2010/02/23

Mashable FAIL!

In a recent article on Mashable, Ben Parr wrote:
Which will eventually win out in the end: Adobe Flash or HTML5? Which is better for the future of the web?
Wait, what? Why am I the only one that sees the problem with this statement? I'll let my response to Mashable explain it:
This is a ridiculous and pointless discussion. You're comparing TVs to DVDs here. They both provide entertainment, but one is what all entertainment is viewed on, and the other is one form of specialized entertainment. Can you guess which one is which in my analogy? Here's a clue: HTML5 is the TV.

HTML is what a website is built on. Even if you use ASP or PHP, those are simply tools that control how the HTML is ultimately displayed. Flash is a completely different ballpark: A) it's a proprietary format for scriptable/interactive media content, B) it is not a markup language designed to provide the basis for the web page design (it requires HTML to be displayed as an embedded object on a web page). Just like a DVD requires a TV** to be used.

There is not even any point to having this discussion because Flash has nothing to do with running the WWW. If Flash completely ceased to exist tomorrow we might be out a few web games, but the web as a whole would march on with nothing more than a slight hiccup. If HTML (which will eventually move to HTML5 as the standard) were to completely disappear tomorrow, the entire WWW would come to a screeching halt. So the answer to your ridiculously inane question of who would win, is clearly "HTML5".

A sensible question to ask here would be "could HTML5 kill Adobe Flash" or "is HTML5 a Flash-killer", because it would be reasonable to debate whether Flash will fall by the wayside because of HTML5, rather than "who will win".

** For simplicity sake I'm using the term "TV" to mean any TV, monitor or other viewing device.
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