Winners Announced: Build an Incredible HTML5 App: $7000 Competition

Winners Announced: Build an Incredible HTML5 App: $7000 Competition

After a week of deliberation by a handful of select reviewers, we’ve narrowed the dozens of submissions down to the top three winners! Trust me, when I tell you that it was not an easy decision. Let’s see who won!


3rd Place: devZor.project


devZor

Created By: Gjore Sazdovski

devZor.project is the only to-do list a developer ever needs! It provides you with the freedom to manage your tasks in a different way. I’m sure you’ve used a lot of these task management solutions, but in my opinion, they were always either too simple and feature-less or too advanced and hard to find your way around. As such, I created something different, something that focuses on the every day tasks of a developer and/or freelancer.


2nd Place: JCanvasMap

JCanvasMap
Created By: Miralem Drek

This is an insanely detailed map, with click-points, built entirely with Canvas. A full demo is coming soon!


Grand Prize Winner: Dweamer

Dweamer
Created By: Jesse Weed

Dweamer is an HTML5 “theme builder” for Dreamweaver. It allows you to easily create themes that change the appearance of Dreamweaver’s code view. If you’ve ever tried to edit the Dreamweaver color scheme on your own, you know what a pain it can be (and if you haven’t, you’re not missing much). But, Dweamer makes easy work of a task that used to take several hours. And since Dweamer allows you to save themes, you can come back and edit them at any time, or quickly switch to a different theme whenever you like (without having to start from scratch every time).


Congratulations, Guys!

Job well done to Jesse, Miralem, and Gjore. We’ll be in touch with you later this week to arrange your prizes!

To those of you who entered, and did not, please keep in mind that this was a very close competition. Up until the last few hours, we were deciding between the top six. Nonetheless, many of these items will be featured on CodeCanyon, and in an upcoming round-up on Nettuts+.


As HTML5′s popularity continues to increase, we at Tuts+ and CodeCanyon would like to do our part in promoting and rewarding those who are on the cutting edge of what’s possible with HTML5, local storage, geolocation, SVG, and CSS3. Not only that, but we’re also, at the conclusion of this competition, launching a brand new category on our coding marketplace, CodeCanyon, specifically for HTML5 apps.

We have $7000 worth of prizes from some of the most respected companies in our industry, but the creators of the best items will also profit by selling their HTML apps on CodeCanyon. Authors: you have one month to prepare the coolest, cutting edge HTML5 app that you’re capable of. What prizes are we offering??


I’m pleased to announce that I can personally recommend every single one of the following sponsors who offered items and services to this competition. We wouldn’t promote them if we didn’t feel that way!


2 Runners-Up Prizes


How Does it Work?

The rules are quite simple. Using HTML5 technologies (and feel free to throw in some CSS3 goodness while you’re at it), we want you to build a cutting edge app. It could be similar to something along the lines of:

  • The recent HTML5 presentation app
  • An awesome cross-browser HTML5 video player, with full screen support, Flash fallback, etc.
  • A kick-ass to-do list with offline storage support.
  • An HTML5 website that people would swear was created with Flash
  • etc.

Feel free to combine all modern technologies when building your item, including HTML5, geolocation, offline storage, CSS3, SVG, and any other acronym that is applicable to your project. Once you have finished building your “app,” — and you have a month to make it — return to this page, where there will be a contest submission form to fill out.

Most Importantly: We want you to build an item that people will actually use. Particle effects are great, but unless you have an argument for why others would have a need for your particle item in their project, it most likely won’t be in the running for the grand prize spot. Think wide-spread, when building your app. A presentation app is wide-spread, video players are wide-spread. Use your imagination!


Selling on CodeCanyon

In late August, CodeCanyon.net will be launching a new “HTML5 Apps” category, which we fully expect to be monstrously popular. After we select the best items from this contest — including the ones that didn’t win one of the top three prizes — we will contact the authors about selling their items on CodeCanyon in this new category, where they’ll earn between 40-70% for each sale. Considering Envato’s 430,000 marketplace members, and the fact that many of these authors make thousands of dollars each month, you’ll do quite well if your item appeals to a wide variety of people. By entering this competition, you agree that, if your item is chosen, it will be uploaded to CodeCanyon under your account, and will help to serve as seed content for the category.


Frequently Asked Questions

Please note that this section will sporadically be updated as questions come in from the community.

