Next page: HTML5 or new standard for future Web pages

With increasingly powerful HTML5, web pages will achieve more and more functionality. The change is accelerating.

Flash surrendered.

What we're talking about is on the mobile internet. Flash's patent holder adobe-yes, the company that invented the famous Photoshop software announced last week that it would not devote any resources to flash support on mobile devices such as mobile phones.

For more than more than 10 years, Flash has been a standard format for Web pages when displaying multimedia content, and it is one of the most important means of profit for adobe companies besides Photoshop. Flash animation once rage, with the production of Flash online ads are still everywhere. There are also videos uploaded to YouTube, most of which were in flash format in the early days.

The rise of the technology stems from the 1990 's late-stage browser wars. At the time, both Netscape and Microsoft competed for the market with their own browsers, but fierce competition led to Web content publishers encountering compatibility issues with different browsers: to outdo rivals, Netscape and Microsoft incorporated proprietary technology into their browsers, "expanding" the original technical standards, To make the site look different to the end user. As a result, the results are mixed in different browsers, creating confusion for Web developers and users.

A company called Macromedia found the opportunity to develop Flash, which was later acquired by Adobe. Flash from the date of birth, the appearance of a unified solution, has been widely used in Web pages and network multimedia production, so that the pages become rich and colorful, no longer just monotonous different thickness, different sizes of text or pictures, and there are few similar to the same technology as Flash.

But the torrent of technology is always rolling forward. More than 10 years on, the problem of Flash is becoming more and more serious as mobile devices become a mainstream device for Internet and entertainment. For example, it consumes too much power, and the most important thing about mobile phones and tablets is enough battery time, and flash consumes a lot of valuable mobile device memory resources. However, neither technical nor commercial strategy, Adobe will not take the initiative to change this situation, after all, no one is willing to break their own stable profit of the business model.

The big companies that need to compete for words in the mobile internet age-Apple, Google and Microsoft-don't think so. With the launch of the ipad in February 2010, Apple pioneered the death penalty for flash on mobile devices and backed the new web-page format, followed by Google and Microsoft: Chrome browsers turned to the new Web page format, or even a web-app store with new technology. Microsoft's next-generation operating system's browser interface does not support those technologies that need to install specific plug-ins to run, including Flash.

Their new support objects together point to the HTML5. Now, with Adobe's initiative to flash on mobile devices-even Adobe has launched its own HTML5 development tool "Edge"-HTML5 is getting closer to the day when it becomes the new standard for future Web pages.

An intuitive explanation is that HTML5 is the fifth edition of standard HTML for Web pages, and it provides developers with a complete platform, without any plug-ins, compared to previous generations of HTML. In addition to the most basic audio and video, it also supports more interactive features, as well as new features such as multithreading. It is these features that make it possible to achieve the general complexity of large programs on a Web page. It is not only conducive to development, but also conducive to maintenance. On mobile devices like mobile phones, it also behaves more efficiently and saves power than Flash. Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder, mentioned that the power to watch video in Flash was almost twice times as much as the HTML5 watch video.

Developers are also very much in pursuit of the advantages that HTML5 can develop across platforms, which means they can use this technology to develop fully compatible products for smartphones, tablets and PCs, without having to make changes specifically for specific hardware or online stores. Whether it's Apple iOS, Google Android or Microsoft Windows Phone, or even the fading BlackBerry OS, users can use apps just by opening their browsers. This allows developers to promote their products to the fullest extent possible.

NA information company CTO Liu Tie even told "the first financial weekly", from the technical view HTML5 already has the ability to replace Flash, in the 3D graphics can also do a better rendering. The company is a staunch supporter of HTML5 technology, and its most well-known product now is dolphin browsers.

According to Binvisions.com, a technology blogger who tracks internet technology, 34% of the 100 most popular websites in the third quarter of 2011 used HTML5. Technology Jobs Web site Dice.com said that the HR manager has doubled the number of HTML5 technical talent searches in the first quarter to the third quarter of this year.

James Lamberti, vice president of mobile advertising InMobi Mobile insights, revealed that in September 2011 the number of large advertisers using HTML5 technology to produce advertising in the United States had increased from 62 in January to 250.

It looks like HTML5 's tide is a bit overwhelming, but someone reminded us to stop, because what's even more curious is when you can fully embrace the beautiful HTML5 Web page?

The topic went back to the big companies. In fact, Adobe has complained that Apple, Google and Microsoft are planning to stay away from Flash, more out of business than technical issues. There is some truth to this from the various motives of these big companies turning to HTML5.

Apple has always had reservations about supporting HTML5. For example, when developing a HTML5 application for the iphone, developers are not currently able to invoke features such as cameras or gyroscopes, and will only get full support when developing app versions. This is because the App Store has always been an integral part of Apple's business model, while HTML5 encourages direct development of applications on the Web.

In June 2011, the old British Financial Times, due to dissatisfaction with the new policy in the App Store, withdrew its own paid application and was promoted by the Web page. Three months later, the Web client ft.co up to 200,000 of downloads, and 15% of them paid subscribers. Although this is not a common example, it is not yet a threat to Apple, but Apple does not want such an example more and more.

At Google, the situation is also very complicated. The company's mobile strategy is somewhat vague, with the exception of the Chrome OS for laptops, as well as the hot mobile OS Android. The former relies on web pages, and Google has even launched a chrome netbook that does not install any software and has only one browser, but the latter is closer to Apple's model and sees app as mainstream. So while Google has announced its support for HTML5, it wants to fully integrate its development into its own orbit.

As for Microsoft, although in the IE9 and IE10 browsers, all part of the support for HTML5, but the company also has plans to promote the Sliverlight, this is Microsoft's own new Web development technology. If you fully support HTML5, the future will reduce the market share of Silverlight.

The Huaiguitai of these large companies, the level of support for HTML5 is not up to 100%, so the HTML5 camp formed by a number of companies, has not yet formed a unified standard. For example, for video support, one side is an apple that supports the H.264 encoding format, while the other supports WEBM's Google and browser companies Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft simply as a wall. The spread of this technology camp, the lack of support for developers, led to the majority of HTML5 applications experienced slow start-up speed, poor experience and other problems.

Now more and more developers are trying to incorporate apps, common Web pages and HTML5 into their products, which is almost the safest way to deal with future trends. In the popular application of "Flight Butler", the key ticket inquiries and flight dynamic features directly implemented on the app, maps and hotel queries take the embedded common Web pages, and according to their latest plan, the future of community services will be using HTML5 technology for development. This temporary HTML5 "packaged" into the app, to prepare for cross-platform and richer functionality, has been used by a number of developers.

After all, no one wants to miss the HTML5 that can make pages richer and can be developed across platforms. In addition to Adobe's initiative to surrender, they also ushered in a more powerful force-facebook. November 9, Facebook announced the acquisition of HTML5 program distribution platform Company Strobe. It has just launched its ipad client software in October to support HTML5 Web development technology.

Let's turn our eyes back to 17 years ago, when Microsoft's Bill Gates saw Netscape browser easily occupy 90% of the user's desktop, the full driver of the company into the development of IE browser, this decision makes Microsoft relies on the operating system and browser to dominate the PC market. Today, browser companies are equally ambitious and want to use programs-including operating systems-directly on the web, and HTML5 become their most important bargaining chip.

History is always like this, and inevitably there is reincarnation. Now, it's time for a new generation to come in.