This is big news. Netflix is considering switching from Microsoft’s Silverlight to HTML5. HTML5 web developers benefit from having a big name like Netflix switch to HTML5. HTML5 is widely adopted at basic levels, but we need more rich-media sites like Netflix to be reliant on HTML5 to help push adoption, development, and standards further.
This is another blow to HTML5 web development. Xero, the accounting software for small businesses, is ditching HTML5 as its mobile platform of choice and moving to native iOS and Android apps.
A quote from Xero:
And the lesson we’ve learnt over the last 12 months has been that the cost in time, effort and testing to bring an HTML5 application to a native level of performance seems to be far greater than if the application was built with native technologies from the get-go.
The W3C has moved the HTML5 specification to Candidate Recommendation. Although most of the HTML5 features are already supported by several browsers, it’s a good sign to see the standards body working to formalize the spec on schedule.
Also, a first working draft of HTML5.1 has also been published.
Venture Beat has a post covering a recent survey of developers about HTML5. 94% of the developers surveyed (about 4000 respondents) said they are using HTML5 now or will be soon. As HTML5 matures and hopefully gains greater access to device capabilities like native apps, we’ll see an increase in the number of apps built with web technologies. It’s much like the adoption curve of web apps vs desktop apps.
Wikipedia recently announced that they now support HTML5 video, with the help of Kaltura and Google.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 will feature Internet Explorer 10, bringing HTML5 support along with it. HTML5 on Windows Phone 8 won’t support everything that the desktop version of IE10 supports, but it’s a step in the right direction. One big gotcha for HTML5 web developers is the lack of File Access API.