  1. When is the deadline? You have until August 23rd, 2010, at 11:59 PM (USA Central Standard time).
  2. How do I enter? When ready, submit your item here.
  3. If I win the contest, how will my item be sold on CodeCanyon? At that point, we will contact you about creating your free author account (if you don’t already have one), and submitting your item. It’s quite easy. Plus, because your item will be part of the new category’s seed content, you’ll get a tremendous amount of exposure as we advertise the category like crazy!
  4. Can I submit to the upcoming “HTML5 Apps” category even if I don’t win? Absolutely…and I hope you do!
  5. Can Envato staff enter this competition? Unfortunately not.
  6. Must my item support all browsers? No; we fully understand that these are items that simply won’t work in all browsers. However, do your best to provide some level of support for as many browsers as possible.

Terms and Conditions

  • This competition is open to anyone and everyone, excluding Envato staff.
  • You have until August 23rd, 2010, at 11:59 PM (USA Central Standard time) to submit your item
  • The winners of the contest will be determined by a team of no less than three judges.
  • Items must officially be submitted here to be considered for the prizes.

Good Luck!!

We can’t wait to see what you come up with. There are a lot of prizes at stake here, so submit the best possible item you’re capable of! And remember, even if you don’t win, if your item is of a high quality, you can still profit from every sale on CodeCanyon. Many authors make thousands upon thousands of dollars each month by doing this!

The deadline is August 23rd. Ready…set…go!!

Note: Want to add some source code? Type <pre><code> before it and </code></pre> after it. Find out more
  • Paulo Vítor

    Hey,

    Congratulations for the tutorials and competitions. I’m developing a website and I’d like to know how you keep the premium videos hidden form the public, the old premium users and from the blip.tv search engine.

    I look forward to hearing from you.
    Paulo Vítor (from Brazil)

  • http://cynicmx.blogspot.com/ CynicMX

    I excellent Competition one doubt !

    The app can have a DB backend option ? or only localStorage ?

  • Dan

    THIS NEEDS MORE PIZAZZ, JEFF WAY. MORE PIZAZZ!

  • http://rappdaniel.com Rapp

    What about an app utilizing web-sockets and node.js? Do you guys have a server with node.js installed?

  • http://www.ashconnell.com Ash Connell

    Done, Dusted, and Submitted.

    Was a really fun project for me to try to manage on top of full time work and web development… Hope everyone gets their entries in on time! Only five days to go!

    Good luck to everyone who has entered.

  • Teun Beijers

    A pity I didn’t see this post before, I would have loved to enter this competition, but only 2 days left is a bit too short

  • http://www.gabereiser.com Gabriel Reiser

    I submitted my entry a week or so ago. Can’t wait for the results!!!

  • w1sh

    Careful with all those ads boys…

  • http://booto.net Kimcool

    I think the weekend is so beautiful if i get it:)
    I want to study study…

  • http://www.devtuts.com.br/wp Rafael Angeline

    Hey!

    The form will open the upload field tomorrow (Sunday) or in Monday?

    Thanks!

  • Luis

    How can we submit the items if the form doesn’t allow to upload a file?

  • http://www.devzor.com/ Gjore Sazdovski

    I’m trying to submit my item, the upload field is disabled!

    When I try to submit the form without the upload field it says “Error: Upload your file!”

    Please give us further instructions as we don’t want to miss the deadline.

    • jPomfret

      Jeffrey Way!

      I am unable to upload my application! The deadline is the 23rd yet the submission form says it is disabled now! Can we still submit?

      Jess

    • jPomfret

      Sorry that wasn’t supposed to be a reply to you Gjore but I’m having the same problem!

  • http://www.topweb2.net Eslam

    the same problem “File uploads have been disabled for this form”
    what is happening??
    and how is supposed to submit our apps :) i hope we can submit our apps soon
    regards

  • http://www.michal-kral.cz Michal Kral

    Jeffrey Way

    I’ve been working really hard and now when i want to submit my app the form is disabled! But the deadline should be on 23rd August.

  • Zach

    Is it possible to add a little jQuery? Or should it be primarily HTML 5? Also, I’m guessing the use of jQuery plugins aren’t the greatest, either? Just because it would mostly be the work of others..

  • http://netkogeren.dk Andreas Madsen

    Nooo
    Help me Jeffrey Way
    It is not possible for me to upload my application.

