Why HTML5 is Better than Native Apps

Do you know why HTML5 is better than native apps?

HTML5 is going to be a universal standard, whereas there are many native apps on a number of operating systems.

There are jokes about how presenting everything through the browser essentially eliminates the differences between OS.

Reliance on Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash make it difficult to make multimedia presentations, or audio and video files, universal.

One of the worst things about the iPhone is all the sites that show you a snippet of a video file before telling you to download a Flash plugin that won't work on the device.

HTML5 will eliminate that problem by replacing them all with the Canvas element.

Yet I have not heard anything about the Canvas element.

That's mostly because the Canvas element cannot be utilized yet, unless you have strong JavaScript programming skills and the tools to use the Canvas element.

HTML5 is still new, so there is not much out there to support it. Are they waiting for that to solidify?

HTML5 is going to be the new HTML5 standard; that's already decided. But how the HTML5 page might handle games you create might take time to work out.

I thought you said it was universal.

The HTML5 standard will be. But since the Canvas element is limited to browsers supporting HTML5, the Canvas element won't work if the user has IE 6 and Windows XP.

So the Canvas element is great if the person's computer is upgraded to use it.

It isn't just upgraded computers. HTML5 runs on smart phones today.

I know that a lot of web pages look horrible on smart phones, with oversized images and menus you can't manipulate.

HTML5 automatically resizes the text and images so that you can work with it on the screen you have.

Whereas native apps cannot do that.

That's why HTML5 is better than native apps. It can go native and adapt to its environment.