![]() ![]() But it’s not a particularly innovative feature. You can hide source code inline, and that’s nice. I think Processing is probably a better path towards this sort of thing. I’ve seen much better results with Java and HTML5. I downloaded the player and tried out several of the CDFs. So perhaps CDF is a bit like Wolfram Alpha: utterly useless outside of a very narrow field of applications, in which it performs utterly beautifully.īut that’s where the problem lies. Because then authors would know that everyone can see what they produce, without having to download another player. If Mathematica offered an “Export to HTML5” option, they’d sell more software. This includes direct customer support and keeping up with changes to the platforms, security, etc. What does Wolfram expect for such a narrow application? No matter how optimistic they are, why would they want to do this? They have to support this software for a bunch of different platforms, including mobile devices. See that 23% bar for the RealOne player? And that’s for streaming media, a very broad market. I think it will be a challenge to get readers of the NY Times to en mass download another player for their browser just so that they can see an infographic. ![]() Shockwave got people to install it for games. Flash had success because of streaming video. It’s hard to get people to install another player on their computer. There’s only a player for people who don’t own Mathematica (~500 MB download). Although Wolfram says the specification is public, the restrictions are perhaps enough to prevent wider adoption. Arguably, it’s possibly exactly what Elsevier’s Executable Paper Challenge is looking for. Although the same basic results can be obtained using HTML5 or Java, Mathematica makes it very easy to create some types of interactive infographics. On the other hand, web pages don’t print out as nicely as PDFs (CDFs should print out as nicely), and it can be a bit messy to download and view a webpage with embedded apps offline. Then everyone can use it, anyone can modify it, and most platforms will play it. ![]() ![]() Alternatively, one can simply author a webpage with embedded Java apps, or maybe even HTML5. And right now, Mathematica 8 is the only way to author a CDF file. This is basically just another step in the evolution of Mathematica’s native file format. One the one hand, there’s the xkcd viewpoint. Wolfram is pushing a new document format called Computable Document Format (CDF). ![]()
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