And a link to Chrome frame, a retired Google product.
Please use feature detection instead of sniffing the browser agent. My browser (IE11) is perfectly capable and supports HTML5 APIs fine (e.g. Canvas 2D).
i suspect they don't use feature detection because the GWT framework makes it a bit more difficult to do feature detection (its not impossible, but it does work against the "default" way of doing things in GWT).
This looks like a really full-featured and powerful animation tool! The tutorial movie was very impressive.
The gallery[0] has some good looking examples, but they all run very slowly (1fps) in both chrome/firefox on my MBP. Not sure why performance is so poor on my machine.
One thing I couldn't figure out from the site is what their revenue model/pricing plan is. I saw that guest accounts are active for 15 days, but what are the limitations after I sign in?
to edit the project from the projects page you need to click small edit icon just below the project. yeah, I know it's not easy to notice, working on that.
Thanks for the compliments! Not sure about what's causing the fps issues, but we're definitely investigating.
At the moment, there aren't any limitations after you sign in - Animatron is free, and the only difference between a registered account and a guest account is that guests can only create one project (which is only saved for 15 days). Pretty soon we'll be rolling out a few different paid-subscription plans that will offer advanced features and functionality, but there will always be the option for a free account.
Similar issue on the FPS using Firefox 24. It all loads (once I let JS do its thing) and can be interacted with (made a quick little movie of a box dancing around, but its like watching a slideshow. With a few optimizations to speed up interactivity, this would be really cool.
if it's not too private, i'd like to hear about some of the details of the debate you had! What was the arguments against GWT? what was the arguments against pure js?
gwt pros:
- java (excellent tooling, static typing, reliable refactoring)
- code splitting and async loading (although we don't use it as much as we thought we would)
- easy live debugging in devmode (will be gone soon)
- rpc (although we switched to our own)
- same model (java classes) on a client and on a server
but frankly most of it is basically java. we knew that the team will be 5-10 devs at least, we knew that the codebase will be big, so the java is obvious choice.
js pros: language a bit nicer (but it sucks anyway comparing to scala which is our server side :), better performance - no gwt wrappers/layers.
This is very impressive. As someone who has no idea what I'm doing, I was able to make an animation of a circle moving and growing from left to right in 30 seconds without reading the manual or tutorials. This is how user interfaces should be built!
Couple points: I checked it on my mobile earlier, and the landing, although still pretty looking, doesn't scale responsively, having a pretty small HTC, it was kinda tedious to fiddle with scrolling left to right/ and which kinda made me forget about it until I noticed the thread again today.
Anyway I understand that this wouldn't have been your focus, but maybe it will give you a small % boost :)
In any case, really well put together product, and although I will likely never have use for it myself I'm impressed
One other thing: The introduction video is really cute, and I love your original style and branding. But it hardly provided much information about your product imho, other than what I've already got from the text on your main page.
But maybe this is just a designer/programmer style discrepancy.
I am sorry about that. this issue happens only in chrome under linux (which is basically ChromeOS). the good news is that it will be fixed really soon!
Yes, I was wondering what was going on. A vast expanse of white and no actual tools or anything else. I'm using regular Chrome on Linux. I don't even get as much UI as you do! http://imgur.com/bHLKAsv
Nice, yeah let's make a Flash IDE in a browser, which will compile results into a real .swf, which will then play in an HTML5-based Flash player on any device. Maybe support of a few things like rtmfp protocol will be tricky, but who cares.
I am serious about this. A lot of good stuff is written for Actionscript, all sorts of libraries etc., years worth of good work of many good people. It's just not fair to trash all that effort just because Apple has a tooth on Adobe.
Even without rtmfp, or even without rtmp, that will be very valuable.
supporting actionscript by itself without implementing the whole flash model does not make much sense. most of the existing actionscript code use it one way or another.
and implementing flash model is a very serious undertaking.
Someone has to do it, anyways, and you guys are closer to there than anyone else out here. Flash is great but it is stuck between egos of business guys.
Just want to say, from the front page your site looks pretty cool, but I didn't actually get to try the tool because your tool, unlike animatron would require typing before getting to play around with it. If animatron had required an account first there's a 0% chance I would have spent the 25 minutes I did playing around with it.
we do not support multiple monitors, but animatron supports collaborative editing which means you can open the same project in several browser windows on 2-3 monitors and edit them at the same time, i.e. have different parts of the project open etc.
and of course you can send a link to your friend and you can both edit the same project and see each other changes.
Great - all the tools that come close to this have been flash and don't run easily on phones and tablets. I noticed it crashed mobile safari for me. Do you have plans to make this workable for non-desktop users?
Looks interesting but an authoring tool is not something I want to run "in the cloud" and be dependant on a connection and a service that may or may not be there when I need it.
Wouldn't invest much time in a tool that is not available for download, to be honest.
If you don't mind me asking, what country are you from?
I ask because I find this strange, since here in the San Francisco bay area, I find it difficult to get 'away' from an internet connection. They're everywhere I go, whether I want it or not. I carry an internet connection on my smartphone and can tether to it whenever I need it. The only time I can't get an internet connection is when I'm in the middle of the woods, and that's just because I'm not paying for AT&T.
Having authoring tools "in the cloud" is the premise for many great services such as Google Apps, Microsoft Office apps, Facebook, Wordpress, etc... Being able to do something as cool as HTML5 authoring without having to invest hundreds of dollars in some Adobe product has great value to many... especially students or young poor people that want to learn and don't want to pirate software to do it.
