Famo.us – JavaScript engine and framework (Livestream today)

by beaker52 • 12 years ago

46 24 12 years ago

Kenji3• 12 years ago

"40-60fps on phones, tablets, PCs..." >klicks a button >site doesn't react for 2 minutes >laggy background animation >on i7 2.7GHz Laptop (AC adapter plugged in)

Either I'm missing something, or this is absolutely ridiculous. The performance problem is because of the abstraction level, we're too far away from the metal with DOM/JavaScript. This can't be solved with JavaScript.

adam74• 12 years ago

I'm assuming it compiles to native code on mobile.

BTW, I have a shit computer and the site ran smoothly for me.

Kenji3• 12 years ago

It displays a completely different site on chrome than on firefox for some reason...

notduncansmith2• 12 years ago

I don't think anything compiles to native code, from what I understand it's pure CSS3 (which, in the way they're using it, is rendered via the GPU).

Edit: it appears they have a native iOS version, but it's still buttery smooth in a mobile browser.

notduncansmith2• 12 years ago

I would try a hard refresh, it's pretty snappy for me (stock Macbook Air and iPhone 5). It's always been really impressively performant, ever since I heard about it some months ago.

chalgo• 12 years ago

Unusable on Chrome under Ubuntu on an 8 core xeon with 32GB of ram.

KhalPanda• 12 years ago

Chrome, Ubuntu, crap laptop. Snappy load and smooth animations, here...

wingerlang• 12 years ago

Reading this comment made me think the demo would be laggy on my already slow-almost-burning old 2008 Macbook (not pro). But it was very smooth here.

jbeja• 12 years ago

2GB, ADM Dual-Core C60, 1.333GH, on Linux, Chrome browser, no lag and smooth.

nawitus2• 12 years ago

JavaScript compiles to native code.

Kenji3• 12 years ago

Yes, I'm aware of that, but at soon as you interact with the DOM, a canvas, etc, you reintroduce all the overhead that you wanted to circumvent with compilation. And JavaScript without DOM interaction is rarely useful in a browser. For node.js, on the other hand, it sure is awesome. I didn't want to imply that JavaScript itself is necessarily slow, it isn't.

edwinvdgraaf• 12 years ago

Some more information: https://docs.google.com/a/famo.us/document/d/1aC461kM855a66S...

and https://docs.google.com/a/famo.us/document/d/1DE_26fh9nYbU2x...

Source: https://twitter.com/befamous

beaker52• 12 years ago

Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQMVjCVZBo

dreen3• 12 years ago

I like how the example idea is ripped off three.js: http://threejs.org/examples/#css3d_periodictable ;p

But seriously, this doesn't look very release-ready.

itp2• 12 years ago

If you visit your own link and then click on the "info" link at the top, you'll be taken to a G+ post explaining that the three.js periodic table demo was an attempt to recreate something the author had seen.

Written in famo.us.

dreen3• 12 years ago

You're right, that's interesting.

madoublet• 12 years ago

I really hope this is successful. But to me, animation performance is really a small problem in the larger problem of deploying HTML as an app. Sure, having something that performs on par with native apps is great. But, both Ionic and WinJS seem to be tackling that problem right now. And, both don't use some esoteric 3D rendering engine and are fully compliant with Angular or anything else you want to use.

The bigger problem, in my mind at least, is gaining full access to the same APIs that are available to native DEVs. Cordova does a pretty good job, but if you go off their core APIs then you are stuck trying to build or figure out plugins, which is less than ideal.

Ronsenshi• 12 years ago

Would be nice if "About" page worked - just to clear some stuff about framework.

Also, something's not quite right with menu background on Android (Chrome) disappears after a bit. Although, if you click on "menu" button, it's visible, but only until you close it.

spyder• 12 years ago

List of demos: http://demo.famo.us/

Famo.us – JavaScript engine and framework (Livestream today)

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