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I have read and experienced a lot of up and downs loves and hates of HTML5 from across the industry.  My thoughts are that open source is great, I'm all about easier deployment of media and content (It's what I'm all about).  This is definitely without a doubt where the web is going, but I don't think that it will exclude other technologies like I was hearing when HTML5 was in it's infancy.

I have talked to some large companies that have their "feelers" out on this, and staff dedicated to IT trends, and the consensus is that they don't even know what direction to go. Ultimately, a choice has to be made.  Internally a lot of these companies are looking for and hiring and implementation of HTML5 design with out actually knowing what direction they would go.  I heard a lot of "Do we go with HTML5 and CSS3, or do we stick with 4 and use proprietary software like Flash and Silverlight?" (How could we turn our backs on them now?)  It always ends with, We dont know yet...

There are definitely some great things about it, a few years delayed I must say, and additions will realistically only become available and depend on development in coming years. Some great things to see are the development of the <input> tag that supports common data types such as date, time, url, email etc. It is also good to see HTML5 incorporating/supporting media scenarios by adding the <video> and <audio> elements as part of the tag soup, and at the same time standardizing common video formats, much like the jpeg, gif and png have done on a static level. Other useful additions that I think will go a long way are better and standard support for application scenarios such as managing navigation history, local storage, drag/drop, drawing and content editing with the <canvas> tag. There is definitely lots of possibility, especially when combined with the latest CSS capabilities.

Some of the drawbacks I can see at this point are the under development of DOM fundamentals.  Specifically, I would have loved to see the HTML 5 specifically address extensibility of this tag set and rationalize things like HTC behaviors and XBL bindings. We now have built in media tags, but what if I want a <slideshow> tag? It simply doesn't address encapsulation of behavior, composition, layout extensibility, and ability to define new object models.

Its over-encompassing nature, especially beyond HTML in a strict sense, also makes me wonder if there shouldn't be a much more trimmed down HTML 5 Core spec. I'd love to see something that has a chance of being realistically and fully implemented in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, it looks like browser plugins such as MS Silverlight and Adobe Flash Player will continue to be an important part of the RIA platform, by bringing not only consistency in APIs and capabilities across browsers, but also by nailing some of the fundamentals. I believe as a designer that all of these technologies can coexist, and I feel like they can coexist for the better of the web.  Ultimately, users will decide, like they have since the beginning of "web time".  Which brings me to another point that I will address in a future blog.

If you have questions about future technologies or what direction you should go, contact virtuosodesign to discuss your needs moving forward.