Sometimes the Internet shows you something that defies your tendency to think about things in terms of what’s familiar. I’m not talking about ESPN3.com.
In this case I’m talking about technology and art intersecting in new magic ways that involve you in a personalized experience via HTML5, unique to you. Choreographed windows, real-time compositing, etc., all the bells and bombshells of the latest open web technologies. I don’t even know where to start with this one.
Forget HTML5 vs Flash, load it in Chrome, sit down and don’t touch anything. Do you remember the address of the house where you grew up?
You know, I’m going to be skewered for this, but I’m going to say it. I don’t like this site.
1) What year is this? Why is it suddenly awesome for a site to throw up a sign that tells you a site is “best viewed in X browser”? Wasn’t everyone celebrating the death of those old Netscape / IE banners?
2) I truly hate sites that pop up a million windows all over the place. Even if it’s part of a choreographed music video (that completely destroys your CPU if you’re running in Firefox)
3) Wasn’t the whole selling point of HTML5 supposed to be that HTML is by default friendly to mobile devices? Are you going to be brave enough to load this site up on your smart phone? Does HTML5 also need a warning when it’s not “optimized for mobile?”
Well I’m not going to skewer you, in fact I appreciate your comment.
#1 I also had a memory twinge from the bad old days, regarding the ‘Best viewed in…’ disclaimer! Make it all just work!!!
As to #3, it does seem like the creators of this little ‘experiment’ neglected other (mobile) platforms (and browsers), which again feels tedious as hell in 2010. I’m waiting to see what my friend sees on his iPad when he tries to watch it. It’s been a day though and he hasn’t gotten back to me so maybe that tells us something.
#2: I’ll admit that I got caught up in the strangeness of this little experience, but I liked it as I don’t recall seeing anything quite like it before. That’s a subjective thing of course; it just felt to me like we were watching the beginning of something that’s gonna take us someplace new, and I’m biased toward those kind of experiences.
Please visit again.—T
Have to say that this just doesn’t do anything for me.
Don’t get me wrong it’s nicely choreographed and I am sure that technically this is stunning.
But really how many windows did I have open? Your really telling me this couldn’t be done in one window with Flash? If it had been in one window it would have been a lot lot more impressive.
I know html5 is new etc but that doesn’t mean that it has a get out of jail free card for us having to accept things that have long gone.
Yeah I found it sort of annoying that it had to open so many extra windows, though it was cool how it generated video using data from google maps and street view with a pretty decent frame rate.
It could have been done in one window with visible/hidden divs. It’s an old CSS 2 trick. It would probably fix some of the memory problems too and make it viable for mobile devices. Hopefully the author can fix it so it’s on one page.