I’ve said on here before that one of the things some developers might not like about HTML5 is that others can easily see the code of anything you make. But at the same time, for anyone trying to learn it’s as easy as right-click > view source. I love to take a look at code and figure out what does what and that’s one of the great benefits of technology like HTML5/CSS/JavaScript. It’s all there in the open, so if you see something that interests you, you can very easily take a peak.
I’ve seen some amazing things done with Flash and while I would love to know how they did it, you need a decompiler to take a look at the code and all the assets. Some decompilers will rename library items and variables so it’s a lot harder to figure out what does what. Plus, in some ways, I’ve always felt there was an ethical question when it comes to decompling .swf files.
I love going to a site, like Mr. Doob’s, and being able to see the code so easily. It might be one of the reason’s that I’ve spent so much time lately messing around with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.
I recently reader Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and one of the main themes throughout the book was the Hacker Ethic, something that said make your hardware or software open source so that others could see what you’ve done and improve it which will make things better for everyone. If HTML5 takes off like it has the potential too, this idea will come back whether developers want it to or not.
Hopefully, developers out there take advantage of this and learn from what others have done. One of the things that gave Flash some bad press was developers making bloated and slow running programs. If a developer has the ability to look at someone else’s organized and efficent code, it might make them a better programmer and users will get better and smoother running programs.
Now if we can just get rid of the phases like “Runs best in Webkit” the future of the web is going to be wide open.