Look forward to the battle of HTML5 vs Flash

It's not surprising that flash has met lots of challenges this year. We already know that Apple's strong attitude against flash in their products. We also know that Microsoft has made a lot of efforts to spread its silverlight. But actually there is one more player in the chaos of RIA: the HTML5.

Maybe people will use statistics like "over 90% of websites are using flash" to argue for the flash. But if they are reminded the predecessor of flash - java applet, they may understand that 90% doesn't mean a absolute domination over RIA.

Before 2000 when flash was not yet popular, java applet has been widely used by lots of websites. It was also the golden time for Sun. The stock price reached $258.75 per share during 2000 and 2001. Then by the growing of Macromedia, flash showed its advantages in performance over applet. And finally what you can see now is that 90% websites are using flash while applet has faded in the front-end of web pages.

The same thing may apply to HTML5. For programmers I guess it is also easier to use something that they are familiar with. But the evolution of technology will force us to learn new stuff. If the emerging new technology has superior advantages over the old one, then the stereotyped people who insist in using the old one will either be discarded by the age or change the age to their own(the latter is always quite difficult to achieve.) So the problem now is not whether HTML5 will challenge Flash. It is a problem of when this battle will start. As far as I have seen in those HTML5 websites, they consume fewer resources and deliver a similar or even better performance than flash(at least from the examples that they show). If HTML5 could be finally standardized, then Flash will get a real hit(why should I install some plug-in for some animation if it can be achieved already through the standards natively supported by all the browsers and platforms).

So far there are no published books about HTML5. Most of them are in progress by HTML5 pioneers. And In June there will be some available. I will buy some and start playing with it:)