The Battle is On! Or is it? HTML5 vs Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a single browser plug-in and multimedia platform popular for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Per Adobe statistics, Flash is on almost every computer worldwide with 98 percent penetration given provides consistency in appearance from one computer to the next. However, a collection of new technologies, including HTML5, is proving more and more they can reproduce some of what Flash offers.  Bruce Lawson, Opera Software web evangelist, believes Flash will be replaced and the newer technologies as a collective are "very close" in ability.


What I find interesting is as of June 2010, HTML5 has been in the Working Draft stage for 18 months and folks expect it to stay there at least another year.  Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects HTML5 to reach the Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012.  This mean web developers won't be able to start providing feedback on how to make HTML5 actually work for another two years.
Here's some background to give you a better idea of what this all means.  From conception to completion, all versions of HTML5 have to go through a distinct set of stages:

Stages in HTML development 

• Working Draft: After a private group of W3C members develops the standard, it becomes a Working Draft.  Standards can remain at Working Draft stage for literally years until some form of general consensus is achieved about how it should look.

• Candidate Recommendation: The focus at this stage is on feedback from developers about how practical or implementable the standard is.  Most significant features are locked, but the design of those features as well as minor aspects, such as syntax, may still change.  Although Candidate Recommendation stage does not typically last as long as Working Draft stage, it can still extend past a year.

• Proposed Recommendation: The standard is submitted to the W3C Advisory Council for final approval.  It is very rare to see any significant changes at this stage, which can last a few months to a year.  

• W3C Recommendation: The standard is now endorsed by the W3C and is safe to use.

Given the number of YEARS it will take to get through these stages, I apt to agree with Brandt Dainow's statement: "HTML5 is a great idea, but it's still just an idea. It's not a standard, it's not finished, and - in my opinion - using it now is just plain stupid."  Even so, it's probably wiser to take a deep breath and accept the bigger truth that both technologies will prevail and neither will conquer the other any time soon.