by AJ George
Honest truth: sometimes I fall into Hype Holes.
When you tell me the iPad is "the most important thing [you've] ever done," Steve Jobs, I believe you.
When I'm told that HTML5 will be the inevitable death of Flash, I believe it.
And when Kevin Lynch says that HTML5 will send the web back to "the dark ages of video," I believe that too.
What can I say, I'm a believer.
Luckily for me, the fine folks over at Gizmodo have put the whole Flash vs. HTML5 debate into perspective that allows me to take a deep breath and not rush to pick a side… just yet anyway.
To summarize:
- HTML5 allows video to be embedded directly into web pages, similar to a JPEG image.
- Playing videos through a Flash plug-in is generally slower and more buggy and isn't even an option on the iPhone or the iPad.
- Vimeo, DailyMotion and YouTube have launched test programs for HTML5 video technology.
- Internet Explorer (the most popular web browser on the internet) doesn't support the HTML5 video tag at all and Firefox (the second most popular) doesn't fully support it either.
- HTML5 doesn't support DRM (Digital Rights Management) which means no movies and no TV…unless Hollywood decides it doesn't like money anymore and wants to give all of its content away for free to everyone.
- Adobe is pushing Flash to nearly all smartphones that don't already have it.
- HTML5 isn't a replacement for Flash games or interactive ads.
- In the near future iPhones and iPads will move toward video delivery via apps, not HTML5.
- Flash is here to stay…for a while anyway.
- HTML5 is working its way into relevance…but it's not there yet.
So what does this mean for those of us who fell into the Hype Hole of thinking our Flash-free iPhones would be saved any day now by the global acceptance of HTML5? Means we better get some shovels.
About the author: AJ George, a cum laude graduate of Towson University, is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the soon-to-be released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.