Unless you live in a technology cave you have probably noticed the discussion in the industry around Flash and HTML 5 that has been started by the Apple controversy.  My goal here isn’t to rehash what has been said around using Flash or HTML 5 in a browser or on a mobile device, but to share my thoughts around this debate as it applies to Enterprise Business applications.

There is valid debate occurring around the pro’s and con’s of using Flash to serve a banner ad, or a video, or if the <canvas> tag or <audio> tag are a viable alternative.  However this is a minor point when you are considering which platform to use to create a business application or a consumer facing RIA (Rich Internet Application).

First, let’s look at where the HTML 5 spec currently sits.  It is a much-needed refresh of the current HTML 4 spec and has some great features such as support for video, audio and offline data storage using SQL Lite.  The W3C HTML 5 specification is currently in “Working Draft” status and is not expected to be finalized until 2012 or later.  The other current issue with HTML 5 is that is only supported in varying degrees by the major Internet browsers and some of its features may never be supported by some browsers (such as an offline data store).

We do a lot of work for Fortune 500 clients and have used both Adobe Flex and HTML 5 on projects.  Currently HTML 5 is an option if you have full control over which browsers will be used to run an application (which is frequently not the case, even in the Enterprise).  In contrast, Adobe Flex is a great platform to build business applications and can run in virtually all desktop browsers. 

Flex is a rich platform that has complex UI elements (data grids, tabbed navigators, menus, etc.) built directly into the Flex SDK (now called Flashbuilder).  It allows you to take your application and easily run them in Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) on the desktop (outside of the browser) or on a mobile device*. 

As a company we are generally technology agnostic and try to bring the best options to the table to meet client needs.  Although our focus is around deploying Cloud based solutions we have found that user interface or taking the Cloud offline is important to our clients.  The question of Flex vs. HTML 5 for a business application is an easy one to answer today and will likely be so for the next couple of years.  The promise of HTML 5 is great, but until the specification is finalized and it is widely supported by all major browsers it can only be used in limited ways and it doesn’t have the developer productivity tools that are inherent in Flex. 

Here is a real world example.  One of our early iPhone products on the iTunes AppStore was Search2GO, a simple search tool for Salesforce.com.  This was built in Objective C and it took approximately 8 weeks to develop.  Yesterday I watched two developers create over half of this same functionality using Flex/AIR and had it running on an Android phone in a day.  Granted there are still things that could be added, but this was a great illustration of why Flex/AIR is a great toolset.

So while the debate rages on about HTML 5 vs Flash in the consumer market I’d recommend taking a hard look at Flex for business applications.

* Except the iPhone or iPad of course…

I just got back from the recent Google I/O developer conference and was struck by it’s simplicity.  It was short, only two days. It provided great content.  It provided great food and snacks.  It even had the requisite Wii and Rockband pods and upped the ante with Pool, Foosball and chair massage. 

So enough with the format, what was the message?  The message was all about the importance of HTML5 and how it was supported by all “modern” browsers.  The browser made by the boys in Redmond was not on this “modern” list.  I haven’t followed the HTML 5 standard that closely but was surprised along with others with what could be done within the browser without a plugin.  Does this mean Adobe should worry about Flash marketshare dropping?  Not immediately, but in a couple of years, maybe so.  In a nutshell you have some new tags and features to consider:

<canvas>  This tag allows you to have pixel level control in the browser and do things such as draw a diagonal line.  They even created O3D which allows you to create compelling 3D graphics and use the graphics card, not the CPU.

<video>  Now you can embed a video as easy as an image without worrying about plugins or codecs.

Geolocation – Your PC or Laptop can now be as smart as your iPhone and you can choose to share your location with the browser to get location awareness in Maps or other apps.

App Cache and Database -  HTML 5 allows you to do some interesting caching and has it’s own SQL Lite DB (very similar to Adobe AIR).  This can allow you to cache portions of your app for faster access or to do interesting offline applications in the browser.  Google Mail already uses this approach on the iPhone and Android.

Web Workers – An API for running background Javascript so you can do things asynchronously and not slow down the user experience.

The big question of course is when is the HTML5 support going to be broad enough that developers can take advantage of all of this and really exploit it?  Google asked that we as developers push that curve and not allow these features to lie dormant for years as was the case with the foundations of AJAX.

My next post will talk more about Google Wave and some other announcements that came out of I/O 2009.