Flash? Who needs Flash?

Not Apple, and now, not Microsoft.

For background, Adobe Flash is a browser plug-in that enables rich media and rich user interfaces. Over time, we’ve all used it for YouTube videos, spiffy re-sizing menus and games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars.

In fact, Flash has been the de facto standard for rich UI over the past decade, eclipsing all others (including Silverlight .. the Microsoft entry in the space).

Ahh .. Silverlight. I barely knew ye.

That’s a lie: While at Microsoft, I worked diligently launching Silverlight 1.0, engaging worldwide partner adoption for early efforts. Painful, but we had some exciting, .NET-driven, browser-based applications adopting the plug-in playbook. The advantage: one code line .. developers could write code with known conventions, extending their .NET experience into a new, plug-in world.

I digress, therefore, I am.

For more background, here are a few, well-known fun facts (at least, in the developer community):

• The Apple iOS (the operating system that drives the iPod, the iPad, and a variety of Apple devices) does not support Flash. This 2008 article from Wired explains why: “Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone”. Yes: it’s dated, but still relevant. Really relevant.
• Microsoft has relegated Silverlight development to Windows Phone devices, and no longer to the browser. Here’s a post from my favorite … Mary Jo Foley: “Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted”
• That said .. this page is painful to see.
• That said, So is this page.

So. Mobile issues aside. The answer? HTML5.

HTML5 boasts a number of syntactical features (features and functionality that confirm to a language .. provided as part of a platform) .. which eliminates the need for a plug-in.

• Want videos? Embed a <video"> tag .. built into HTML5, which includes position, height, width, codec, etc., etc. and etc.
• Want absolute positioning? It’s there, built into HTML5.
• Want SEO (Search Engine Optimization?). it’s built into HTML5.

If the operative term in all cases is: “built into ..”, suffice to say: it is.

Why do I bring this up? Well, TechCrunch (and a host of others) report: “The company announced today Microsoft Excises Flash And Plugins From Metro Internet Explorer In Windows 8”. The title of the article says it all: The shipping browser atop Windows 8 will not support (or need) vendor plug-ins.

This is significant .. remove the platform initiative, and you remove the need for developers to write to the platform.

Hey HTML5 developers: Start here, and here, and here.