How much has development changed latest years?

[K1kk0z90]

Hi all!
I’ve been out from HTML5 game development for a while, in fact last time I worked on an HTML5 game was back in 2014 when I made a game for which I managed to sell a non-exclusive license.

I’m thinking about developing a new HTML5 game in my spare time, and try selling a non-exclusive license. So… how much have common sponsors’ requirements changed for mobile-ready (i.e. playable on a phone’s web browser) HTML5 games? And how much have solutions to achieve those requirements changed?

For example, I remember that games had to hide address bar on Safari on iPhone, and this could be achieved with a trick of calling the Javascript window.scrollTo(0, 1) function. Does this trick still work today in latest iOS versions and newest iPhones? On Android, Chrome supports full screen API, so should I use that in addition to the aforementioned trick for iPhone?

In 2014 a common resolution in which games were designed was 320 x 480, but if I recall correctly 640 x 960 was beginning to take place. What are commonest resolutions used today?

Thank you in advance to everybody!

[b10b]

The Safari scrollTo() trick expired, and nothing has come along to replace it yet (as far as I'm aware?).  Yes, Android has some nice fullscreen capabilities so use them.  I think you'd be fine at 640x960 currently, maybe even less and focus on fast loading?  Probably the biggest change since 2014 is WebGL and accelerated canvas proliferation.  Therefore devices have become significantly faster so the need to work technical magic is reduced (for low end games) - focus on the player experience and have fun making the game.

[K1kk0z90]

Thank you very much for your answer @b10b !

So the scroll trick on Safari doesn't work anymore. Googling to search for an alternative, I've read some forum threads about a solution involving to put the HTML Canvas into a container which is taller than the Canvas, and to prompt the user to swipe down to go fullscreen. Do you know about it? I still have to study it (so far I only found some threads talking about it, but I may have misunderstood). It could be a solution to hide the address bar on Safari, even if it is not done automatically anymore but it involves a user interaction.

Great for WebGL! I remember it was rarely supported even on desktop browsers. So is it beginning to become supported even on mobile?

Thanks again to everybody!

[mattstyles]

Whereas in 2014 supporting Android was quite the pain, its now the case that Safari is a pain, hiding browser chrome being a real pain, wait until you try to deal with the taskbar (at the bottom) for Safari! At least its a damn sight easier to package HTML5 inside an app shell and publish to an app store if you wanted to go that route.

WebGL and general device power is the biggest change, newer iPhones have as much single-core performance (which is all you care about with JS, usually) as high-end laptops from only a few years ago and I'm pretty sure Android phones are about the same, so, performance shouldn't be a major issue (depending what type of game you want to present).