Today’s developers are currently deep at work on a new development that might modify the entire internet as we know it. It’s known as HTML 5.0, and some recent press releases have questioned the dominance of rich browser plugins like Microsoft Silverlight.
Considering video has grown to such an integral part of the modern browser experience, it can be iffy to be reminded of the fact that a large part of the videos we see comes filtered through a 3rd party plugin. There’s not really anything essentially incorrect with such a notion, for the most part.
What HTML 5.0 Means for Video Standards
But the internet is premised upon open, useable standards. At this moment, all the standards for flash video are in the hands of
Adobe. While there’s no chance of Adobe going bust, the important thing is that having each and every ‘rich’ web video downloading through the plug-in of a private organization moves against the open standards that serve the www itself.
So HTML 5.0 has chosen to resolve this conundrum. Today, squads of web developers are deep at work creating a viable set of standards for the www, a standard that that shall define rich documents and let videos and other multimedia content to be located right there in the HTML standard, not sent through browser plugins.
Should Graphic Designers Care?
This counts because the www of the moment shall look very different in the upcoming years. While a good amount of the rich user experience will clearly mirror the best qualities of the rich addons we’re accustomed to, the amount of changes achievable in the web browser shall go even further.
If you take a look at what organizations such as Google have done with current HTML practices (think of how fluid Google Maps is), and all the new developments that have been located into our web browsers, think of an entirely new sphere of possibilities on top of that.
Is This All Coming Soon?
In all probability not when we’d all enjoy. WWW standards demand a very lengthy time to create and be accepted, as they have to be completely universal, accessible, and work across all upcoming browsers. It’s much like coming up with a whole new language, and this one is certainly on track to be the most complex as of yet.
Most sober guesses put the time-frame for full, rich HTML 5.0 embrace somewhere far in the future, even nine years. Although parts of the new standard are going to become used way before that (some are already being adopted as I write this), the full acceptance by all browsers, crossing all platforms, is simply too complicated and requires too much work to happen quickly.
Adobe's Viewpoint
Mainly, they aren’t very worried. Privately, who can tell? Press releases from all three browser plug-in companies, there shall always be a position for rich content, and constructing an entire brand on one competency (let's say, flash streaming video) is never a 100% way to make money to start.
Once the HTML 5.0 standard is heavily adopted, plug-in developers will have had many years to develop enhanced advancements that will not be matched by the new protocol, and we will likely be in the same mess once again.
