Viewer forecast: Partly Cloudy with a chance of WebGL

Aloha!  My name is Antonio Licon, and I’m a gadget enthusiast and have been a professional Web-geek for over 10 years.  Currently, I am a Senior Software Engineer at Autodesk on the Suites, Web Services and Subscription (SWSS) team. 

As our team attempts to push the envelope with technologies such as HTML5, SVG and WebGL, I would like to share with you some of our experiences, lessons, issues.  I am particularly interested in hearing from others out there working with these same technologies.

For example:  Wouldn’t it be cool if you could view 2d and 3d design files directly in your web browser without a plugin or software download?  Lately, our team has been conducting viewing experiments that would allow you to do just that!

However, developing for consistent cross-browser behavior can be tough for even the most seasoned web-ninja. When you throw in the sketchy implementation of these bleeding-edge specifications, it gets very tricky indeed.

Take SVG for example.  This chart gives you an idea of the landscape:

Browser	supports <img>	supports <embed>	supports inline svg	supports 'background-image'
IE 9	yes	yes	yes	yes
Firefox 3	no	yes; However mouse events are dropped through to the embedded object	yes	no
Firefox 4	yes	yes; However mouse events are dropped through to the embedded object	yes	yes
Chrome 10	some; doesn't support large svgs like our converted dwfs but smaller svgs do work correctly	some; doesn't support large svgs like our converted dwfs but smaller svgs do work correctly	some; doesn't support large svgs like our converted dwfs but smaller svgs do work correctly	yes
Safari 5	yes	yes; However mouse events are dropped through to the embedded object	yes	yes

 

Then you have WebGL.  WebGL is awesome… SO COOL.  So what is up with IE9?  Why are they not on board here?  It’s a shame too, because IE has such a large user base and are doing cool things with SVG.

I have to give kudos to the development team at Google though.  I think they have done a really good job with Chrome.  I am really enjoying their aggressive update strategy.  By the time I am ready to file a bug, they have often already fixed it!

According to Seth Rosenblatt at CNET, Firefox 4 has taken the lead for browser performance.  But generally the difference in performance is negligible.  A  less than 100ms difference between the best and worst performer in the SunSpider 0.9.1 benchmark.

And the performance edge Firefox has may be entirely synthetic.  Try running the Aquarium Demo side by side in both Firefox 4 and Chrome 10 with the same settings.  In my experience Chrome’s performance is perceptibly smoother.

In addition, Firefox may still make you jump through some hoops to enjoy the WebGL experience.  You will either need the latest graphics drivers for your system, or you can try to force-enable WebGL.

I just wish the iPhone, iPad and Android devices all had browsers that were as functional as Chrome is on my desktop.  I will save my rant on that for a future post. 

This is just my “Hello World”… I will be sharing more about our adventures in technology as well as links to some of our tech demos. We are also doing some cool things on viewing for mobile platforms and I can’t wait to share them with you.  Stay tuned!