Andrew Frank

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Andrew Frank
Research VP
5 years at Gartner
30 years IT industry

Andrew Frank specializes in best practices for data-driven marketing, including how organizations can use data to drive sales, loyalty, innovation and other business goals. Andrew also specializes in marketing and advertising technology and business trends …Read Full Bio

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A Message from Google

by Andrew Frank  |  May 22, 2010  |  2 Comments

google-pacman

In case you missed this, Google wants you to know that, even though the official HTML5 standard may be years away, HTML and Javascript today are capable of some pretty sophisticated interactive animation. Apple, Adobe, and Flash developers, take note. In a clever demonstration disguised as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of PacMan, Google coded the game (or a facsimile, anyway) in cross-browser Javascript – which I noted runs just fine on all my Apple i-* devices – and sent a message, which I interpreted as follows:

Adobe: time to give developers a way to convert SWF to Javascript/HTML5. No excuses.

Flash Developers: until Adobe gets to this, better brush up on CSS and Javascript (or find a coder to work with if you’re more of a designer).

Apple: Glad to hear you’re committed to supporting HTML5, because that’s what we plan to use and promote for simple cross-platform interactive apps.

I found this demo pretty distracting, and more than little nostalgic for me: I was a video game designer back in 1980, and I spent quite a while in those days reverse engineering the behaviors of Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, which I’m sorry to say I’m not convinced Google rendered faithfully.

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2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Ambroos Vaes   May 24, 2010 at 2:40 pm

    Ehm… That game has nothing to do with HTML5. It uses only Javascript for the game and Flash for sound. Play it in a browser without Flash and you don’t have sound. Good research!

  • 2 Andrew Frank   May 24, 2010 at 3:02 pm

    Thanks for the comment. I don’t think the lack of sound without Flash invalidates the observation, but to your point about HTML5, I’ve clarified the language to be more precise.