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Firstly, I respect the idea of cutting through PR speak. I hate it as much as you do. That said, there are some things in your comment I think you're way off on. MINORITY. Get it? Unsupported! Unofficial! What happens if the minority goes away? Don't buy Tucker. Buy GM. The vendors with minority market share are really putting their weight behind this spec, and adopting features as quickly as they can. The majority browser vendor, Microsoft, is not. They have a conflict of interest now that Silverlight is out. MS has displayed reticence in cannibalizing functionality from their other products in the past; IE is unlikely to subsume Canvas and Video features since its the domain of Silverlight ( for the time being ). We have been in this situation before - how many of us have banged our head against the desk for hours fixing a "bug" for IE6? Though many web devs are brave enough to only support current gen browsers, many of us do not have that luxury. I love HTML 5, but I can't imagine any of the features to be "killer" enough to make users switch to more modern browsers. That said, I'm not big on prognostication, and if it turns out I'm wrong, I'll be a happy man. What a threatened tool vendor CEO has to say is what you should use to form your opinion about a technology and its future viability. 100% agreed. But I also wouldn't discount that opinion just because it comes from someone in a weakened position. Every one of us is a geek, and every one of us has been in a seemingly losing position when we actually know we're right. I'm with you, about not trusting the source, but not on the idea that it invalidates the position of that source. The biggest challenge for HTML5 will be the constant undermining from companies that see their current tool strategy and quasi-monopoly threatened, such as us. This I have the biggest problem with, and I'll project onto it some other sentiments I've seen from HN and Redditors, just to make it interesting :)
I'll posit this: a monopoly, kept in check with free and open source alternatives, is healthy for our web ecosystem. I'll go further: we would not have AJAX if Microsoft didn't invent it. It's a hell of a good idea, but maybe not good enough, alone, to force users to switch browsers. Since MS invented it, and since it had the dominant browser ( a quasi-monopoly ), and since it was a great feature, other browsers could implement it. We all benefited. If it came from Mozilla, web devs would have been bending over backward to not totally ruin the experience of their AJAXified apps for IE users, and no one would have bothered to switch browsers.
I know that I'm picking on subtext from your comment, and that's what I'm most disagreeing with, but I wanted to share that opinion. If we keep repeating the fear of how long it might take to implement again and again, it will take even longer. Your hesitation equals cold hard cash for us. Everyone knows that HTML 5 will be faithfully implemented in at least FF/Webkit/Opera before long. But, for right now, IE is still the lynch pin. Adoption of HTML 5 features will occur as rapidly as they're introduced into IE ( if history holds true - I pray for some really feisty and ballsy web devs, but I'm not holding my breath ). This, obviously, sucks, but for the time being, Adobe is right - if we're going to wait for IE, and if IE remains the dominant browser, we're going to be waiting a while. Flash is a strong bet for emerging platforms - I'm high as a kite How is this not accurate? I can reliably replicate any feature from HTML 5 in Flash today, and it'll work on any platform I want (* except all the platforms geeks get cranky about ;) ). Those features have been around for a while now. Flash's been a test bed for new ideas, and we all reap the benefits when it fails miserably ( intro movies = suck // never use a monolithic binary model for the web ) and when it succeeds spectacularly ( cross-platform, single-codec video player: <video>; audio player: <audio>; custom fonts; vector illustration <canvas>; animation [ more CSS3 ]; persistent local storage; etc ]). _I'm increasingly uncomfortable with calling the WhatWG proposals "HTML 5" though_
I'm offput by this statement as well. I don't know why he's uncomfortable... It does seem like he's trivializing it. Open standards are the enemy of our proprietary tools. Again, I wouldn't count Adobe out on this one. The <video> tag isn't going to kill Adobe. Proprietary means Adobe can implement DRM. Yes. I know. WE ALL HATE THE FUCK OUT OF DRM. YouTube could thrive without DRM, but Hulu, for right now, could not. It is because Hulu offers protection on their videos ( Netflix, too ) that they're allowed to stream content to us. We could all "send a message" by torrenting those shows, cutting out Hulu/Netflix until they switch to <video> in lieu of Flash. But no one else will. Most people don't even understand what a plug-in is. They don't care that it has DRM attached. And frankly, me watching a few adverts so that the writers of The Office can buy a couple more ivory backscratchers is really not that bothersome for me. Again, Adobe implemented the first successful browser plug-in - they paved the way for <video> in the HTML 5 spec, so while we're chanting for its death, let's not forget that it's done some good. Fuck you, WHATWG, Chrome, Mozilla, Safari. Now you're just projecting ;) |
Funny you should say that. Users don't really care about features. What they care about is being able to view the content.
Flash is so popular today only because of services like YouTube. It only takes a YouTube to make HTML 5 popular, and speaking of YouTube, guess who owns it ;)
> Adoption of HTML 5 features will occur as rapidly as they're introduced into IE
Complementary to the point above, Microsoft doesn't have any options but to implement it, otherwise they'll lose more market share.
Not to mention that plugins can be developed by third parties for IExplorer to add HTML 5 functionality. Google already started doing that with Gears.