Technology: Rapid Gains for HTML5, But Challenges Ahead

HTML5 is the next generation of the HTML language used to markup, layout and present content in web browsers.  It directly challenges proprietary rich-content technologies like Adobe’s Flash.  Two factors that are driving its rapid adoption are mobile and Apple’s anti-Flash stance.

Smart-phone application development has been fragmented because there hasn’t been a standard technology for building mobile applications. This Wikipedia page describes the state of mobile application development and lists 50 different available platforms for creating applications.  Frequently used mobile software development technologies include Java for Blackberry, Apple’s Objective-C-based  iOS SDK, Android’s Java SDK, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile SDK, and Adobe’s cross-platform AIR SDK.  In order for developers to create an application that runs across a variety of devices and provides a similar experience on all devices, it’s typically been necessary to have multiple versions of the application written for the different target platforms, and expensive undertaking.

Few mobile applications are written exclusively to run in a mobile browser.  The reason why is that mobile applications built using HTML4 are limited not only in the richness for how a browser-based application can be presented but they also don’t allow the application access to built-in capabilities of the mobile device, like GPS, memory and graphics, limiting the range of possibilities for what the application can do.

In April of 2010, Steve Jobs declared that Flash would not be supported by Apple mobile products.  He wrote that “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short…  New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Netbiscuits CEO Michael Neidhoefer advised developers to try to develop their application to target the widest range possible of mobile devices.  And that is exactly what the intent of HTML5 is.  But the goal is easier said than it will be achieved.

Currently mobile net traffic is dominated by three techologies:  Android (46%), Apple iOS (35%) and Blackberry (15%).  But Neidhoefer comments that we need to remember that there are now 3000 different types of mobile devices in use. Consider for example Android devices — there are now 40 different Android manufacturers creating devices with a wide range of capabilities and characteristics, like screen size.  He noted that the “long tail of devices” generates about two-thirds of all mobile site requests.

Getting HTML5, or any development platform, to be able to adequately run on all or many of the various mobile devices available, will be very hard.  A report by Netbiscuits comments that “even if all iPhones or Android devices were running on the latest version of their respective operating system, differences in hardware would still hinder the implementation of a single user experience among all devices.”