I remember the good old days, I guess in part because I’m no longer a twenty or even thirty or wow – a forty something. Software development was a thoughtful, exciting process. And, as you developed the software you planned to release, you had the benefit of expanding support in the channel you were developing for.
Thanks to HTML-5, those days may return, at least for awhile. I must say that the past few years have been a royal pain in the neck for us, as our clients have migrated from one “solution” to another. The plug-in world for web browsers was initially designed to create expanded capabilities for users, but ultimately, has been a one way street ending at the top of the Malibu pier: off you go, tech solution/plug-in from ten minutes ago. Splash.
I expect that during the coming few months, more and more hardware manufacturers will move away from technology that just minutes ago they were promoting as “long term” solutions. FLASH from Adobe is already fish food. And Silverlight is about to swim with the fishes as well.
So, why is HTML-5 different?
First off – it isn’t a plug-in. It’s a different animal, and it’s got a laundry list of capabilities that make it far more functional for developers and consumers alike. For starters, HTMP-5 supports variable semantic elements, scalable vector graphics, an offline cache, and when used in combination with CSS3, will support high-quality interactive graphics.
That means it is more like a user-interface design environment, rather than a markup language. Bottom line: HTML-5 is ideal for delivering rich web-driven content.
Steve Jobs was right. The late co-founder and CEO of Apple predicted, accurately, that Flash as a delivery platform was doomed. Just 19 months have he initially trashed Flash, Adobe suspended mobile development of Flash – and the future of computing is mobile. And iOS, one of the two primary operating environments, doesn’t support Silverlight either – likely for the same reasons.
Today, Adobe and Microsoft have both signaled their intention to strongly support HTML-5. So far, our experience with it has been highly positive – and we believe it will create some stability in a market that for the past few years has kicked and screamed, never quite knowing what users or developers should use. I’m ready for that.