Saturday, November 5, 2011

Whats cooking with HTML 5 ?

We have been hearing too many things about [Open] HTML5 and [Adobe] Flash ,on how HTML 5 could end flash dominance in web world both in PC and mobile , of course nothing would change in Mac or Linux world as there is very less support for flash even as today , sighting  performance and battery (in case of mobile devices) overhead due to flash's excessive CPU utilization, adobe's header boards read that they are working on the the performance glitch and claims to have achieved some improvement on their flash 10.1 version on windows through hardware acceleration  , on the mac world adobe says , apple isn't allowing Flash to become more efficient on their Mac OS X/Safari platform (or their iPod/iPhone/iPad one, either) by not providing the access to the hardware it needs to reduce its CPU load. Adobe is waiting and watching to see if they do get the API access.

There is lot of development work in progress on HTML5 headed by Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) backed by heavy players like Apple and Google, eager to know whats new on HTML5 ?  categorically the ares to look for are
  • New tags and types - The "Semantic web" <header> and <footer> , <section> and <article> new input types like email , URL , number,date. ...form validation                                                 <!DOCTYPE HTML>
    <html>
    <body>
                 <video width="320" height="240" controls="controls">
                 <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
                 Your browser does not support the video tag.
                </video>
    </body>
    </html>
  • Canvas - Allows you to draw complex graphics , could potentially match up flash , liked by the many in Apple and Google world.
  • Media - Audio and Video tags allows you to create AV controls and gives you freedom to control with HTML tags and attributes. 
  • Geo location - Tells a web app where you are , supports JS API you just have to say "navigation.geolocation.getcurrentposition""and you get the location.
  • Drag and drop - Support for drag and drop files from desktop to browser.and other controls drag and drop on the browser. 
  • Offline and local storage - Allows you to cache the website locally on the client machine and offline browsing of a site would just make no difference unless there's any real time data dependency updates.

Learn More on the tags and semantics here : W3schools , Comparison chart on HTML 4 & 5  , Demos 

Flash V/s HTML 5 what the experts say ?

According to a report released recently, 34% of the world's top 100 Web sites were using HTML5 - the adaptation led by search engines and social networks. Facebook announced the launch of the HTML Resource Center, giving developers tools to build, test and deploy Facebook applications

Even as innovation continues, advancing HTML5 to Recommendation provides the entire Web ecosystem with a stable, tested, interoperable standard. The decision to schedule the HTML5 Last Call for May 2011 was an important step in setting industry expectations. Today we take the next step, announcing 2014 as the target for Recommendation. — Jeff Jaffe, Chief Executive Officer, W3C

According to Adobe,
  • 85% of the most-visited web sites use Flash,
  • 75% of web video is viewed using the Flash Player,
  • 98% of enterprises rely on the Flash Player, 
  • 70% of web games are made in Flash
Jan Ozer an expert in video encoding technologies,  recently put HTML5 up against Flash in a series of tests that pitted the two technologies against each other on both the Mac and PC and in different web browsers including Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox. summary of his tests below

Mac Tests
  • With Safari, HTML5 was the most efficient and consumed less CPU than Flash using only 12.39% CPU. With Flash 10.0, CPU utilization was at 37.41%.With Flash 10.1, it dropped to 32.07%.
  • With Google Chrome, Flash and HTML5 were both equally inefficient (both are around 50%).
  • With Firefox, Flash was only slightly less efficient than in Safari, but better than in Chrome.
Windows Tests
  • Safari wouldn't play HTML5 videos, so there was no way to test that. However, Flash 10.0 used 23.22% CPU but Flash 10.1 only used 7.43% CPU.
  • Google Chrome was more efficient on Windows than Mac. Playback with Flash Player 10.0 was about 24% more efficient than HTML5, while Flash Player 10.1 was 58% more efficient than HTML5
  • On Firefox, Flash 10.1 dropped CPU utilization to 6% from 22% in Flash 10.0.
  • In Internet Explorer 8, Flash 10.0 used 22.41% CPU and Flash 10.1 used 14.62% CPU
With the build version of HTML 5 & flash currently we have ...... 
Circumstances in which it would be appropriate to use HTML5
If you want a vendor-neutral format, to best respect viewers' freedom of software/hardware choice.
If you are running your video on low-end systems.
If you are looking to save costs (and not have to purchase Flash licenses).
If you want your video/application to be supported on the iPhone, iPad or other mobile Apple platforms.
If it is important that you work with an open development environment.
Circumstances in which it would be appropriate to use Flash
If your product needs to support a wide variety of browsers, including older models like Internet Explorer 6.
If you offer video streaming in several bitrates, and want clients to dynamically select between these based on network bandwidth.
If you do not want people to copy your content.
If you want to be able to splice in commercials dynamically throughout the video.
If you need integration with webcams and microphones for interactivity, like two-way.

Its too early to say that HTML 5  will eat in to flash's dominance , but there's something certainly cooking out there in WHATWG camp with strong backing of Apple and Google, to me less flash means no weekly flash updates. looks like GAME ON !!!.      
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