    On http://www.formstack.com/forms/envato-envato_marketplace__codecanyon__html5_competition it says “(File uploads have been disabled for this form.)”
    Refer to:
    http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/6222/skrmbillede20100822kl22.png

    And if I just fill out the fields, its say:
    ERROR: Please return and fill out the following required fields:
    * Upload your file!

  • http://fanaticalvps.com Nick

    Can’t submit here either, :/

  • http://www.devtuts.com.br/wp Rafael Angeline

    Jeffrey! Please, go go go!

    I need submit my app =D

    Thanks!

  • http://www.devzor.com/ Gjore Sazdovski

    I guess there’s allot of us working till the last second… hahaha :)

  • http://www.devtuts.com.br/wp Rafael Angeline

    The Upload form is working!

    Thanks Envato Staff – and Jeffrey.

    Have a final result date ?

    Thanks!

  • http://webcloud.se Daniel

    23:rd as in from where in the world? GMT? :)

    • Luis

      They specifically wrote “USA CST”

  • Dave

    Extend the date!!!
    Hope jefft way and evanto allow =)

  • Luis

    2 questions:

    1. When will the results be announced?
    2. How can we validate that you have received our submission?

  • http://www.twitter.com/aBionic AbhishekKr

    thank god it’s by CST not GMT… I still have few hours that means; so I’m gonna begin hoping I’ll finish for a decent entry ;)

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
      Author

      I’m going to extend the deadline by 24 hours. So you have about 32 hours left.

      • http://www.devzor.com/ Gjore Sazdovski

        You saved my life Jeffrey :))

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        Haha – hurry up and get your app finished. :)

  • Daniel van der Merwe

    My app involves a MySQL database.

    1) Is this allowed?
    2) If it is how do I give it…

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
      Author

      Yes – just export the the database to a SQL file or something like that.

  • http://www.twitter.com/aBionic AbhishekKr

    :D thanks for extending the deadline, I got an idea to work upon too… now for sure one entry from my side. If get to finish app-logic early… would work on styling then.

  • http://www.devzor.com/ Gjore Sazdovski

    Finished my app!

    Now, can I create a small screencast and include it in my zip instead of a readme/doc file?

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
      Author

      Absolutely!

  • http://twitter.com/korenbr Koren Berman

    Submitted yesterday. Good luck everyone!

  • http://www.devtuts.com.br/wp Rafael Angeline

    Sent now! Good luck to us directly from Brazil!

    Thanks!

  • http://topweb2.net Eslam

    any news about the result date ???

  • Andreas Madsen

    Do I get a confirmation email when I have upload my project.

  • Luis

    Congratulations winners.

    Dweamer looks good and the functionality is fantastic for someone using Dreamweaver. However, seeing this is an HTML5 competition, I didn’t quite get what was HTML5 about it.

    It is a great app, but how much does it have to do with HTML5? not much. Moreover, the app itself was buggy in all browsers, and I didn’t think it was fair that both Nettuts and CodeCanyon glorified it over Twitter relentlessly. It’s unfortunate the judges decided to show favoritism right off the bat.

    JCanvasMap looks good, but since there’s no preview or anything we can admire, it seems aloof. Also I can’t think of any usability to it besides perhaps maybe being an interactive play.

    devZor.project didn’t have any live preview either, but indeed seems useful.

    Overall, I don’t think the judges fully understood what HTML5 is; which is a shame since there have been some great apps submitted that I believe emphasized HTML5 more than the front runners.

    • Koren Berman

      I have to agree.

    • Devon Govett

      I have to agree here as well. I spent a very long time (an entire month) creating my submission, which, if I can say so myself, was very well polished. I received an email from Jeffrey Way about a hiccup that they had trying to set up the app on his servers to which I promptly replied with a suggestion and a link to the app running on my own server where it was working just fine – not that the setup was very complex. The worst thing was that I never received a response to these emails, not even a confirmation of receipt. Obviously, I wouldn’t have submitted a non-working app to the contest, and the server side should have been secondary anyway since this was an *HTML5* contest.

      While the winning entries are nice, as far as I can see, they aren’t really taking advantage of many of the *new* features in HTML5. Overall, this didn’t seem like a very fair contest (and I’m not just saying that because I didn’t win). Next time, I will focus my work elsewhere and not bother entering. I feel like I wasted my time.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        Devon – I did receive your live preview link, and forwarded it to the reviewers for the competition. Yours was a finalist, but was just edged out.

        The winning entries use HTML quite a bit, ranging from canvas, to mark-up, to web workers, non-spec localstorage stuff.

