Just read this news from Tim Anderson’s blog,
it appear that the W3C working draft has a statement about the use of proprietary UI languages.
As an open, vender-neutral language, HTML provides for a solution to the same problems without the risk of vendor lock-in.
BUT:
For sophisticated cross-platform applications, there already exist several proprietary solutions (such as Mozilla’s XUL, Adobe’s Flash, or Microsoft’s Silverlight). These solutions are evolving faster than any standards process could follow, and the requirements are evolving even faster. These systems are also significantly more complicated to specify, and are orders of magnitude more difficult to achieve interoperability with, than the solutions described in this document. Platform-specific solutions for such sophisticated applications (for example the MacOS X Core APIs) are even further ahead.
Read the W3C working draft for HTML5
Even if HTML5 seems to be heading in the right direction:
- New Structure
- Block semantic elements
- Inline semantic elements
- Embedded media
- Interactivity
The only point where I see an overlap with Flash or Silverlight technologies is for ‘Embedded Media’ and ‘Interactivity’.
However those are just a minor part of what is feasible with Flash…
So no, for me HTML5 is not going to make me stop using Flash & Flex, for Silverlight it’s another question as I didn’t even started using it…
For the semantic part, well I’m looking forward to use those new HTML5 elements, but seems that I’ll have to wait a long time 🙁
Ahmet
What is it that is commonly done in Flash that is not covered by HTML5 (in particular the video element and the canvas 2d API) and SVG?
Honestly for me a soft as Flash is not comparable with the next version of HTML (aka HTML 5).
The Flash side is much more oriented rich internet application (RIA), whereas HTML5 is more oriented semantic and standards.
So if for you HTML5 is equivalent to Flash because it can make some rotation to a video component, or draw some lines, I would just answer that you may don’t get the ‘big picture’ of both technology.
Now about the word ‘commonly’ I guess it’s just a matter of competences, an expert would answer something else that a beginner would do.