Nothing is going to replace Flash because it’s an industry standard! Even the $700.00 that people shell out…people are still going to buy it and use it. It’s possibilities are endless really!

Proprietary software and plugins and support are always going to have a corporate interest behind it. This has been great for Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, etc, but nothing has moved the Internet forward like User-Generated Content.

People are what make the web, not companies or even the technologies. This will give everyone more choice, not just the choice of those with the budget to advertise across the globe to gullible iConsumers and even more gullible businesses.

If HTML 5 is a standards-compliant and interoperable as promised, then this is the future and programmers will need to step up or step off.

Frankly, why pay thousands for an Adobe ActionScript course, or pay hundreds for an Apple Developer license, or thousands for Microsoft’s .NET software when the real power is back in Notepad. Meaning the real power is in the hands of creative programmers, not code-heads or Flash gurus, but a new breed which incorporates the best of everything and everyone.

I look forward to more tutorials like this one.

Thanks.

That being said, I am all for new technologies. The potentials of HTML5/CSS3 and the webGL standard (for example) opens up new territories of exploration and creativity. This can only be good for developers and for the consumers of information.

In the same way that I now turn to jquery for basic animations and effects, I’m sure the new markup standards will become an essential part of my toolset. Not having to rely on plugins is great when it makes sense. When it doesn’t – I’ll use the flash platform to bring my ideas to life. And… its actually as simple as that.

Flash has helped make the web what it is today (turds and all) – and that can’t be ignored. But I am certainly looking forward to whatever new technologies emerge, as well.

What this essentially means is that Flash will further move into more advanced fields. HTML 5 cannot and will not ever be a total (or even major) substitute for RIA technologies like Flash and there are a number of reasons for this.

1. HTML 5 can’t offer the precise animation control used by artists creating animated experiences (thinking about interactive advertising and the likes). Flash provides a good authoring environment for these things and will remain for that purpose, as it should.

2. HTML 5 can’t deliver high end client side applications (AJAX goes some way to solving this, but still Flash is and will remain more powerful in general). Also, some of the more powerful client side stuff mixes the two.

3. Open code isn’t always good, sometime it needs to be closed; Flash solves this.

4. And then we get onto Flash Media Server; which is what I think Adobes “flagship” product will be in the future and where I think Flash (and Silverlight) will essentially find their niche; for high end interactive and broadcasting products.

As its panning out, HTML 5 is going to tidy up markup some more and the biggy is going to be in how HTML 5 will allow; as others have said, for video and audio content posting more easilly and AJAX (and whatever else that comes up in the future) allow for animated UI components.

They dont allow however for animated websites and I’m strugglin to see how HTML 5 is going to support high end video content delivery and DRM. As Flash supports H.264… I’m unsure how this will work.

Here are some issues I have with the new video tag though:

1. Isn’t it a security risk in itself to have this functionality as viruses can be hidden in video.

2. When we have user contributed videos under HTML5 video; point #1 will become a problem (virus checking on the server).

3. How will DRM be handled with HTML5 Video?

– Flash goes a long way to solve these problems.

HTML5 will be supported in IE9 which is now in Beta and already available for download. (Tom is correct)

Firefox has been supporting certain features of HTML5 already and was first to do so in some aspects of the development. They will offer full HTML5 support as it is becomes a more standardized language. See link below:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/w3c-offers-html-5-draft-731

1) You don’t have to pay 700$ on an IDE to develop HTML5, all you need is a web browser and a text editor.

2) You don’t need to get any plugin to use HTML5, it just works out of the box.

3) HTML5 doesn’t have the security holes that Flash does.