HTML 5 As a Viable Alternative To Flash?

superglaze writes "Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's CEO, has claimed that the open standards in HTML 5 will make it unnecessary to deliver rich media content using the proprietary Flash. '"You can do most things with web standards today," von Tetzchner said. "In some ways, you may say you don't need Flash." Von Tetzchner added that his comments were not about "killing" Flash. "I like Adobe — they're a nice company," he said. "I think Flash will be around for a very, very long time, but I think it's natural that web standards also evolve to be richer. You can then choose whether you'd like [to deliver rich media content] through web standards or whether you'd like to use Flash."'"

Comments

Viable alternative is redundant

[Crafty Spiker]

If it's not viable it's not an alternative.

Re:Flash uses

[Wraithlyn]

...and to build extremely rich media websites.

Check out http://www.rolex.com/ for example. The whole thing is Flash. And sure, much of it could've been done with JS/etc, but some of it could not (the animated watch hands, for example)

And before you decry the website for requiring Flash; it doesn't. Turn off Javascript and try again, there's a complete and fully functional HTML/CSS layer underneath (which is also very important for SEO & accessibility purposes). The Flash "pages" are also bookmarkable and handle the Back/Forward buttons, etc, properly, through use of the the hash text in the url. (This technique is also used to maintain state in AJAX-y apps such as GMail)

Rolex.com is a good example of a flash-heavy site done properly (added value, not a requirement).