HTML 5 ain't ready just yet

October 6, 2010 by Dave Haynes

A lot of people who’d like to shift away from Flash as a playback engine for digital signage – worried about vague licensing issues and playback stability – have been getting excited about the prospects for HTML 5 to mature and take the place of Flash.

You can already find HTML 5 video players ion the online mainstream, and Apple’s moves have created a lot of buzz. But the people who are in charge of defining its full specification say that’s not even finished, never mind ready for widespread adoption.

Reports ReadWriteWeb:

HTML5 is all the rage. Everyone from mobile developers to Apple CEO Steve Jobs to Google CEO Eric Schmidt have backed the standard as the future. Everyone, that is, except for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the official standards organization of the Web.

An official for the W3C is calling for developers to hold off on all the HTML5, saying it’s a bit too early for the Flash-killer to be let loose on the general public.

Phillippe Le Hegaret, an official with W3C responsible for SVG and HTML specifications, told InfoWorld, “The problem we’re facing right now is there is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues.”

According to Le Hegaret, the basic issue is getting HTML5 to operate the same in different browsers and using different video devices. He also noted that HTML5 currently lacks a video codec and digital rights management capabilities, which he said he does not expect to have in the upcoming specification.

The HTML5 specification should be “feature-complete by mid-2011,” he told InfoWorld, noting that we shouldn’t expect the death of Flash “anytime soon.”