On: The HTML5 Experiments of Hakim El Hattab

[mahmud]

I respect his opinions, but this is not about him, rather HTML5.

His demos provoked uses cases in my head, stuff I would usually consider flash for. I am by no means anti-flash; I know the SWF and FLV specs like the back of my hand. I have annotated wireshark logs of RTP that are almost faithful to the "spec". And most importantly, I am an Adobe fan, and sided with them against Apple.

But this is one of those "top idea in your head" things. Now, after seeing those demos, my mental model of "what flash can do" has been diminished. I will still use flash for microphone capture, sockets, and persistent cookies. But I know now that I don't need flash for audio, video, and interactive eye candy.

Flash has always been a last resort, and seeing HTML5, in this light, is like discovering Qafiya in English:

http://www.ghazalpage.net/prose/notes/arabic_rhymes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaafiyaa

[ThomPete → mahmud]

But I know now that I don't need flash for audio, video, and interactive eye candy.

I don't know what kind of work you do with video and audio, but HTML5 is so far away from being anything close to powerful when it comes to the audio and video area.

You wan't to do an interactive video in HTML5 like http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

You really want to do complex audio tools in HTML5 like http://audiotool.com

HTML5 is still inferior to Flash.

What is great is that there is experiments being done.

But those experiments are interesting because they are done in HTML5 not because they are somehow showing that it's better than flash.

I am pretty sure most of the projects that Fantasy Interactive do can't be done in HTML5.