I think ports, hacks, and tech projects are fantastic. I’m a believer in experiments and proof of concept. So when I saw the port of Processing to JavaScript, I was impressed. I think this stuff is valuable, even if it’s imperfect.

Processing.js could indeed be useful in some cases, and it’s a testament to developer John Resig’s prowess as a JavaScript guru. But it’s limited by the restrictions of JavaScript. That isn’t a deal-breaker — it just means you need to adjust expectations and use this tool as what it is.

Unfortunately, the word "JavaScript" is magical to a lot of the Web development community in a way that seems to make them lose sight of reality.

Processing.js Aftermath [John Resig blog]

That’s sad. Because if "Java" remains a four-letter word (erm … well, you know what I mean), it really will be a massive blow to the open future of rich client media.

The Reality

Processing in Java is …

• Extensible (you can easily add Java libraries to add features)
• Massively compatible (you need only Java 1.3 or later, which believe it or not is already on the majority of machines — on CDM, we see roughly the same penetration as we do for Flash)
• Fast (significantly faster than JavaScript for processor-intensive operations)
• 3D
• Functional in the browser and as desktop software on every platform
• Compatible with desktop features (hardware support, MIDI, synthesis, audio, video … see the extensible bit)

Processing in JavaScript is …

• Limited to JavaScript’s capabilities — and thus not nearly as extensible
• Massively incompatible (IE7 doesn’t work at all. Firefox 3 is recommended, even though it’s not out yet.)
• Slow, often unstable, and CPU-hungry
• Browser-only
• Loses all desktop functionality (hardware support is significantly less than what you get with Flash)

This is not to say it’s not a good idea, or that it’s not fun to play with. In fact, none of the above restrictions take away from the coolness of John’s project — I’m really glad he did this, and I think it has a lot of potential. But let’s see how the JavaScript-happy blogosphere takes the news…

Boy, there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think how much more productive I could be if every single one of my creative apps ran online.

Wait.

Scratch that. No, I’ve actually never thought that.

Online applications can be fantastic. I’m using one right now. Having Flickr for photos and Vimeo for videos, and so on, can vastly expand the potential of what you can do with media. And I certainly see casual users of those applications preferring online services in some cases. (On the other hand, I also know even a lot of casual photographers who would rather sit in Aperture or Lightroom and tweak their photos than struggle with a Web app — for them, the Web is about uploading and sharing, not editing.)

It’s just really hard to see why pros would need to do everything online. And here’s the fundamental problem: why are we talking about taking applications online rather than taking online to applications? Witness Adobe’s Bruce Chizen making vague predictions about the far-off future — ten years, to be exact. By that point, we might as well start talking about how we’ll all be flooded by global warming and under attack by the Mutant Bug People who have dominated the Earth. But in ten years, says Adobe, their products will be fully online. Why? Uh … haven’t figure that one out yet, evidently.

Believe it or not, people making art with webcams don’t rate very highly on the priority list for big computer companies. (Who would have thought?) On the PC, at least, there’s a thriving market for webcams for video chat, since so few PCs have built-in cameras. Meanwhile, on the Mac, Apple has absolutely zero interest in you using any webcams other than those built into their machines, or, if you’re lucky, one of the FireWire iSights Apple made before Apple discontinued them. (Given the high failure rate I’ve seen on the iSights, that assumes you’re lucky enough not only to have found one, but to have it still working.) Ditto, naturally, third-party manufacturers, since there’s unlikely to be any significant market for their wares — and they’re busy navigating the morass of driver development complexity on PCs.

Long story short: the Creative Labs Live! Optia I raved about in the fall is one of the few choices you’ve got that doesn’t require drivers. It’s USB video class-compliant, though unlike other USB classes, it’s not entirely clear that that’s all that meaningful.

But, for several glorious months, through last week, I was able to keep my Live Optia working perfectly with Processing (and thus QuickTime for Java) and QuickTime (via tools like Jitter). Until today, that is. Now I’ve got two of them, five Macs to test, and — nada. On 10.4.10 / QT 7.2 and 10.4.8 / QT 7.1.3 and 7.2, I get either a black screen or (in QuickTime video capture) garbled video. It looks like the sequence grabber isn’t properly setting the resolution, so pixels are being dumped arbitrarily from the camera … I suspect the other errors I’m seeing are also related. USB video class support is relatively new; it only hit iChat in 10.4.9 and may have reached the OS at the same time — I would know for sure, except documentation from Apple is scant.

I suspect some misbehaved QuickTime update, though I find it especially odd that it fails on multiple machines (all Intel — iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini) with different versions. I’ve tried reinstalling QT, zapping NVRAM (formerly PRAM), the lot. For once, I can’t blame QuickTime for Java, because everything else is broken, too.

Webcams working some of the time under unpredictable circumstances don’t inspire confidence. Suggestions, anyone? Any idea why this is happening? Anyone got a rock-solid solution for Mac webcams that doesn’t spontaneously cease functioning?

Incidentally, Windows isn’t much better; weird driver bugs there can cause fabulous results like an echo-cancellation driver knocking out USB MIDI devices, driver-related blue screens of death, and other goodies.

Maybe I should just start making my own cameras and writing my own drivers. Yeah, that’s it.