Tron has entered the hardware accelerated HMTL5 grid via Internet Explorer 9. The result is the new Disney Tron: Legacy digital book site, an immersive project which has taken an analog graphic novel to the next level by the way of modern web standards.
Disney Tron: Legacy was made possible through the collaboration between Disney Publishing House, Microsoft and Vectorform.
The amazing developers and designers at Vectorform have put together the digital flavor of the Tron comic book in less than a month, relying heavily on HTML5 and the power of HTML5 hardware acceleration that IE9 brings to the table.
“Most online comics are stagnant,” explained Dario Di Zanni, development manager for Disney publishing digital media. “We wanted an engaging, fluid site that is more like the actual experience of reading a comic book.”
Vectorform tested a range of technologies for the project, including CSS3 2D Transforms, JavaScript, jQuery, DOM, etc. However, they found that only by leveraging the HTML5 <canvas> element could they get not only a superbly immersive performance, but also top performance, no less than 60 frames per second (FPS).
“It’s truly an interactive environment people don’t expect to see on a website,” added Ken Disbennett, art director for Vectorform, who worked closely on the project. “When a character is smashing through a glass wall, you can see and experience the glass particles shattering. We couldn’t have achieved this the way we did without the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer 9 or the use of a plug-in.”
Disbennett lauded Internet Explorer 9 and the evolution it introduced, focusing on hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, audio tags, but also praising IE9’s fast JavaScript engine as critical elements into powering the unique Disney Tron: Legacy experience.
“The Tron: Legacy project is a great example of what happens when Internet Explorer 9 helps developers unchain what’s in their imaginations,” said Ryan Gavin, senior director, Internet Explorer, Microsoft. “It’s a beautiful example of where the Web is going.”
In addition to HTML5 <canvas>, Vectorform also made heavy use of PNG/8, a version of the good old Portable Network Graphics format, capable of blending together RGB and Alpha information within the same 8-bit channel.
As you’ll be able to see on Disney Tron: Legacy, there are multiple layers of content on top of one another, but still synchronized and blending perfectly. Obviously, it took a consistent amount of work to create Disney Tron: Legacy and Giorgio Sardo, Sr. Technical Evangelist HTML5 and Internet Explorer shares some great details from
behind the scenes here.
Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) Platform Preview 1 (PP1) is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 is available for download here.
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