Christian Heilmann

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Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Backing up delicious bookmarks

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

OK, it is not the end of the world yet, but a leaked screenshot of the latest Yahoo all-hands shows that delicious has no bright future in the company.

So in order to preserve the years of work I put into this web service of awesome I am backing up my data. There are a few simple ways:

You can then import and sync your bookmarks in your browser of choice or upload them to Google Docs.

As to the future? Who knows?

Indiana Jones maps with HTML5 and Google Maps

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

I am right now in the US for my first week in Mozilla (back to back meetings and lots of discussions and interviews of awesome going on here) and when I got back to the hotel USA had all the Indiana Jones movies playing. Now, I always loved the travel sequences with the moving red line and map and the video of the plane on top (and its copy in Rocket Ranger on C64). As I had my trusty MBA on me I thought I give it a go to re-create the effect in HTML5 - and I did:

You can See the demo online and read the details on the Mozilla hacks blog: Syncing HTML5 video with Google Maps. The source is of course available on GitHub.

I was pretty amazed how easy it is to achieve the effect. Most of playing with HTML5 is simply letting yourself go and have a run for it rather than thinking of how hard it might be.

Now that is a great job offer – anyone for HTML6 guru?

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Just got an invite in LinkedIn full of win:

I’m a IT Head Hunter (10yrs+). My client is a City based (5mins of Liverpool St) Digital Agency (40+ staff). They are seeking a Lead Front End HTML5/6 Dev / Guru – it is not a pure developer but someone to guide them on the Front end and to keep up to date with HTML5/6. They will pay what it takes!

Sod that HTML5 gig at Mozilla then! This is the future.

TTMMHTM: Geo APIs, some cool HTML5 interfaces and Michael Jackson vs. Vuvuzelas

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Things that made me happy this morning:

Talking about HTML5 and gaming in Old Street

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Yesterday I went to the Mozilla Labs Gaming Special evening at the Bar Music Hall in Old Street, London. Around 150 developers, designers, entrepreneurs and project managers showed up despite the cold and it being a Monday so it seems this was a hot topic.

As the first speaker I wanted to lay the groundwork for others to woo the audience with cool technical demos. So what I did was explain why open web technologies are a great idea to build games on.

You can read the slides of the talk on Slideshare:The Why of HTML5 games development or embedded here:

I’ve also recorded the talk and uploaded the audio to archive.org:The why of HTML5 for games development (MP3 and OGG):

download the audio at archive.org

I’ve published my notes on the Mozilla Games Blog. Here’s a digest:

  • Working with components and open technologies allows you to be much more flexible than building monolithic one-off solutions for one provider
  • Yes, native code is more terse and gives you more permissions to access the hardware you work with. The question though is if you really need all these features or if you just want to use them to make the game cooler
  • Simplicity in gameplay doesn’t mean that there is not much complexity going on behind the scenes – the example is the artificial intelligence in Pacman when it comes to the behaviour of the ghosts.
  • Simple games can be incredibly effective – see Canabalt as the example
  • The web has social aspects and sharing built in. If for example Angry Birds were a web based game you could make it much more immersive by allowing people to build their own levels, play against each other and giving each other hints – much like people already do on YouTube now
  • A lot of the challenges we are facing right now with HTML5 games development have already been solved when we had to support low-spec gaming environments like 8 bit computers, handhelds and very slow connectivity speeds
  • Last but not least – HTML5 is a world of openness and you can find an incredible amount of information and solutions for free on the web rather than having to pay for training.

By using HTML5 anyone can be a games developer and land an unexpected success. The games industry in closed environments is much more cut-throat and reliant on immediate commercial success. You could compare it to book publishing vs. self publication of articles.