News
19 July 2012
Compass360 launches 'new old' website using HTML5
TORONTO—Compass360, a design/ad firm in Toronto, just spent a couple of months recreating its own website. And it looks exactly the same.
The Compass360 website has relaunched, but while it originally launched four years ago as a Flash website, this time it's entirely in HTML5 and new web technologies.
"For us, this overhaul is a case study in a new generation of interaction and user engagement on the web — it looks, feels and even moves exactly like our previous website, but is now completely forward-looking," said Scott Wise, 360's digital director, who coded the new site between client projects.
A "state of the union" address about the new site explains it is "responsive and adapts to your screen, crunching itself down to display the exact same content for mobile phones, and works beautifully on a tablet without compromises. The videos play natively in your browser/device, if at all possible. The fonts look identical. The portfolios are beautiful and fluid, just like before."
So, why did Compass360 even bother if it looks the same?
"We wanted to see how much of the look and feel we could retain as we move away from Flash, as we have been doing with all of our client work. We wanted to use our own website as a case study for new technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery, and see how many compromises need to be made in a direct comparison between a Flash site and a non-Flash site. The answer? None."
The Compass360 website has relaunched, but while it originally launched four years ago as a Flash website, this time it's entirely in HTML5 and new web technologies.
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An image from the Compass360 website case study
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"For us, this overhaul is a case study in a new generation of interaction and user engagement on the web — it looks, feels and even moves exactly like our previous website, but is now completely forward-looking," said Scott Wise, 360's digital director, who coded the new site between client projects.
A "state of the union" address about the new site explains it is "responsive and adapts to your screen, crunching itself down to display the exact same content for mobile phones, and works beautifully on a tablet without compromises. The videos play natively in your browser/device, if at all possible. The fonts look identical. The portfolios are beautiful and fluid, just like before."
So, why did Compass360 even bother if it looks the same?
"We wanted to see how much of the look and feel we could retain as we move away from Flash, as we have been doing with all of our client work. We wanted to use our own website as a case study for new technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery, and see how many compromises need to be made in a direct comparison between a Flash site and a non-Flash site. The answer? None."
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Whenever I have this discussion with people, they always say how great HTML5 is and that it was a great idea for Apple to do it, but people never stop to think "Why" Jobs did it. You are totally correct about HTML5 being better. It is, in every way, but, by September 2011 only 34% of Alexa's list of the top 100 websites had converted to HTML5. This is 4 years after the first iPhone came out and 5 years out, how many sites across the web have converted? Hence, my earlier statement that Jobs could have phased out Flash and phased in HTML5, but didn't because there would be no way he could make money. Steve Jobs made the decision for control of the market.
"As Holman Jenkins pointed out in the Journal a week after Jobs met with its editors,
"Flash would also allow iPhone and iPad users to consume video and other entertainment without going through iTunes. Flash would let users freely obtain the kinds of features they can only get now at the Apple App Store."
Think about it. There are tons of different apps that drain battery life on the iPhone and Flash would not have impacted the battery as much as these apps do currently. The only difference is that Apple makes money on every App whether it's 99 cents or 99 dollars, and Apple has solid over 25 billion apps.
It's not Steve Jobs, it is the development team who created the HTML 5 platform. The fact is you can achieve the same results with HTML5 as what Flash offers, with out the memory consumption. Small data footprint — great usability.
I think the article's explanation in the last paragraph answers your statement reasonably well — it was done as a case study.
Not knowing C360's future intentions, it may already have a crew working on a site-refresh, but as I said before, for a four-year-old site, it looks fresh.
I think you've been brainwashed by Steve Jobs...
I have to agree that the way Flash is used is SLOWLY moving away from its present function with HTML5 becoming the standard, however, Steve and his silly "no flash on iPhone" mentality was premature, in my opinion, by at least three iPhone generations. (All other smart phones work well using the Flash reader and Apple could have phased it out over time).
Steve, in pushing forward his agenda to kill Flash, forgot who his original word-of-mouth fan club were — graphic designers who liked and used Flash.
Steve always had a hate-on for Flash going back to its days when it was owned by Macromedia and I'd have love to have been privy to some of the conversations they had together.
There are still some very good design and ad agencies that don't show up on the iPhone and haven't transitioned over yet nor have some of the great sites they've produced for clients.
To Compass360 and your leap into HTML5, I say kudos. It's amazing that your site design, although four years old, is still very fresh.