Absolutely! With our redesigned browsers, web centric smart-phones, and trends in social media grabbing larger parts of our day, we can see the tide swiftly changing in the accessibility and performance of the web. In this new tide, an outdated Adobe Flash may very well capsize in the wake of the sleek and efficient HTML 5.
Getting right into the comparison: While Flash has served us well (Thank you water balloon drop) it seems HTML5 will out-surf Adobe on this new wave of internet capability (nautical puns intended). It doesn’t work in every browser you say? Oh Hulu hasn’t picked it up yet because it doesn’t cater its needs? Well, even if I had not watched, read, and conversed on HTML5’s new features, I would still never bet against Apple. I definitely wouldn’t make that bet when they have two hardware sets, which happily flood our population, THAT ONLY USE HTML 5.
Flash 10 currently works well because of its numerous redesigns and lack of any serious competition, but all those redesigns have led Flash to become bloated and heavy on cpu usage. HTML 5, on the other hand, works more efficiently by embedding directly and losing the need for any plugins or codec. Running in HTML5 uses less cpu fuel and that’s Apple’s main argument for dropping flash on all its hand sets. Not to mention that from design point of view Flash has always had it’s issues, it can always end up looking stale.
HTML5, even in its beta stages, hosts an arsenal of new features that will help pioneer the new frontier in web-space. Unlike Flash, HTML5 has time to adapt and synchronize with the new web environment, which means, controlling our tweets, broadcasting our video content, and fouring our squares. HTML5 doesn’t just display them either; the new tool engages us in a way that Flash has yet to show us. (Interactive example : http://apirocks.com/html5/html5.html#slide1)
HTML5 will revolutionize the internet through the interactivity it provides. HTML5 can promise to work faster with the advent of Web Workers. Web Workers basically runs multiple functions without effecting a users interaction with the page or as Mozilla puts it “Once created, a worker can send messages to the spawning task by posting messages to an event handler specified by the creator.” -mozilla.com. Web Workers allows for greater functional speed so tasks and site interaction can become much more fluid. The most powerful capacity of HTML5, however, is the ability to embed video without any plugins or codec. What does that mean? Greater speed and performance on smaller hardware. You will also now be able to control and manipulate the video in real time.
Having mentioned the live editing in video, the canvas feature in HTML5 allows you to create and edit graphics in real time. This allows you to draw/edit graphics, photos, and images all of which can be user submitted, without the use of a single plugin.
Another useful feature is the application caches. This feature allows you to work in websites offline and as soon as a connection is established the website synchronizes itself. HTML5 can run this by storing data on local hard drive( think cookies, but much larger). This has great potential for websites that understand connection isn’t always available, it allows you to keep working, playing, or creating when passing though tunnels, on airplanes in mid flight, or just when you don’t want to pay for a wifi connection ( I figure boats aren’t a regular place to be with a laptop)
Not only will it excel in functionality, I believe that because of its smoother interface and interactivity it will become something of a trend. The HTML5 design fits apple, and it basically looks as if apple designed the internet. Design is the one thing you can always depend on apple to do well so it will catch on (imacs, ipods, ipads, powerbooks… don’t lie you have one of them). Despite that HTML5 is still in its developmental process it has richness and flexibility that is hard to miss. And although Flash is currently the kingpin in web video, the switch to HTML5 video is underway. From January to May the HTML5 friendly video available on the internet has jumped from 10 to 26 percent.
So now the question is when. Well it clearly won’t be overnight. The bugs with any new/refurbished program will have to be worked out, and they’ll have to wait for all of us in web creation to get familiar to make improvements, but the movement is in effect. Flash won’t be torpedoed out of the water just yet, every flash heavy site will have to re-script their video, which will be time consuming and expensive, but in the long run unavoidable. I’d even predict Steve Jobs would have an app for that.
All signs point to HTML5 being the new step in web development. It will take some time for it to fully mature and It won’t take flash out completely but it’s always a smart move to get a jump-start. Seriously consider the possibilities now so that you won’t be left up stream without a paddle.
