Last week, I finally got around to reading the Microsoft announcements from September about Windows 8 and WinRT. Like a lot of people, I was surprised by the dropping of Silverlight for the Metro UI. HTML5 (along with XAML) would be used prominently.
HTML5 again.
I’m old school and I can’t get rid of the memories of coding conditional blocks of code for different browsers. A lot of web apps would only adhere to one browser because of the different capabilities. In corporate environments, this was mostly IE. The difference capabilities still exists, so I was not pleased about using conditional coding again. Silverlight was a nice hiding place—write once run anywhere (except Linux, and tablets, and phones—okay just Windows and Macs!).
But, things are much better than they were before. Now, we have Modernizr and jQuery. Now we have devices which, for the most part, adhere to one browser only (If I write for IOS, I only have to worry about Safari).
I’m at the point now where I’m excited about HTML5. I’ve taken December off from my current contract to really have a good play with it. I’m very impressed with localStorage and GeoLocation. Canvas is what I’m playing with next.
And, after months of learning Android, I discovered PhoneGap. PhoneGap allows you to host html5 in a compiled application (IOS, Android, Windows Phone) and release it in an app store. It also provides a javascript library to interface with device libraries like GPS, camera, and the accelerometer. I’m struggling with the intricacies of Java (C# keeps getting in the way), but I can do just as much in javascript.
HTML5 allows for mobile apps (web and compiled) and MetroUI.
Once again, the future is bright.