        You should definitely submit your app to CodeCanyon, where we’ll feature it again. :)

        @Luis – I’m sorry if you felt that I gloried the Dweamer app on Twitter. I thought it was very well done, and served a very specific purpose that would appeal to Dreamweaver users. I’ll be promoting most of the top 8 submissions to the competition on Twitter over the next week.

        A JCanvas demo is coming soon.

        We indeed received other submissions which heavily used HTML5, however, the items weren’t polished enough, like the three winning entries above.

      • Luis

        @Jeffrey Way

        Honestly, I don’t think that that makes any difference. How did the winning app, Dweamer, implement HTML5 profusely, as you claim?

        Personally, I don’t use Dreamweaver; but even if I did, I don’t think that that app is a winner in an HTML5 competition.

        the items weren’t polished enough, like the three winning entries above.

        I don’t think that that’s the reason. I have reviewed all apps submitted on CodeCanyon, and none of them were as buggy as Dweamer. If any of the apps can be said to be unpolished, it’s Dweamer (with all due respect to its author, who I have absolutely no intention to bash). Furthermore, as you may see in my comment below, your tweets were far more than cheering.

        I think the competition was pretty fixed. And I agree with Devon, it’s not bitterness over not winning ourselves, it’s over the fact that other apps deserved to win far more than the ones that did.

        I think the abundance of disappointed comments on this thread show that I’m not the only one thinking so.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        I just checked Dweamer again, and it’s working correctly for me. I’m not sure what bugs you are referring to. Feel free to email us if you’d like to provide a bit more detail as to these bugs. sitemanager@codecanyon.net.

      • Luis

        Bug Notice:

        There is a known bug when switching between languages (for example when switching from HTML to PHP) where the color values will occasionally not load correctly. If this happens to you, a simple page refresh is the cure. We’re working on a fix and hope to have it sorted very soon.

        Under Dweamer live preview –> instructions.

        Btw this is ridiculous.

  • Ijaas

    Already purchased my copy of Dweamer, I was looking to modify the Dreamweaver theme over the weekend so this helps alot.

  • Chris

    I was disappointed, I added what I thought was a great entry, and didn’t win a prize, I was very, very hopeful that it would win.

    I don’t think the winner deserved it’s prize, yes, it’s a fantastic application, but I didn’t think it was what you guys were after. Moreover, it’s not something every single user can use – many people don’t have dreamweaver.

    It was a shame net.tuts+ had to do something like this, maybe mine would never of won, but I sure you had bigger and much much better entries.

    Nonetheless, congrats to the winners I guess, and enjoy your prizes.

    I totally support Luis to be honest.

    • Michael Grech

      I agree. Not many people use Dream Weaver, plus that app took forever and a day to load. The second app no longer has a link. This was kind of a joke. I take you guys didn’t get very submissions? You should have just extended the contest if that was the case.

      • http://vladh.net vladh

        They got about 45, if I remember correctly. And I agree that the winning submissions aren’t very practical – my submission took 3 days to make (I was in a hurry though) and it didn’t have a ridiculous amount of features, code, or insane HTML5, but it was really practical. I’m not saying that I should have won, I was just expecting better submissions to win.

  • http://www.fishmemory.net fractalbit

    I agree with Luis and Chris above, especially for the winner. Yes it is a cool app, but only for those who use dreramweaver heavily. I would expect the winner app to have a more broader use. I saw the screenshots for devZor and it seems a very cool project though. I would probably pick this as the winner if i had to choose among these three.

  • Corin

    It makes sense I guess, since their primary goal was to choose something that will sell so that they could receive maximum revenue via Code Canyon, which was probably not the case with other applications submitted (better or worse) which involved more HTML5 features, per say.

    It was a bit misleading for the developers I guess as this was, in the end, a Code Canyon competition marketed through nettuts+. It appeared to be a competition all about HTML5, using HTML5 and promoting HTML5 but came out to be all about building a sell-able application for Code Canyon.
    (This is from the competition description: “As HTML5′s popularity continues to increase, we at Tuts+ and CodeCanyon would like to do our part in promoting and rewarding those who are on the cutting edge of what’s possible with HTML5, local storage, geolocation, SVG, and CSS3.”, which is really not what the competition ended up being about)

    I do also agree that it was very wrong on the organizer’s behalf to be advertising the winning application before even announcing who the winner was and claiming that it was a close tie between the top 6 down to the last few hours.

