What’s New in CDF for 2016?
My annual summary of the state of CDF

André Kuzniarek

Executive Director, Document and Media Systems
Wolfram Research

CDF Player updates

Browser and plugin status

CDF in the cloud

Web applets/microsites

“Portable CDF”

Things to come

Join the Conversation #WolframTechConf

CDF Player updates and release plan

CDF Player for 11.0.1 completed and released September 30, 2016

New build process pays off

This release was the fastest turn-around ever, 1 week after release of Mathematica 11.0.1

11.0.0 released within 10 days

Installer download size increases

Macintosh: ~800 MB     (installs to 2.2 GB)

Windows: ~1 GB

Linux: ~1.5 GB

New things that came in last year, remaining unchanged otherwise:

Multicore support — 4 cores in FreeCDF, 8 or more in EnterpriseCDF/Player Pro

Player Pro activation (via Help menu and Welcome Screen)

Copy/paste to/from InputField

Welcome screen repressed when opening desktop files directly

Connectivity for all link types (WSTP, .NETLink, JLink, RLink) for EnterpriseCDF

Browser and plugin status

Goodbye to Plugins, “We hardly knew ye”

NPAPI goes away this year if Mozilla sticks to it’s end of 2016 schedule for it.

NPAPI plugin already abandoned by Chrome

Flash gets special treatment, but in 2017 will force blockers that need interaction to continue, and the plug on Flash will probably get pulled later same year.

Safari no longer supports 32-bit, ending support of our plugin (we do not support 64-bit, anticipating the end of usefulness)

Microsoft Edge does not support plugins (other than Flash w/pausing, for the short term)

“We encourage the web community to continue the transition away from Flash and towards open web standards.”

What does this mean for CDF on the web?

Interaction on the cloud needs to improve, and is getting better

Cloud-based embedding, straightforward embed code

Free user access up to a limited amount of interactions before pointing to cloud or download

Demonstrations:
Updated for downloading and cloud access

0/1-Polytopes in 3D

Fern Fractals

Generating a Lemniscate I: Envelope of Circles

3D Lissajous Figures

2D View of a Conformal Mapping

2D Rotation Using Matrices

A Gothic Window

A Ring Game

Bicycle Wheels Using Curves of Constant Width

Factorizing Mersenne Numbers

Right and Equilateral Triangle Ternary Phase Diagrams

Order, Chaos, and the Formation of a Cantor Set Attractor in Elementary Cellular Automata

Spherical Models of Polyhedra

Voronoi Diagrams in 3D

CDF Export Wizard and Web Embedding

Wizard will be updated in 11.2 for cloud integration

As shown with demonstrations, resulting CDF for web will have download/cloud choice

Autogenerated preview animations, download, and embed links

Download files and animation previews processed and stored in the cloud, so no file uploading necessary, just embed code

Beyond CDF: web applets/microsites

Microsites:

Live:
http://familytour.guru
http://mypiday.com
https://www.imageidentify.com
http://celebritymatch.io

Coming soon:
https://wolfr.am/pixelart
https://wolfr.am/tiltshift
https://wolfr.am/codecard
https://wolfr.am/anagrams

Bernat’s talk later this afternoon: 2:30 Fighting Illini Room

“Portable CDF”

CDF Players in one ZIP archive

No player installation process

Java file for launching CDF file from appropriate player

Other stand-alone solution coming down the road for Mathematica et al.

Still to come

Mobile (in beta shortly)

FreeCDF static unless user buys (one-time) in-app upgrade

EnterpriseCDF is interactive automatically

Enterprise feature set otherwise restricted, since this is a sandboxed environment

Certificate-based security authorization

No more dynamics warnings

Means to establish verified users via public signing mechanism

Allows for CDF as default file format for Wolfram products

Potential for DRM

CDF archive format, with strong encryption capability (potential for DRM)

ZIP-based file but with CDF MIME-type

Distribute complete application layouts as CDF files

Encrypted ZIP offers more security potential than Wolfram Language encoding

Tied with certification offers strong, secure potential for DRM

Resources

New CDF101 training course

http://www.wolfram.com/training/courses/cdf101.html

Website updates reminder:

http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/resources/

http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/compare-cdf/customer-stories.en.html

http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/licensing-options.html

http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/cdf-and-mathematica-comparison.en.html