Nelson's Weblog: tech / good / chrome-angry-birds

Inside Chrome Angry Birds

One of Google's big announcements this week was the launch of Chrome Angry Birds, a port of the hugely popular mobile game to Google's browser. But calling it "Chrome Angry Birds" is missing the point because what's really interesting is that it's a real-time multimedia cross-platform HTML 5 app. It runs fine in MSIE 9 and Firefox on Windows (sound and save games included) and I've heard reports it works in Safari on Macs, too. And because the game is based on open browser technologies, we can easily pull it apart and see how it's built just like we've been pulling apart web pages since 1993 via the magic of "view source".

The key file is appcache.nocache.manifest: it contains a list of all the other stuff in the app. There's a whole lot of files: sound, art, levels. Here's the image sprite sheet for birds and pigs, here's the slingshot sound, here's the data file for level 1. The only thing that's opaque is the code itself, 390k of GWT compiled Javascript. People often call this style of code "obfuscated" but the compilation is as much about making it run faster as it is hiding the details.

The part that impresses me the most is the sound: that's been a weak point in browsers. Over on Metafilter someone pointed out that it was loading a small Flash shim, what appears to be gwt-voices. So still not a 100% Flash-free app, but very very close. The caching is quite sophisticated too.

tech • good
2011-05-11 20:27 Z


Mastodon @nelson@tech.lgbt Linkblog Wed 2024-11-20 Francis Williams painting The Platonic Blow Tue 2024-11-19 EmojiRain Bantam Tools Artframe Using OSM vector tiles Starlink sold out Fine-tuning LLMs at home Bluesky starter packs Mon 2024-11-18 Carbon Mapper Sun 2024-11-17 Love, Acceptance, and Screeching Modems Voyager 1 backup radio Gay Tblisi Usenet feed growth Methane mapping City99 console font Sat 2024-11-16 Lorraine Gervais Sill Justin's Linklog Thune 2004 blog campaign Fri 2024-11-15 Open source garage door Search Archives 2023 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2022 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2021 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2020 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2019 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2018 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2017 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2016 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2015 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2014 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2013 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2012 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2011 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2010 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2009 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2008 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2007 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2006 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2005 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2004 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2003 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2002 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2001 12 11 10 09 08 07 One good site MDN Nelson Minar nelson@monkey.org Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License		Inside Chrome Angry Birds One of Google's big announcements this week was the launch of Chrome Angry Birds, a port of the hugely popular mobile game to Google's browser. But calling it "Chrome Angry Birds" is missing the point because what's really interesting is that it's a real-time multimedia cross-platform HTML 5 app. It runs fine in MSIE 9 and Firefox on Windows (sound and save games included) and I've heard reports it works in Safari on Macs, too. And because the game is based on open browser technologies, we can easily pull it apart and see how it's built just like we've been pulling apart web pages since 1993 via the magic of "view source". The key file is appcache.nocache.manifest: it contains a list of all the other stuff in the app. There's a whole lot of files: sound, art, levels. Here's the image sprite sheet for birds and pigs, here's the slingshot sound, here's the data file for level 1. The only thing that's opaque is the code itself, 390k of GWT compiled Javascript. People often call this style of code "obfuscated" but the compilation is as much about making it run faster as it is hiding the details. The part that impresses me the most is the sound: that's been a weak point in browsers. Over on Metafilter someone pointed out that it was loading a small Flash shim, what appears to be gwt-voices. So still not a 100% Flash-free app, but very very close. The caching is quite sophisticated too. See also my explanation of what a Chrome App is tech • good 2011-05-11 20:27 Z Nelson's Weblog • tech • good