Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
cases where a video game is involved) we don't need to write software that is any-
where near perfect. At the end of the day, whether you agree with it or not, the goal
of software development is to produce software that is good enough. As long as the
program solves the problem for which it was written, and does so in a reasonable
fashion, then for all practical purposes, we can say that the software is good.
With that introduction behind us, keep those two principles in mind as you develop
HTML5 applications, including games, aimed at reaching hundreds of millions of
people world wide. True, there are some browser-specific functionalities that may
make a game unplayable, or at least make the user experience significantly different,
that the final result might not be desirable. But, pay close attention to what you're
really trying to accomplish, so as to discern what browser differences are good
enough. It may very well be that a feature targeted to a particular browser is used by
so few users that there is no cost benefit to the feature. What we never want to do,
however, is to deploy an unusable product.
HTML5 libraries and frameworks
In our quest for multiple browser support in cost efficient ways, we can find comfort in
knowing that we're not alone in this struggle. Today, there are so many open source
projects aimed at solving this same problem of browser compatibility that we can
possibly play the alphabet game, where we name a different HTML5 library or frame-
work for each letter of the alphabet.
There are normally two reasons for the existence of such tools, namely to abstract
away browser differences, and to speed up development. While most abstractions
provided by today's JavaScript tools attempt to provide the client with a single inter-
face that unifies browser discrepancies, a lot of these libraries also provide function-
ality that simply speed development time and effort.
jQuery
By far, the most popular JavaScript library is one called jQuery. If you haven't heard
of jQuery before, chances are that you just woke up from a very deep and profound
hibernation, while your body traveled through distant galaxies. Some of the main be-
nefits for using jQuery includes a very powerful DOM query and manipulation engine,
a very simple, unified
XHR
(
XML HTTP Request
also known as Ajax) interface, and
the ability to extend it through a well defined plugin interface.
