Top all-time · #2016
Cameron Adams
Personal blog · themaninblue.com/writing/perspectivedesignprogramming
Cameron Adams writes The Man in Blue, a personal blog at themaninblue.com about design and programming. Since 2008, 37 different Hacker News readers have linked it 40 times, most often “"HTML5" versus Flash: Animation Benchmarking”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Cameron Adams's blog mainly for its Flash, canvas and SVG animation benchmarks, and for early web experiments such as the 2004 responsive layout post and the CSS sticky footer. Many comments cite it as evidence.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter says to check out the tests on themaninblue.com for a more direct comparison of multimedia technology performance.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The Man in Blue showcases the writing, design, and code of Cameron Adams.
Most-linked posts?
- "HTML5" versus Flash: Animation Benchmarking7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2010-03-25
- /writing/perspective/2010/03/22/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-05-10
- The Handwriting of Typographers4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-07-12
- Build 3D cube scape in javascript with JQuery and record it as movie 3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-05-15
- /experiment/AnimationBenchmark/flash/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-03-30
- Anatomy of a Mashup: Definitive Daft Punk visualised2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-13
- Your webcam can see in 4D2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-02-18
What Hacker News says?
My experience is that your anecdotal experience is flawed and that Flash has a better workflow AND performance AND battery conservation on both desktops and mobile platforms (where it's allowed). http://www.next-gen.biz/news/html5-still-lagging-behind-flas... http://iq12.com/blog/as3-benchmark/ http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-player-101-for-... http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-A…
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
on “Swiffy: convert SWF files to HTML5”Submitted "HTML5" versus Flash: Animation Benchmarking as a story · 52 points
HN discussionI ran the "Man in Blue" tests: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ on my N1 running Flash 10.1 in the default (webkit-based, I assume) browser and was surprised at how much faster Flash was than the HTML or canvas tests: HTML: 6.5 fps Canvas: 13.2 fps SVG: blank page? Flash: 25.3 fps For reference, my eeePC 901 only managed 34 fps in the Flash demo (Chrome 6, Flash 10.1) N1 running demo with…
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
on “Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right”Submitted JS-909 as a story · 44 points
HN discussionCanvas is significantly faster for animation: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ It is also more likely to get faster in the future, as browsers might implement GPU acceleration for it. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for GPU acceleration for SVG, since SVG is not as easily mapped to drawing primitives, like Canvas is.
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
on “Here's why Raphael.js and SVG totally rock.”Submitted "HTML5" versus Flash: Animation Benchmarking as a story · 8 points
HN discussionMaybe it was not called "Responsive layout", but it was a thing since 2004: https://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/09/21/ Flash was as bad as Java Applets. They both tried to solve problems that couldn't be done with standard web technologies at the time. They both needed extra plugins so they could work... while everything else just works in the browsers. They have no place in web development.
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2004/09/21/
on “I can no longer compile my first Flash game”Submitted Anatomy of a Mashup: Definitive Daft Punk visualised as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI agree, but as another poster said, the technology simply isn't there. I haven't tested an iPhone 4S yet, but I did develop some javascript canvas based animations for some time, and the performance was extremely poor. The old benchmark I used was http://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ I believe, and I have yet to see HTML outperform flash on it.
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
on “Adobe confirms: no Flash for Chrome on Android”Submitted The Handwriting of Typographers as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThere is, it is called WidgEditor http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/widgEditor/
Comment linking /experiment/widgEditor/
on “Why Sass And Languages Like It Will Triumph”Submitted SVG blobs. Neat interactive in-browser demo as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI haven't noticed, but I usually stick Firefox (for firebug). Using the Flash version of the animation test posted a few days ago: http://themaninblue.com/experiment/AnimationBenchmark/flash/ I get 27-29fps in Safari 4.04 and 48-50fps in Chrome 5.0 beta (maybe because it's the beta?). Firefox gets around 44fps. [older mac pro - dual dualcore 3GHz, 6GB, 10.6.2]
Comment linking /experiment/AnimationBenchmark/flash/
on “Chrome Dev build comes with Flash 10.1 beta "integrated"”Submitted Your webcam can see in 4D as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttp://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2011/05/12/
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2011/05/12/
on “Anatomy of a Mashup: Definitive Daft Punk visualised”Submitted Build 3D cube scape in javascript with JQuery and record it as movie as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is neat, and reminds me of http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/new.php circa 2010. Very clever uses of css.
Comment linking /experiment/Cubescape/new.php
on “Show HN: A voxel design tool built on the top of CSS transformations”Submitted 4D Video Demo as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere's also Cubescape ( http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/ ) by Cam Adams.
Comment linking /experiment/Cubescape/
on “Voxel, a 3D pixel editor in HTML”Submitted Handwritten Samples from Prominent Typographers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe first example I saw of serving multiple layouts was by Cameron Adams, almost 6 years ago: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/09/21/ He went on to work on as the UX guy on Google Wave in Australia.
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2004/09/21/
on “Responsive Web Design”Submitted Typographers and their handwriting as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI love this technique, though its been around for a while. This is where I first saw it: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2005/08/29/
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2005/08/29/
on “The CSS Sticky Footer”Submitted Strong culture = less process as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIs this related to this project? http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/new.php Design looks the same.
Comment linking /experiment/Cubescape/new.php
on “Isometric text with CSS3”Submitted This is the handwriting of famous typographers as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI don't understand the essence of this movement, by all standards it is the mobile lobby who should be to blame. Killing Flash is like killing the Concorde Airplane, it just means it is too advanced for its time. Everyone who knows anything about Flash and HTML5 knows that in terms of CPU resources HTML5 is still far far far FAR behind on what the Flash plugin can do... yes, even now. HTML5: http://themaninblue.com/…
Comment linking /experiment/AnimationBenchmark/flash/
on “Movement to get rid of Adobe Flash started 3 years ago. Flash is still alive”Submitted Now, that's a CSS3 demo: CSS3 Dodecahedron as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCould you point some benchmark actually showing canvas performing at tiny fraction of Flash's speed? Considering that they both are ECMAScript-based and Firefox got even some code from Adobe for their JS engine, I'd imagine that the performance difference wouldn't be that great. I found one (micro)benchmark[1], and in my quick unscientific tests, canvas-version performed quite well compared to Flash (70 FPS for canv…
Comment linking /writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
on “Raycaster in HTML5 / JavaScript”Submitted WDS2011's impressive opening titles built with web standards as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
