Promote ff3.5 & OpenWeb technologies - the message (from my experience in Stuttgart)
Paul Rouget
I'm just back from Germany where I gave a talk about OpenWeb technologies and
Firefox 3.5.
I was writing a kind of "recipe" for my OpenWeb talks and thought that would be
nice to share it with you.
It's not a "HOWTO", I'm sure the message can be improved a lot. I'm maybe wrong
somewhere, there's maybe some errors, or some points missing or useless.
So please, feel free to share your thoughts and comments.
Here is the message: [1].
Some unsorted comments:
* know your audience, are you sure that everybody can understand what you're going to
talk about?
* be impressive, show demos (50% talk, 50% demos)
* show the source code
* don't blame Flash (they've made some cool things for the web)
* don't blame IE if you don't know it enough (yes, IE 8 has some nice openweb
features)
* don't talk about unrelated things (you are there to talk about Firefox and the
OpenWeb, stay focused)
* Give an example for each feature you are talking about (for example, "offline"
means cache+events+storage, but it's easier to understand if you say that you
can write a webmail which works in a plane - you can read you "favorite" message
and write a new message)
* Know the features implemented in Webkit/Opera/IE
Feedbacks:
People asked me a *lot* of questions (that's a good sign):
* People are really impressed. The demos are definitively a good way to prove
that OpenWeb technologies are serious things
* The demos are useless. It's just a showcase. But people have their own projects,
their own interest, and found themselves smart ways to use these new technologies. A lot of
questions are "Is it possible to ...".
* The inescapable question: "Ok, but does it work with other browsers? What
about the real like?".
My answer: Some of these features can work everywhere, and some almost
work with Opera & Chrome & Safari, and there's some fallback mechanism for IE.
* "What about HD Video?"
My answer: I have no idea (FIXME please)
* "What about the other codecs"
My answer: I've explained the patent issue. "Dirac should be included later (libogg),
and maybe we will delegate the decoding mechanism to the OS"
Am I right?
* "You can do a "right-click -> save as for a video. It's really tricky".
My answer: "It can be. It's the OpenWeb. Create your own value around the video"
But I don't feel comfortable with this question. What would be the right message here?
Errors:
* I gave to many importance to unrelated questions (about the Thunderbird future,
about Google, ...). I lost time here.
* Too late during the talk, I've realised that I was not sure that people had
the needed tech background for the talk. Fortunately, they had.
* Sometimes I couldn't explain why a feature is useful
(for example: foreign object VS. CSS Transform)
* Sometimes, I think that my arguments sound like more "anti-plugin" than
"pro-standards". Be careful here!
* I was using different words for the same thing: "standards / open-standards /
openweb).
[1]:
----------------------------
//this really needs some polishing from a language standpoint, but you get the gist
The web is moving.
The user needs are moving (document, then application and Multimedia).
But, we still use the same languages.
... which are not enough.
Some technologies limits are fixed via non-standards ways.
For example, thanks Flash to have make the video a reality in the Web.
But this is not standards.
Why using standards is important (for me, as a developer):
Hackability,
By default, you can view the source code (ctrl-u), play with it,
and modify the content for you own needs (greasemonkey, stylish, ...)
Portability,
Everybody can implement an engine for standards. You don't have to wait for
some companies to do things for you.
Example, no Flash on mobile, first because we have to wait Adobe.
Compatibility.
Each standard works with other. You can include HTML inside a SVG document. You
can add SVG effects on a HTML document via some CSS rules.
The standards are moving forward, to push the limits further.
The browsers are moving forward, to implement those standards.
10 things you may not know about open standards:
* Offline
* Video/Audio
* Geolocation
* Canvas
* Web Workers
* SVG Filters
* Cross XMLHttpRequest
* CSS Transformation
* SVG Foreign Object
* Font Face
Ok, it's time to prove you that standards rock!
Demo time
// 15 cools demos, mainly from http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/
// Step by step:
// show the video element
// show CSS 3 Transform
// show SVG Filters
// show Canvas
// show Video + CSS 3
// show Video + SVG Filters
// show Video + ... everything
// ...
It's cool, right?
It's your turn, update the web!
----------------------------
Thanks,
-- Paul
Christopher Blizzard
On May 26, 2009, at 2:03 PM, Paul Rouget wrote:
> * "What about the other codecs"
> My answer: I've explained the patent issue. "Dirac should be
> included later (libogg),
> and maybe we will delegate the decoding mechanism to the OS"
> Am I right?
We're working on a backend for gstreamer for mobile to take advantage
of hardware accelerated mpeg4 and also investing in bringing high-
speed theora decoding to certain mobile DSP chips. But for desktop
machines we don't plan to support platform-specific codecs at this time.
--Chris
Paul Rouget
>
> On May 26, 2009, at 2:03 PM, Paul Rouget wrote:
>
>> tricky".
>> My answer: "It can be. It's the OpenWeb. Create your own value
>> around the video"
>> But I don't feel comfortable with this question. What would be the
>> right message here?
>
You have a direct access to the video file.
That means too things:
* the user can download the video (right click, save as)
* your content can be used in another website without any reference of your
website and without your ads.
That can break the current model of classic video portal (vimeo, youtube,
dailymotion, ...).
-- Paul
Christopher Blizzard
On May 26, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Paul Rouget wrote:
> You have a direct access to the video file.
>
> That means too things:
> * the user can download the video (right click, save as)
> * your content can be used in another website without any reference
> of your
> website and without your ads.
>
> That can break the current model of classic video portal (vimeo,
> youtube,
> dailymotion, ...).
>
> -- Paul
Yeah, it's true. I mean people have tools to do this for youtube and
other sites so it's not a huge difference there. And people have used
things like Referer to block direct access to images for a long time,
will probably have to do the same with videos.
--Chris