"The World is Moving to HTML 5" and Other Flights of Fancy

This basically reads, "If HTML 5 is so great, why aren't Flash developers, like myself, using it?!"<p>That would be a much more interesting article, and the reason is basically because the market share is not there yet, although it is increasing quite a lot. However, to use this as a reason for the continued dominance of Flash is obviously extremely short sighted.<p>The author himself predicts that the iPad and iPhone like devices will be the future of computing, which lends even more credence to HTML 5, given that all modern mobile devices support WebKit or the equivalent HTML 5 browser.<p>However, instead of arguing "HTML 5 is no more powerful than Flash", the author needs to argue why an open standard, which is rapidly developing and seeing continuous growth, will not take off.<p>The author cites a few examples of super powerful Flash web apps and seems to imply that these are the future of desktop applications, however, these are dwarfed by the quantity of new web applications created every day.<p>The author basically needs to argue why Google and the countless other creators of popular web apps out there would switch to Flash, when the trend seems to be pointing in the opposite direction.<p>HTML 5 is not so much a "Flash killer" as it is simply "one less reason to have to use Flash".

The key error this author makes is in the title, with the word "moving". The title suggests that the general velocity of web technologies isn't towards open standards, particularly HTML5. The content of the post seems to be a mere apologetic for Flash as the status quo, arguing that at the moment HTML5 cannot do what Flash can. That is evidently true, just as it is also evidently true that the internet is moving towards HTML5.<p>All of the major players but Adobe are making big steps towards HTML5 as the standard for rich internet media. Even Microsoft are being forced to tag along. We simply have to answer one question - which technology is improving at a greater rate, Flash or HTML5? Basic arithmetic will tell us the rest.<p>Flash is a dead technology walking. The forces that want it dead are faster, smarter and better resourced than Adobe.<p>A previous poster said 'HTML 5 is not so much a "Flash killer" as it is simply "one less reason to have to use Flash".'. Like any open technology, HTML5 is one reason after another, with more reasons presenting themselves at a near-exponential rate.

"Disclaimer: This post is not about defending Flash."<p>No, it really is. This is just as annoying as anyone claiming that HTML5+extras means the immediate (or even near-term) death of Flash.

Why doesn't Adobe just open source the Flash plugin? Seems like it would solve a lot of problems here.

&#62; nearly all applications will be web-based in the next 5 years<p>I sincerely hope the author is wrong. I think the almost all the applications which function well on the internet have communication as their core function. I sick fed up of having to use 5 languages (Java/PHP/Ruby/Clojure/Python, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS) just to create a moderately usable UI. Even worse, I'm fed up having to work with crappy unresponsive Enterprise Web based UIs.

We should allow the Flash developers to secede from the web. It's what they seem to want, anyway.