Apple published a new Web page on Friday promoting the use of HTML5 for many tasks that Adobe’s Flash is commonly used for such as media playback and Web page animations.
“Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac — along with the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser — supports web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient,” the Web page states. “They allow web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions. Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today.”
The page includes examples showing realtime video resizing and masking, audio playback, working with typography photo galleries, transition effects, 360 degree object rotation, and virtual reality.
The promotion is the most recent move in Apple’s campaign to promote HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript over Flash. Apple and Adobe have been publicly sparring over whether or not Flash should be the dominant multimedia player and Web page interface platform — Adobe says it already is and should be going forward, and Apple says Flash’s value has come and gone, much like the floppy disk drive.
Apple makes a point to let visitors know that not all browsers offer full support for the Web standards it’s promoting, which is a good thing since trying to view the examples in Firefox and Chrome shows a dialog suggesting Safari. Viewing the examples in Safari or OmniWeb, however, shows compelling examples of how HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can be used together to create dynamic interactive Web sites that don’t require special browser plug-ins.