Hakim El Hattab

Glad to see this on Hacker news! Hakims experiments into CSS, HTML and JS have always been a source of inspiration for me and got me curious about the possibilities of CSS (https://github.com/hakimel / https://hakim.se/). I also have a common interest in exploring the possibilities of Markdown so I've followed Slide and reveal.js with keen interest. For a while it was my number one choice for deck building. Super easy to use and great UX and probably the best Markdown to slide deck option out there.

If you want to code something similar though, my approach has been using Svelte.

Svelte is a framework for building user interfaces that uses a build step to compile your code. The syntax and API is awesome to work with and the first proof of concept took me from Markdown to a working slide deck in maybe 30 minutes. The pages are mostly pre rendered HTML with a small chunk of JS on top. Not the same great UX but... I will get there.

Have a look at my own experiments with Markdown to slide decks here https://www.fictionboard.com/demos where I show how decks can be used for storytelling and immersion in TTRPGs.

I'll probably finish a demo of markdown based interactive fiction and RPG character sheets this week. And I'll expose the syntax :-)

Looks like a nice 3D tweening DOM engine. Related (and recommended) visits for people interested in that sort of thing:

- http://hakim.se/

- http://desandro.github.io/3dtransforms/

- http://glmatrix.net/

As for the article... the author confuses "rendering" with "layout":

- "the primary part we need to rewrite is the part of the renderer that creates and multiplies the matrices"

- "We use the CSS3 primitive -webkit-transform: matrix3d, which lets us compute the composite matrix and skip the browser's renderer"

Which leads to some absurd claims:

- "We were 14 times faster than compiled C in Chrome"

Before reality kicks back in:

- "rendering goes through DOM"

- "Obviously, this isn't exactly the reinvention of the Web"

And this is how you sell a DOM scenegraph engine to people with more money than common sense:

- "a W3C standard that must be supported by all browsers"

- "all text in Famo.us applications is searchable"

- "enable rapid application development"

- "smooth, high-functioning UI across all platforms"

- "one of several enabling technologies"

- "allow enterprise users to touch-interact with big data analytics"

- "spark a new breed of gamified enterprise apps"

A few portfolios I like to refer back to as good examples of different approaches:

- mason.js-style grid of experiments and projects, filterable: http://hakim.se/ – direct links to demos

- short-description + screenshots: http://www.robbiemanson.com/

- a full blog post per project: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/