Color Cycling in HTML5 (also, pretty old-school game artwork)

242 on 29/7/2010 at 15:40

Color cycling should be css thing, not html.

ZylonBane on 29/7/2010 at 16:41

Color cycling is content, not presentation.

SubJeff on 29/7/2010 at 17:13

Hmmm. Depends. I usually set my colours, backgrounds, boxes, etc, in my css style sheets. But since the "content" of these demos is graphics in this case I'd rank it as content.

Al_B on 29/7/2010 at 18:07

I personally view the colour cycling as "behaviour". Since the colour cycling can be controlled to stop, start, reverse, etc. at will it's behaviour that's imposed upon the content to display in a particular way.

An animated gif doing something similar, however, I'd class as content since the behaviour is defined by the object (i.e. the image) itself and not by how it is controlled by the web page and associated scripts.

Phatose on 29/7/2010 at 19:57

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

If you are prepared to hack it in you can do a massive amount with HTML4, CSS and Ajax, yes.

I think the point is that with HTML5 you can do this in a much simpler fashion. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Probably. And I'll eat my hat if this isn't related to Apple's big anti-flash push. Still, even the HTML4 method is simple compared to the server code to output the individual pixels. And I really wish people would let the spec get finished before they would start pushing it. It's already annoying that using it is going to mean doing whatever it does in HTML4/Flash as a fall back for a couple of years without it being pushed.

As for whether it's content or presentation....meh. Doesn't really matter. As far as HTML goes, the separation between the two is a theoretical anyway. Achieving a certain presentation always ends up requiring a certain document structure.

Al_B on 29/7/2010 at 20:54

Quote Posted by Phatose

As far as HTML goes, the separation between the two is a theoretical anyway.

Sorry, but it's not. For someone with working sight then yes, it doesn't make much difference how the information is laid out on the screen because it's easy to skip straight to the parts that are important. Whether things are structured with HTML tables, divs, laid out with CSS, etc. - the end result is that the information is presented as a two dimensional page which we can pick and choose from.

However, if you work with people who have little or no sight who have to rely on screen and page readers then it's a completely different situation. Yes, things are better than they once were but it's still a one dimensional delivery of information and separation of content and structure is very important.

Phatose on 29/7/2010 at 21:50

I don't think you're following me - I'm not claiming that separation of content and structure aren't good ideas. I'm claiming that the html/css/js combo we've got fails to do it.

Al_B on 29/7/2010 at 21:58

I'm not disagreeing that the situation isn't perfect (or even close to it). I took issue with the "meh. Doesn't really matter" attitude from your post. You're right that this isn't something that should be hailed as something new and wonderful that couldn't be done before - but lets not get this confused with best practice that has been built up over the last decade.

Phatose on 29/7/2010 at 22:26

Fair enough.

Yakoob on 29/7/2010 at 22:55

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

Color cycling is content, not presentation.

Actually, it's the opposite. Cycling is switching the palette out, which defines how each color code in the picture is displayed. It doesn't modify the actual image (the "content") just how each pixel is colored ("presentation").