So you keep hearing about HTML 5, and how it has the potential to “kill flash” completely. You’d think this would make us pretty nervous because Showit is a flash website builder, and our 9-5 (actually more like 9-9) is building websites for photographers with Showit.
I want to officially say; I’m not worried about it one bit, and neither should Showit users.
HTML 5 is the next version of HTML. As of today the standard is HTML 4.01 , and XHTML 1.0. HTML 5 will replace those standards, and bring along with it the capability to define audio and video in the web page just like you would with a picture or text. For example you use the <img src> attribute to define a jpg, where in HTML5 you could use <audio src> or <video src> to define an audio or video file. This can all be done more quickly, and more efficiently than presenting with Flash because it’s then native to the browser and doesn’t require plugins to work: i.e., Adobe Flash.
75% of media on the web right now is basically puppet-ed by one master; Adobe. One of the co-chairman of the W3c HTML5 team is Maciej Stachowiak, who works with Apple’s Webkit team (the guys responsible for iPhone browsers). Do you see what’s happening? Apple won’t let Flash on it’s products because it’s working to bring HTML 5 to fruition. We’ll see this on mobiles first before we see it in browsers on the desktop.
HTML5 still has a very long way to go. We just hit Flash 10; that’s 10 revisions of flash since it was born in 1996 (technically born in 1994). Flash is a very stable, very mature, and every web browser can display flash. It will be at minimum 1 year before we even see HTML 5 matured to the point to where it’s an option to web developers. As of now only Chrome and Safari are even able to view pages rich with HTML 5. It will be even longer than that before web developers start utilizing HTML 5 over Flash. It’ll be the same as the film era dying off for photographers, and the digital era beginning.
So where does that leave flash and Showit? When HTML5 is matured, I foresee Showit evolving right along with it, perhaps being the first HTML5 website builder. Showit users; you’ll be the first photographers to have new sites built with it. Of course this is all just a prediction. The future is not always clear.
One thing is for sure; Apple is out to kill flash. It’s not too far fetched seeing as how they killed the floppy.
Great post! Very informative. Thanks Nick!
Nick,
Very good read…thank you!
Good work Nick.
Also keep in mind HTML 5 is still HTML leaving it without the fluidity of flash as an animation tool. Many people don’t care about the feel or flow of their website and simply need to get contact across and that’s what HTML does.
I wouldn’t compare it to film and digital because both of those still accomplished the same result. FLASH and HTML don’t give the same result unless you’re using flash simply for embedding video.
Great post Nick. Thank you for addressing this.