Santa-pede challenge: conclusion (Hackaday.com)

At the end of October, we announced the purchase, pause, series generate kick off with "Santa-pede challenge."  The objective was to get your hands on one of those annoying dancing santas, it tear, and then use its parts to build something that works. We obtained our hands on some cool and same price received [Phillip Torrone] a judge of the guest. Join us after the break to see what we are up to with and may have a few laughs.

So, as you can see in the video, this competition has been a complete failure. We get a single entry. I've quickly discarded this terribly lame attempt in about 30 minutes. I am going to show some pictures of what I did, just for fun. There really are technically "walking" so far as it strangely scoots across your desk making you think about your life decisions.

Here is the beginning of the disassembly. Nothing surprising here. You can see that its half less is a piece of solid plastic (step joints or motorized).

Here are basic breakdown of what I did. I cut feet, radiation servo that his hat to flip back and forth and fade things leg room. There is a thread that went into the arms of Santa Claus. It was too thin and flexible to be useful for a large part of something that I simply thrown in the dustbin of parts.

I couldn't find the attachment to my flame propane, so I was using some tactics quite dubious. I would not recommend water heater for your flexible plastic for most projects. It do the job well.  After putting this piece, all I had to make a tweak "legs" newly created until he himself pulled forward. Its pretty pathetic, I know. It should be the entrance to joke that everyone else seems to good.

What we would like to have ideas. What ideas competition you? What you would compete in? Can what element you think of that has tons of potential hacking for a variety of skill levels?

The challenge with HTML5 - in images (Weblogs @ ASP.NET)

I love working with Web technologies and look forward to new features HTML5 poised ultimately at the table (which can be used today). After being the battle of the layer at the time by the div versus IE4 and Netscape 4 I think that we are directed on this road reconstituted to browsers implement features differently. I spent a lot of research time and playing around HTML5 examples and features (mainly because we are already witnessing the demand for training on HTML5) and there are many great things there that will truly revolutionize web applications we know. However, just browsers did it again and many people outside of the development world does really feel a need to update their browser if it works reasonably well, Mum and dad come to mind) so that there will be some time.

There is a nice http://www.HTML5Test.com test site through various features of HTML5 and notes how even though they are supported. They test for everything and are very clear on this subject on the site:

"HTML5 test result is only an indication of how your browser supports standard and related upcoming HTML5 specifications." It does not attempt to test all the new features offered by HTML5 or trying to test the functionality of each feature it does not detect. Despite these shortcomings, we hope to quantify the level of support to users and web developers will get an idea of how hard browser manufacturers are working on the improvement of their browsers and the web as a platform for development.

The score is calculated by testing for the many new features of HTML5. Each feature is worth one or more points. Apart from the main specification HTML5 and other specifications established W3C HTML Working Group, this test also provides points for support related projects and specifications. Some of these specifications were originally part of the HTML5, but are now developed by other W3C working groups. WebGL is also part of this test despite do not in development by the W3C, because it extends element HTML5 canvas with a 3d context.

The test also gives points bonus for supporting audio codecs and video and SVG or MathML incorporation in a simple HTML document. These tests do count towards the total score because HTML5 specifies audio not required nor video codec. Also SVG and MathML are not required by HTML5, the specification States only to the rules for how this content must be nested inside a single HTML file.

Please note that put to the test specifications are still in development and may change prior to receive an official status. In the future new tests are added for parts of the specification which are currently still missing. The maximum number of points that can be marked is 300 at the moment, but it is a moving target. »

It looks like their tests have not been updated since June, but figures are quite stressful as a developer because it means I am going to do a lot of browser sniffing to assume that a particular feature is available for use. That very different step of what we do today as many browser sniffing say you? I would have to disagree, because HTML5 need to a whole new level. In today's world, we have libraries such as jQuery (my personal favorite), prototype, script.aculo.us, YUI Library MooTools, script etc that handle the heavy lifting for us. Until these libraries manage all HTML5 key features available it will be a challenge. Some features like tables are fairly well supported in most major while other features such as audio and video are hit browsers or fail depending on what codec you want to use. Run the tests yourself to see what goes and what fails for different browsers. You can also view the results of compliance HTML5 test following http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm (a work in progress).

The following table lists scores than HTML5Test site returned for different browsers, that I installed on my desktop and laptop. A specific list to run tests and features supported are given when you access the site. Note that I went ahead and tested the beta version of IE9 and it was almost as good as I expected it, but it is not officially that I expect that number is going to change much.

Am opposed to HTML5 from these tests? Of course not - I'm actually really excited what it offers.  However, I try to be realistic and feel it will definitely add a new level of headaches in the process of developing Web application having been's something like this many years ago. On the reverse, developers who are able to target a specific browser (generally intranet applications) or controlling cross-browser issues will release some fairly soft applications. See http://html5gallery.com/ for a blow to look at some more advanced sites out there that use HTML5. See also Microsoft together to showcase IE9 http://www.beautyoftheweb.com site.