impressed.
Has anyone used it extensively?
What are your thoughts?
What drawbacks did you encounter?
Is it suitable for Internet or only Intranet apps?
I appreciate any input you can shed on this.
Yes, I have used it pretty extensively, here are some of my thoughts. Will add to them as the occur.
I don't rate the approach of implementing the IDE in the framework itself (it runs in a browser window). There are many, many quirks and it can lead to a very frustrating experience. I normally develop all of the JS, XML etc in Intellij Idea using the Javascript debug window to run the IDE itself. After working on a file, it has to be reloaded in the IDE, but its still much more efficient.
Using the IDE, an entire application can be layed out relatively quickly.
There is a pretty steep learning curve. The API is extensive and the community forums aren't great when you do run into problems.
Much of the GUI painting is done using inline style attributes, making them difficult to skin and get the overall application looking exactly how you might want. If is for this reason that I think GI is more suited to intranet apps than publicly available ones.
GI uses a 'dual DOM' approach, holding it's own internal representation of each on-screen element. This can make it difficult to fully integrate other frameworks such as JQuery etc.
As RIAD environments go, I think it is awesome. I find that doing things the GI way is an order of two faster than going down the request/response route.
I really like the enforced separation of presentation and business logic.
The JS extensions they put in, like introspective package, interface and class definitions are quite clever and very useful.
I completely agree with mysomic, but:
Unfortunately Tibco GI has a huge disadvantage of it's weight and how slow it runs.
jQuery is much much faster.
Also I run into issues of different behavior of developed UI under IE and firefox.
Lack of documentation.
I agree with u on some point:
Compare JQuery with GI, I think they are not the same level:
Jquery which implement the CSS searchengine , provide the plugin structure
and some util tools, but it is still like component.
GI , which is the enterprise RIA solution, provide the mapping utility , class interface,extends, implement structure, AMP plugin structure, I10N, I18N etc. it is like the composite level. and also it has the GI IDE, that is every cool.
We provide a web application with a frontend completely developed in Adobe Flash. When we chose Flash 6 years ago, we did so for its large number of features for user interaction, like dragging stuff, opening and closing menus, tree navigation elements, popup dialogs etc.
Today it's obvious that AJAX/JS offers roughly the same possibilities and because of the number of frameworks that are readily available, it's very feasible to implement them.
Is there a technical reason one should choose either technology over the other? By "technical", I mean performance, security, portability/compatibility and the like. I don't mean aspects such as the very non-programmer way development is done in Flash or whether it makes sense to switch an app from one to the other.
As I just explained in another question, it seems to me that JS is way ahead in terms of market share and I'm wondering whether we are missing some important point if we stick to Flash.
In addition to what others have said, Flash is constrained in the "rectangle" and cannot be added to a normal html page in an un-obtrusive manner.
#Gulzar I think when more browsers will support the video tag like mozilla 3.1 does we'll see even more adoption of ajax/js over flash.
Adobe Actionscript is a statically typed language, Javascript is dynamically typed. Depending on your point of view, this may be a good thing or a bad thing.
With Javascript/HTML/CSS you're going to be heading into cross-browser compatibility hell, especially if you want to support older browsers. This can be mitigated by the libraries that are available, but it's still a big headache. With Flash, you write the code once and it just works in all browsers.
Even with the libraries available, Flash user controls are simply more advanced than anything you can find in the world of Javascript/HTML. In Javascript, you are not going to find anything that comes close to the simplicity and power of a databound user control that Flash provides.
I don't see how Javascript has more of a "market share" than Flash. Pretty much anyone with a web browser has a Flash plugin installed. I'd be curious to know how many people disable Javascript but have a Flash plugin.
Also keep in mind that you're going to be in for a huge learning curve and lots of development time if you decide to switch your technology base so you'd really better have a good business reason to do it.
This decision also has a lot to do with what your application does and who your install base is.
Edit: I see people have mentioned that the iPhone doesn't have Flash support. I would expect this to change with the install base of the iPhone - Adobe would be crazy not to support it.
Correctly designed AJAX apps are more googleable than Flash
Correctly designed AJAX apps are more easily deep linkable than Flash
AJAX doesn't require a plugin (Flash is pretty ubiquitous, so it's not really a big deal)*
AJAX isn't controlled by a single company the way Flash is
Edited to add:
* Except for the iPhone, as Abdu points out.
JS and Flash both have great presence on the web with overlapping capabilities. One area JS is still lacking is in rendering video.
Flash, used well, allows easy localization and internationalization.
Furthermore, it is much easier to use Flash in an accessible manner; you can feed screen readers the right text, instead of having them iterate over all of the possible form elements.
I think Flash should be limited to online games, videos and animation. Otherwise use html and Ajax. It's a web standard and supported by almost all devices.
AFAIK, the iPhone doesn't support Flash. That's a fast growing segment you're blocking out already. Keep it simple and efficient.
Although flash is pretty ubiquitous on desktop browsers, mobile support is very limited (flash lite? yeah, right). I get really frustrated looking up a restaurant on my phone only to find the entire site is flash based and I can't even get a phone number or address!
One benefit of Flash is that it has a few facilities to help do cross domain type operations safely, which can be helpful. Flash also has (limited) support for some hardware, which is not possible with Javascript.
Personally, I'd try to use as much Ajax as possible before turning to something like Flash. From the UI perspective, it is better in that the controls and basic authoring is a little more developed. The Sound Manager project is a good example of effectively using a small amount of Flash while keeping the remainder in Javascript.
I suspect one of the reasons javascript is becoming more popular is that it's more easy to retrofit into an existing application.
As I can't accept two answers, I'm going to merge Christ Upchurch's and 17 of 26's answers in my own post. I think, these two together pretty much sum up what I wanted to know. Thanks guys!
If you're dealing a lot with polygons, then Flash is still easier to program and debug. With AJAX there are a lot of libraries to handle polygons, but the more libraries your app uses, the slower it gets.