    In my honest opinion, from the 3 winning HTML5 applications the most worthy of all was the third place entry, devZor.project. Authors of the other 2 applications, I am in no way stating that your work is not impressive, but simply in my opinion not what I expected and thought that was suitable to win.

  • http://vladh.net vladh

    Yeah…I wasn’t blown away by any of the winners, but eh, what you gonna do.

  • Gjore Sazdovski

    I’m going to be honest, the biggest prize for me is to see the users of my application feel happy about using it, and say it’s worth the price. I constantly communicate with my customers on CodeCanyon and ensure that all the features they request are implemented.

    devZor.project is a very small part of a bigger project aimed at helping developers I’m working on, I entered the competition because I don’t have the hosting or money to get my big project online.

    I will invest every single penny collected from the sales into that project.

    I respect every hard work invested into something, every entry is a great entry! Every work will pay off, sell your applications, I’m sure there are many people that need them.

    I built devZor.project having the following fact in my mind all the time (quoting netttus):

    “Most Importantly: We want you to build an item that people will actually use. Particle effects are great, but unless you have an argument for why others would have a need for your particle item in their project, it most likely won’t be in the running for the grand prize spot. Think wide-spread.”

    It’s up to you, the users, to decide whether the above statement was respected. For me, I’m happy when my users are happy. :)

    • Dhruv Kumar S

      Between these three apps, devZor.project is a clear winner and deserves the first place.

      I always taught envato is the best and does the best.., but this definitely is one of the worst decision taken by them and the app reviewers.

      Whats done can’t be changed but you guys can definitely help Gjore Sazdovski with his project

  • http://click9.net/ vivianjust

    sound great !

  • w1sh

    Why not post all the entries and put up a poll for people to vote on the winner?
    Oh yeah, because you guys hate listening to your audience. I mean, how often do you guys check your UserVoice account? If you’ve lost the link, it’s at the bottom of the site and it’s had “Forum” as the most requested thing for quite some time. Alas, there is none.

    You guys are getting way out of touch with everything in your success and it’s going to cause you to flop.

    Er, I mean. Good contest! Congratulations to all the winners who dev’d those crazy-awesome HTML5 apps like.. a DreamWeaver… themer……

  • Luis

    To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t surprised the results came out irrelevant to the competition theme.

    The deadline was postponed, then everytime we were notified over email and Jeffrey Way mentioned time, I soon found that you should more than quadruple that figure. 10 hours were prolonged into almost 70.

    Personally, I was very upset to see that some apps were endorsed over Twitter. This was a competition, the judges were promoting sales on some items, thus making them more popular and affecting the results.

    These tweets were posted recently by CodeCanyon & Nettuts on twitter:

    “Have you guys checked out this custom Dreamweaver theme builder yet? So awesome, if you use that editor. ”
    about 15 hours ago via Echofon

    Retweet:
    “If you’re a #DreamWeaver user, this submission to the HTML5 comp rocks! It’s a dynamic theme builder. 5:19 AM Aug 31st via Echofon ”

    “If you’re a #DreamWeaver user, this submission to the HTML5 comp rocks! It’s a dynamic theme builder. ”

    “We’re now promoting the top two selling items from CodeCanyon on Nettuts+! \”

    “If you’re a #DreamWeaver user, this submission to the HTML5 comp rocks! It’s a dynamic theme builder. 5:19 AM Aug 31st via Echofon Retweeted by nettuts and 6 others ”

    “This is pretty cool. Somebody submitted an interactive Dreamweaver code-theme builder.”

    Needless to say my submission was never tweeted.

  • http://www.ultramegatech.com/ Steve Guidetti

    Congrats to the winners! It looks like a lot of work went into these.

    3rd place seems most useful, even though there’s no demo to try. I’m not sure what the 2nd place map thing does, but I’m sure it’s cool. 1st place seems like the most complex and very fancy, but I’m not sure how much use it would get. People tend to get a theme that works and stick to it.

    I can safely say they are all better than my submission. :)

  • Anonymous

    I submitted an HTML5 app that incorporated local storage and web SQL databases, it ran on iTouch devices. I never even received a response for it or even an E-mail to say they announced the winners.

    Good job. I spent about 80 hours on that.

    • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
      Author

      We received your submission. But, it unfortunately wasn’t selected. You can still submit it to the CodeCanyon category. In fact, we’d love to talk to you more about that. Feel free to email me if interested: net AT tutsplus.com

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