Sites that pushed JavaScript to the limit

http://www.netmagazine.com/features/2011-review-20-sites-pushed-javascript-limit

by riledhel • 15 years ago

187 27 15 years ago

I think that "top n" lists of things might be the 2011 web cliche of the year, but there was one gem on there that was worth the view. Check out the beercamp link (http://2011.beercamp.com/) - it does something I have never seen before. It hijacks the scroll bar and instead of a y-axis scroll, it zooms towards the center of the screen, pushing the outer elements larger and then off-screen. I just like to see examples like this that make me challenge my expectations of what an interface can be. (Not that I am an interface designer - it would be fascinating to grab a coffee with people that are and hear some other non-obvious ways of letting a viewer steer a web browser)

I'm sure we'd cry bloody murder to see this replace the "top left, scroll down" model, though.

schwabacher• 15 years ago

It looks like that works by having two elements in the body, one, 'wrap', w/ position fixed and covering the screen, covering up another, 'scroll-proxy', with height 5400. They detect scroll on the proxy and use it set css transforms on elements inside 'wrap' to do the zooming effect. It is awesome how smoothly the CSS animations work.

very cool! http://2011.beercamp.com/js/scripts.js?v07

talmand• 15 years ago

That's pretty cool but I can only get it to work on Chrome. Every other browser the website is severely broken for me.

What browser are you viewing this in?

timdoug• 15 years ago

Works for me in Safari.

plq• 15 years ago

works for me in firefox 8 on linux.

bmunro• 15 years ago

For me, it was broken in Chrome. In Firefox 9 it was very laggy.

superasn2• 15 years ago

How is gmail.com missing from this list? Before gmail you could hardly notice any email provider using XMLHTTP requests to load their mail, search, etc.

It just my opinion, but to me it's always gmail which made it a normal-everyday-thing for sites to use Javascript so tightly across browsers. And they keep adding a ton of features like automatic email update (remember the check email buttons?), dragging/sorting contacts, inline chat, etc which may appear seamless but definitely push Javascript to the limit.

ig1• 15 years ago

It predates 2011

superasn2• 15 years ago

well, facebook.com is on the list too.

gulbrandr• 15 years ago

Three.js demos and baroque.me are amazing!

draven• 15 years ago

I stumbled upon three.js demos when looking for Javascript plotting libs yesterday and I couldn't believe the stuff it can do rendering on a canvas. It was a big "I really underestimated Javascript" moment.

pg_bot• 15 years ago

I was surprised to see that http://www.drawastickman.com/ was not on the list.

pefavre• 15 years ago

Sure, this one is amazing.

murloc• 15 years ago

http://repl.it/ should be on this list. I don't think anything on this list comes even close to compiling CPython, Ruby and Lua to JS.

voodootikigod• 15 years ago

Any list like this without http://140byt.es and http://js1k.com/2011-dysentery/ are incomplete IMHO.

gkoberger• 15 years ago

There were some good examples, but most didn't push JS to the limit. About half were merely "cool sites that use JS".

sp332• 15 years ago

Well if they have the Windows Phone demo, they shouldn't forget the Ubuntu demo: http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/

Synaesthesia• 15 years ago

That's really well done. The Windows 7 demo not running on WP7 was a little funny, but hey, I guess they don't have to.

eiji• 15 years ago

I think "Linux in your browser" was the limit in 2011:

http://bellard.org/jslinux/

jbuzbee• 15 years ago

Totally agreed. Emulating an entire x86 CPU, and booting a Linux image over the network in javascript? And it's fast enough to be completely usable? Jaw-dropping achievement.

pkrumins• 15 years ago

It's missing http://www.browserling.com.

romac• 15 years ago

I would also have added http://codecs.ofmlabs.org which features hand-ported MP3 and ALAC decoders.

heyadam• 15 years ago

http://eightbit.me should be on there.

sunsu• 15 years ago

I think it's fairly ridiculous that jQuery Mobile is on the list, but Sencha Touch is not.

MrNibbles• 15 years ago

Agreed. That and Pusher is not built on Node, rather on Event Machine.

kittxkat• 15 years ago

Wow, this list has both some amazing sites but also rather meh-ish sites. And also thanks for the amazing comments, there are some really cool suggestions (as the Ubuntu online demo -- never knew that existed. Thanks!)

Sites that pushed JavaScript to the limit

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