HTML Eats Babies and Spits Hot Fire
HTML5 is fast becoming the new hot thang that all the guys want to fuck. But, like the hot girl: she’s a raging bitch, requires a ton of maintenance, actually is just so-so in bed, and you cannot protect your investment (because she’s open, but remember she has standards). And all the boys want to have their way with her: Google is the new kid on the block, Microsoft the rich kid that wants to buy her, her best friend Mozilla has been holding her hands when time was tough, and now Apple the bad boy because he wants to prove to his gay lover that it’s really over.
I on the other hand am totally gay for flash, but that’s because when I originally wrote for the web in HTML/JS/CSS it was slowly killing my soul. I have and still consider myself pretty darn good at writing clean well-formed markup, making some custom components for jquery (I actually liked mootools for a time), and awesome at skinning sites in CSS. But, all while doing this it never for once felt like real programming. And, that’s what makes me think that this particular trio is really good at: creating sloppy, unmaintainable spaghetti code. But sometimes, that’s ok.
Heck, most of the time that’s ok. The web (initially) is supposed to be open and easy for people to get their message out there, and that’s exactly why HTML began as a dumb way to publish data. Not everyone has to make mind-blowing applications. HTML in its initial form never was about looking awesome or protecting content. So what we have now is adding patches on top of a platform never intended to be commercial and flashy.
However, on the other side are the people that want to send a message, provide a product of content, and deliver a brand or platform. It’s applications like these that defy the trend of openness and may never be able to reconcile with standards, which is what’s really funny about Apple: releasing a demo for HTML5, when it was more or less a demo for Safari.
I am not saying HTML5 and JavaScript is a bad thing; I’m saying it’s not something good for production of commercial code. If HTML5 and JavaScript is so great, then my friends shouldn’t have to bother writing applications for the iPhone or iPad in XCode (sorry Adobe), when I can have them develop for Safari.
Things about flash that make me shit rainbows:
- Compiled code
- Object oriented
- Distributed player with high market acceptance
So what is it that I want from standards? How about something better than and more “well-formed” than JavaScript; maybe even be able to send byte-code to the client, which is exactly why flash has been thriving for years: its been filling in the gap that HTML and JavaScript was never equipped to serve.