Perhaps fed up with all things Cloud, the IT industry hype machine is turning its attention to HTML5. It shouldn’t really be a surprise given that Steve Jobs has been raving about how it can replace Flash and Microsoft sees their implementation of it as a major selling point for IE9.
When people say HTML5 they often mean CSS3 or one of certain other new web technologies. A good explanation of what is and isn’t HTML5 can be found in this blog from ExtJS.
Despite the hype, HTML5 and related technologies are showing much promise. A good collection of what can be achieved can be found at HTMLWatch. The results are certainly impressive.
Is this really the beginning of the end for Flash? Well Adobe products in general have been a nightmare from a security point of view over the past year, so a viable alternative might be desirable. However, at least part of the reason that so many vulnerabilities have been found in Flash is due to its massive installation base and the subsequent targeting by hackers. It’s not unreasonable to assume that subsequent versions of Flash will be more secure and that the developers who have Flash skills and tools will continue to produce Flash applications.
The real danger to Flash may come from Steve Jobs refusing to allow it on the iPhone and the iPad. Despite the miniscule market share that these products have, they dominate the media agenda. It’s not too difficult to imagine hype beating reason and there being a large scale move away from Flash to supposedly allow for maximum cross platform support irrespective of if this is really true.
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