The Internet is changing constantly and quickly. There have been things that some of us have grown to love and hate. One of those has been the Adobe Flash Player. The Adobe Flash player allows the user to watch video through a web-browser but Flash software and up to date plug-ins must be downloaded to view. The times of constantly having to download plug-ins to watch a short 10-second video is coming to an end. Things will be streamlined very soon!
The next big thing coming to the Internet is HTML5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5), it will bring a whole new level of user experience on the internet. It allows web users to take full advantage of web media – audio, video and other multimedia without having to download third party software, such as Adobe Flash, to get them to work. This means the end of those annoying ‘pop-ups’ asking you to upgrade to the latest version so you can play the file you want to see or hear. The new HTML5 will be integrated into all the major web browsing applications Mozzila Firefox, Google Chrome and Microsoft Explorer.
HTML5 will become the standard in web development. If you are thinking of having your business website re-developed anytime soon you should make sure that your web design company is up to date with this key development.
Mozilla, developers of the highly regarded Firefox Browser, are very upbeat about HTML5, which is a prominent feature of their new Firefox 4, which launches in the next few weeks. Whilst this will no doubt be welcomed by the 450 Million users of Firefox it is unlikely to be greeted with such enthusiasm by Adobe, who could see a sharp decline in the usage of one of its premier products.
Is this the beginning of the end of ‘Flash’ then? Mozilla certainly think so. Their view is that once the latest versions of Firefox together with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome browsers include the functionality needed to make best use of available internet technologies, including mobile web, people will have no need to download any external plug-ins. It does seem to make perfect sense – especially for mobile web, where it seems almost ludicrous that you have to download a full version of Adobe Flash in order to play a simple 10-second movie clip!
As i-Phone users will know Apple has already done battle with Adobe when it banned ‘Flash’ from its i-Pad and i-Phone devices. HTML5 will be a much more viable and reliable option across all platforms – Mozilla advise that ‘flash’ is the biggest single reason for crashes of its Firefox browser, the problem became so severe that in June of last year they introduced a ‘crash protection’ to try and combat the issue.
Adobe is trying to cover some lost ground by releasing their new tool “Wallaby” that will allow Adobe Flash designers and developers to export their Adobe Flash file into HTML5. Yawn. Wake me up.
Unfortunately this ‘hail pass’ effort by Adobe to have Flash stay relevant in the emerging Mobile landscape will fail. Note: HTML5 is the only way to get interactivity on HTML pages viewed on mobile devices like the Apple iPhone and iPad. The bottom line is the tool has major gaps and will basically export the Flash file into a generally unusable HTML5 file. Yes, it will work on simple Flash-to-HTML5 conversions like animations, but for those robust Rich Media Flash banners converting into a HTML5 banner with a simple touch of a button? Nope, never gonna happen.
Lets raise our glass to another fine example of the rapid evolution of our one and only World Wide Web!