I am planning on working on an interactive application that graphically animates the various sorting algorithms in action. Most of the examples of this kind on the web seems to be using java applets. I was wondering what other software/tools would be well suited to develop an application like this. It may or may not be web-based. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Dinesh
Do you mean like this? http://sorting-algorithms.com I guess flash would be an obvious candidate, but is bulky. That website uses gifs! I personally like it
Flash and Silverlight are well-suited for showing such showing animations. It's should be easier to create a nice animation than with Java.
With recent advancements in client-side web application development technologies, it's pretty easy to make something like that using Javascript and HTML5 features like <canvas>, that most of the browsers already implement. Even if they don't, there are fallback mechanisms, like explorercanvas aimed at Internet Explorer browsers.
And because it takes a simple option of "view source", the code behind the animations is much more accessible than Flash or Java, which would require to provide the source code separately.
Done.
2nd result for Google: sorting algorithms
Related
I've played a great many MMORTS games such as Evony, Dragons of Atlantis and Kingdoms of Camelot. They all have some great features and a great many not so great problems. Simply for my own interest I wanted to try my hand at writing something similar. I don't intend to even try to compete with the big boys but I wanted to write it in a professional and scalable manner as if it was intended for eventual commercial release.
So that's the background that leads into the question. I have been looking at various frameworks and libraries that would be suited to this style of game. However there is such a plethora of options that my head is now spinning. I would like to get some input as to what other people think are the best options. I want to try and write this as a cross-platform / cross-browser webapp that can later be converted to a "Native" app using something like MoSync. I want to stick with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript technology.
Some of the things I am sure I want are:
It must be scalable (ie able to handle a significant number of simultaneous users)
I prefer to work with some sort of MVC framework (I am used to working with Joomla MVC and have been considering backbone.js for this aspect)
I am no JavaScript guru but will most likely want to work with jQuery (mostly in relation to client side views)
I like templates but am completely lost which template system to go with (ie mustache, handlebars, dust etc). I think my choice in this area will ultimately come down to which framework I end up with.
Chat is an important aspect of MMORTS games and I am thinking of using Node.JS and Socket.io (or NowJS) for this.
I have also been looking at Redis for key-value store.
At this stage I have abandoned the idea of using jQuery Mobile as initial tests have caused more headaches than they have solved.
So my front runners are Node.JS for server side JavaScript (possibly with NowJS to implement chat), Redis for key-value store, backbone.js for the MVC framework, mustache (or maybe LinkedIns fork of dust) for templating and Jquery of course.
I would greatly appreciate any input to help me make my final decision on what frameworks and libraries to use.
This is not a framework, but you may find Mozilla's Browser Quest implementation interesting. The whole thing is open source and they use HTML5 Canvas and Node.js (socket.io is a big player here) and it is entirely cross-platform
I'm working with a team on exactly this. Our research and experience suggests that a Node.js backend is definitely a good idea. What to use with Node.js? We've come up with two good possibilities:
Use websockets for communication and a front-end engine like Phaser for your rendering.
Use Isogenic Game Engine for everything.
(http://html5gameengine.com/ may help you to compare the feature-sets of the top HTML5 game engines including the ones I've just mentioned.)
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).
We are deploying some small web apps.
UI design is quite hard if done right, so lacking resources, we are now looking for a simple way to bring the casual user up to speed (with our bad design ;)).
Are there jQuery plugins that could be used to create a demo? (fire events, move dialogs, etc. etc. ?)
Should we use a totally different approach?
I prefer to do mockups using something like balsamiq - that way the customer doesn't think it's further along than it actually is.
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.