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With each new HTML5 demo of something that comes up, I get the sneaking suspicion that HTML5 adoption is going to be slow.

It seems the capabilities of HTML5 and what you can do with it from an application basis are fine and dandy. It's just my observation and very-limited experience, but I've yet to see anything that really knocks it out of the park for me.

I'm currently working on a project that relies heavily on client-side javascript and flash (for media delivery). We have spent some time evaluating HTML5 and whether we should "cut the cord" and move to developing for that basis.

At this point, we've determined it makes no sense to do so for one simple reason -- it offers us no valued advantage over our current investment. While we hope to see the adoption improve, we're not holding our collective breath.



It's possible that the HTML5 revolution will come from new developers that never learned Flash (or, who like me, tried it once in high school, but didn't inhale).


HTML5 works on phone and tablet browsers; Flash barely does, and it won't at all in the near future.


We're well aware of the Flash situation with non-desktops.

It brings us to a major business decision.

Do we begin migration away from Flash (which we despise with a white-hot passion), even though it represents > 90% of our customers environments? Though a few have asked about our tablet strategy, we haven't had any customers (specific vertical market, enterprise space) push the tablet/mobile conversation.

If it were purely a technical motivation, we would have abandoned Flash long ago. But, we can't yet make the migration away from Flash without seeing good HTML5 support on our customers' desktops.


The thing is, as I played a bit with HTML5, it doesn't actually work that well on mobile browsers either.

It does work reasonably well on iOS, but on Android Browser, Flash does usually work better than HTML5. Which is a bit sad.


What exactly can't you do in html5 that you can do in flash?


Provide a working solution for all customers. Not just 25% of them.


Actual audio support really isn't there as far as I can tell.


Not sure. Why?




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