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HTML 5 will also bring new video and audio capabilities to Web pages. A feature called Canvas--now supported by every major browser except Internet Explorer--lets developers create HTML graphics that match those that they would build using Adobe's Flash software. Andreas Bovens, Web evangelist for Opera, says that "developers are still exploring the richness of Canvas," but he believes that the feature could be used to create sophisticated games and other graphical applications employing HTML and JavaScript alone.
The new standard also focuses on making Web applications work offline. Google Gears and Adobe AIR already allow a Web-based application to access local storage and processing on a user's computer, but HTML 5 aims to make offline capability even easier for a browser to use, without requiring additional plug-ins. Mozilla's Blizzard adds that it's not just about going offline: it's also about allowing a browser to access more of the user's hardware. For example, he says, standards are starting to emerge for defining how a browser running on a cell phone should access the location information stored on that device.
All the major browsers--Safari, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer--have started adopting parts of HTML 5. But each browser has taken a slightly different approach. Apple's Safari, for example, has focused on performance, incorporating new features only when they do not harm the browser's overall speed. The latest version of the Opera browser includes many features of HTML 5, and an experimental version supports HTML 5's video capabilities. Both Google Chrome and the beta version of Safari support HTML 5's offline features.
For the features described in HTML 5 to become an official Web standard, they need to be incorporated into two different browsers. Since they are built on the same framework Safari and Chrome count as one browser in this respect. A Web page that uses the feature will then need to work just as well in both browsers. Smith of the World Wide Web Consortium says that it may take some time to make progress, since there are so many independent browsers. "There's no way to speed it up," he says.
Visual WebGui makes an application accessible via the Web without altering its code.
The last decade expanded what we could do online, but the Web's basic programming couldn't keep up. That threatened to fracture the world's greatest innovation engine—until a small group of Web rivals joined forces to save it.
HTML5 is changing the look of Web video, but can it edge out Flash?
Why does this industry continue its vain attempts to graft the ability to execute code in a browser? Javascript is a terrible language - it has little object orientation and zero type safety. This article explains how the 5th generation of HTML is being implemented in five different browsers. That's the problem - none of the five will digest this frankensteinian dinosaur HTML stream the same way.
The article correctly highlights the fact that bandwidth has increased dramatically over the last ten years. Why bother with the absolute mess that is HTML/Javascript when you can simply download an executable that can run safely in a Java or .NET sandbox on the user's machine? Developers can then use first class languages like Java or C# to write first class applications.
What about deployment you ask? That's been solved for years. There are plenty of technologies for centralized deployment of client applications from a server. MS's One Click comes to mind immediately, and game companies have been doing it a lot longer. If the industry would spend more time ensuring that applications could be easily served over the internet, then developers could get on with creating more powerful apps for our ever increasingly sophisticated devices. And finally the days of HTML Hell would be a thing of the past.
Oh, and those guys like the one from Mozilla would have to learn Java or C# instead of HTML/Javascript...sorry dude.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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dtutelman
117 Comments
There's a reason for that
The article says, "The new standard also focuses on making Web applications work offline. Google Gears and Adobe AIR already allow a Web-based application to access local storage and processing on a user's computer, but HTML 5 aims to make offline capability even easier for a browser to use, without requiring additional plug-ins."
That worries me. A lot.
There are reasons that Javascript was more secure than Microsoft's original scripting objects. (Probably still so -- I'm retired now and haven't kept up with everything.) One of the key reasons was that Javascript did not allow access to local storage. If you give an opportunity for code that just downloaded itself to read or write local storage indiscriminately, you lay your computer wide open for all sorts of nasty stuff.
And narrowing "indiscriminately" down is very tricky. It is not for the average user, and probably not even for most computer professionals, to control the access policy for the browser on their computer. Effective administration of access policy requires understanding the hacker's mind and methods. And, since those methods change daily, the policy must evolve very quickly to keep up. (Think about the daily updates to your anti-virus software.)
Given that criminal, political, and terrorist elements are getting ever more sophisticated, we need to be VERY careful how much we open up access to the local machine, especially the disk. It's a real Pandora's box. Perhaps the designers of HTML 5 have a handle on it. But I'm skeptical.
DaveT
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