I'm not sure why we're so worried about speeds anyway - we're only talking milliseconds in the difference.
Exactly... and that would be the cumulative time. And if we are talking about just a few bloody tweens, I hardly see how somebody could prefer flash. (which wouldn't be faster anyway*)
There are several key points to summarize.
-Javascript is a plain-text language that has to be interpreted by the browser.
-Veltas, at least, thinks that there should be some sort of "Binary code" that is "W3C approved" (whatever that means) for use on the web at large.
-But the reason we don't do that, is that Binary Blobs are inherently unsafe. What is it, anyway? Some sort of byte code? machine code? Just saying "Binary standard" was a dreadfully vague thing to say. Bitmap files are a "Binary standard" but I don't see them as being very useful for animation.
-Currently, the security issues are constrained by the browser's javascript interpreter. This would simply move that to a "new" interpreter for this Binary blob (or remove security and platform independence altogether if it was just a blob of machine code that could be arbitrarily run by a browser, Web-based ActiveX All over again... but W3C approved!) And of course the browser would still need a javascript interpreter anyway, so all this would do is multiply the attack surface- for no real gain whatsoever.
*Allow me to explain why Flash will always universally be slower than javascript,CSS/HTML:
First, it's always a plugin. That means it always has to be loaded, for any Flash-based content to be viewed. various implementations of the plugin could easily change behaviour. Also, most browser plugin architectures on most windowed desktops have to create a Child window for it. This has several ramifications- first, it means that scrolling the page will require more work by the browser to properly clip the flash video being shown (otherwise it would appear atop other controls). You can already see this as a frequent symptom with Flash video- "native" HTML content, without ridiculous and sometimes browser-specific hacks, appears on top of everything else, simply by virtue of it using a window handle (on windows, or equivalent on other systems) and being a full-fledged OS managed Window, whereas the rest of the content is rendered as part of a larger frame. HTML5 would put those rendered elements as part of the rendered frame, making their actions, responses, and general interactions scriptable using javascript. And, by eliminating a Machine-Language binary from the browser, you've eliminated the biggest attack surface present in browsers for over a decade. Is it slower? well, maybe. But you know what? There is no point being minutely faster if it's inherently insecure. And I repeat, Adobe Flash is the primary reason that browsers now sandbox plugins.
