Microsoft Has Seen The Light. & It’s Not Silverlight. http://tinyurl.com/32jyufv

My primary reasons for disliking Flash were that it was proprietary (only one vendor/source) and that it has horrendous performance on OS X (definitely improving but still bad). I disliked Silverlight for the first of those reasons: any development only comes from Microsoft.

Well, it seems that Microsoft have had a “shift of strategy” :

During last week’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC),ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley asked Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s SVP of the Server and Tools Business, why the company failed to highlight Silverlight in a meaningful way this year. His answer was rather surprising.

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” he said. And while he said that the technology has some “sweet spots” for media applications (presumably like Netflix, which uses Silverlight on the web), its role as a vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime appears to be over. “Our strategy has shifted,” is how Muglia put it.

Instead, as they made clear during PDC, Microsoft is putting their weight behind HTML5 going forward. Hallelujah.

Further convergence on a single standard. Now if we can get everyone on the same page for HTML5 audio and video, it would be a big step forward. (I’m looking at you Mozilla!)

Sencha Takes On Flash With HTML5 Animator http://tinyurl.com/2dq7ljd

It’s nice to see someone working on an HTML5 authoring tool. Adobe has already previewed add-ons and beta tools for HTML5 authoring and it seems they “get” that Flash isn’t going to be dominant forever. With new stats showing about 54% of the video on the web is “HTML5 capable” that’s a sensible approach.

I’ve not tested HTmL5 Animator so I can’t comment on its relative merits to other authoring solutions. Compared with no solution or hand coding, anything is a step forward!

Adobe announces HTML5 Video Player widget http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/21/adobe-announces-html5-video-player-widget/

Good to see that Adobe are being practical about HTML5. They have always been in the best position to provide the tools for HTML5 because essentially we need the same functionality to create HTML5 Rich Media as we do to create Flash Rich Media – just that the output will be different.

Techcruch’s take on why this is a big deal.

HTML5 not ready for prime time, says W3: http://bit.ly/blTwrj.

The World Wide Web Consortium, the body that regulates and publishes the specifications of the HTML standard, is warning web content producers that the HTML5 is “not yet ready for production” and that the W3C will likely make further significant changes to the specification to increase interoperability. Philippe Le Hegaret, interaction domain leader responsible for the HTML and SVG spec, added that they expect it to be feature-complete in mid-2011.

This hasn’t stopped a lot of people already making the move to HTML5 where it makes sense as a Flash (or Silverlight) replacement.

In the meantime where there’s a showcase of  ”15 Excellent HTML5 Techniques and demonstrations“

Video Conferencing with the HTML5 Device Element http://bit.ly/aovjtq

Just another indicator of what is being developed with HTML5 as it unfolds:

Did you know that work is being done to enable videoconferencing from HTML5 applications? Ian Hickson has been doing work on the element in aseparate draft to make this possible.

The element will be used to allow the user to give permission to a page to use a device, such as a video camera. A type attribute can be used for the page to give more specificity on what kind of device they want access to. Right now this could be ‘media’ for access to an audio or visual device; ‘fs’ to access the file system, such as a USB connected media player; or ‘rs232′ or ‘usb’ to access devices connected in this manner.

The Wilderness Downtown: How it was Made http://bit.ly/bEybDx

By now you’ve no doubt seen The Wilderness Downtown, which is an amazing mash-up of HTML5 technologies, Google Street View and Canvas animation. The article details how each element was constructed, what technology was used and how it all came together.

HTML5 Player Comparison http://bit.ly/9l0fs3

A good listing of features for HTML5 players that allow you to add features beyond basic browser playback, including full screen. Many are iOS compatible and will fall back to use Flash if the browser doesn’t support HTML5 or the format of your video isn’t supported under HTML5 on specific browsers. For example, if you format to MP4 H264 supported by Chrome, Safari and IE9, you’ll get a Flash player fallback on Firefox.

Adobe Announces HTML5/CSS3/SVG Pack for Illustrator http://bit.ly/anOMff

I’ve long said that the company best positioned to supply HDTML 5 tools is Adobe. Glad they seem to think the same way.

Adobe is pleased to announce the availability of the Adobe® Illustrator® CS5 HTML5 Pack. This add-on for Illustrator CS5 15.0.1 provides initial support for HTML5 and CSS3, extends SVG capability in Illustrator CS5, and helps you easily design web and device content. In combination with the HTML5 features available in the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 11.0.3 updater, these new tools allow web designers to take advantage of the latest advancements in HTML5.

Boxee Embraces HTML5, Switches to Webkit http://bit.ly/bVtAsX

Not, as you might think another Flash refugee, but a switch from the Mozilla Gecko HTML rendering engine to the more popular Webkit HTML rendering engine. Webkit is fully open sourced and used in almost all mobile browsers, Safari and Chrome, but heavily subsidized by Apple with its development.

The switch to Webkit was:

The switch is an attempt to make full use of HTML5 within Boxee, but it should also help with accessing a wider array of video content that’s not yet available through dedicated Boxee apps.

Video: Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad http://bit.ly/bHaKkM

And yet, people think it can be done on an iDevice and even want it!

While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset, all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.

So, to be clear. There is no working version of Flash running on any smartphone, but somehow Apple should magically make it work on their devices with no access to the source code? In what reality is that reasonable?