Data plan is still relatively expensive in the U.S. $30 for 3GB from AT&T. Can you trust the security of free wifi hotspot? What if you want to do work on a bus or on a train ride? What if your home network is down? A lot of people work remotely from home and they rely on home connection. If this has localstorage and sync that'd be nice. Does it?
And this is why anyone sane who doesn't live there hates your smug filter bubble, and why Android is still a pain to use once you go out of signal range.
Eh, I live in independence, Missouri (Pop. 117,000) and I too, "can hardly get away from the internet". It would certainly be available anywhere I wanted to use something like this, e.g. home, coffee shop, library, co-working space, etc... I guess if I was at the park or on a plane, it wouldn't work.
there are two ways to address it. first of all we will add offline support at some point, so you can work offline and when you are online it will sync itself with the cloud.
another possibility we are considering is just to wrap it up into multiplatform desktop app which is technologically not is difficult to do these days.
142 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] threadPlease use feature detection instead of sniffing the browser agent. My browser (IE11) is perfectly capable and supports HTML5 APIs fine (e.g. Canvas 2D).
but we are really sad devmode will be gone really soon :(
The gallery[0] has some good looking examples, but they all run very slowly (1fps) in both chrome/firefox on my MBP. Not sure why performance is so poor on my machine.
One thing I couldn't figure out from the site is what their revenue model/pricing plan is. I saw that guest accounts are active for 15 days, but what are the limitations after I sign in?
[0] http://www.animatron.com/explore#staff-picks
It then redirected me to http://editor.animatron.com/#p=b5da1953a67b29f8d0e00c0c which loaded the identical project (this project seems to no longer exist).
I clicked "embed" again and it showed me the url http://player.animatron.com/go?ea0713ae8d4c50d3a8589aa392c39...
I can see the project in my projects page, but I can't figure out how to edit it from there.
http://glui.me/?i=h8i4rdkzwjnuojf/2014-03-07_at_11.37_AM_2x....
At the moment, there aren't any limitations after you sign in - Animatron is free, and the only difference between a registered account and a guest account is that guests can only create one project (which is only saved for 15 days). Pretty soon we'll be rolling out a few different paid-subscription plans that will offer advanced features and functionality, but there will always be the option for a free account.
Is there a limit to how long the animations can be
gwt pros: - java (excellent tooling, static typing, reliable refactoring) - code splitting and async loading (although we don't use it as much as we thought we would) - easy live debugging in devmode (will be gone soon) - rpc (although we switched to our own) - same model (java classes) on a client and on a server
but frankly most of it is basically java. we knew that the team will be 5-10 devs at least, we knew that the codebase will be big, so the java is obvious choice.
js pros: language a bit nicer (but it sucks anyway comparing to scala which is our server side :), better performance - no gwt wrappers/layers.
The landing page is beautiful and the video catching, registration is easy and the tutorial is great, color me impressed.
Couple points: I checked it on my mobile earlier, and the landing, although still pretty looking, doesn't scale responsively, having a pretty small HTC, it was kinda tedious to fiddle with scrolling left to right/ and which kinda made me forget about it until I noticed the thread again today. Anyway I understand that this wouldn't have been your focus, but maybe it will give you a small % boost :)
In any case, really well put together product, and although I will likely never have use for it myself I'm impressed
One other thing: The introduction video is really cute, and I love your original style and branding. But it hardly provided much information about your product imho, other than what I've already got from the text on your main page.
But maybe this is just a designer/programmer style discrepancy.
http://i.imgur.com/yuJzv6p.png
While i love canvas, it's downright impossible for non-programmers to do any of the footwork that is needed to create even the most basic animation.
i will certainly keep an eye on this project, great job
but people do all kinds of crazy stuff these days, like running linux in a browser under x86 emulator written in js.
so animatron tech is very very conservative from that perspective :)
Even without rtmfp, or even without rtmp, that will be very valuable.
anyway for now our plans in terms of flash do not go beyond exporting to swf.
and implementing flash model is a very serious undertaking.
BTW I wonder if it is worthwhile to try and hook up an interconnect between this and our 3D modeler/animator/renderer: http://clara.io
it would be interesting to try to connect the tools somehow. plz write me to skavish at animatron.com
Or docking (windows in windows, with maximizing)?
and of course you can send a link to your friend and you can both edit the same project and see each other changes.
Wouldn't invest much time in a tool that is not available for download, to be honest.
Nevertheless it looks well done.
If you don't mind me asking, what country are you from?
I ask because I find this strange, since here in the San Francisco bay area, I find it difficult to get 'away' from an internet connection. They're everywhere I go, whether I want it or not. I carry an internet connection on my smartphone and can tether to it whenever I need it. The only time I can't get an internet connection is when I'm in the middle of the woods, and that's just because I'm not paying for AT&T.
Having authoring tools "in the cloud" is the premise for many great services such as Google Apps, Microsoft Office apps, Facebook, Wordpress, etc... Being able to do something as cool as HTML5 authoring without having to invest hundreds of dollars in some Adobe product has great value to many... especially students or young poor people that want to learn and don't want to pirate software to do it.
I develop on the go a lot, so I do find myself very often with either faulty connections or no connection at all.
there are two ways to address it. first of all we will add offline support at some point, so you can work offline and when you are online it will sync itself with the cloud.
another possibility we are considering is just to wrap it up into multiplatform desktop app which is technologically not is difficult to do these days.