An Adobe blog post back in November revealed that in the future Adobe would be be concentrating on HTML5 rather than Flash as it is now universally supported by a wide-range of devices and is considered the best solution for deploying content on the web.

So does the iPad 3 / iPhone 5 need Flash? There is no easy answer for this, the huge success which previous iPad and iPhone models have seen suggests that it is not a necessity, but Apple’s reasons for snubbing Flash technology are dubious to say the least. Many believe that there could be an ulterior motive as the reasons explained in Steve Jobs’ open letter titled ‘Thoughts on Flash’ mainly mention security and power consumption as Apple’s reasons for not offering Flash support in iOS. A lot has changed since then, Adobe increased the rate at which new Flash versions were rolled out, which ensured that software bugs and security holes were squashed far quicker than before, also with each new Flash build there were optimizations made to ensure power consumption was as low as possible – Apple don’t seem to mind that plenty of apps and games available drain battery life quickly do they?

We think that if Apple was planning to bring Flash to iOS it would have happened in 2011, now that Adobe has revealed that the future lies in HTML5, not Flash, there’s even less reason to support it. Many believe that the reason behind snubbing Flash in the first place was more to do with the fact that there’s thousands of free Flash game sites on the web (Kongregate is one of these) which would have been fully accessible via the iPad / iPhone’s browser, this could have affected App Store sales which Apple earn commission from – so could this be the real reason behind it? We’ll never know.

Now that Adobe has revealed that HTML5 is the way forward we believe that throughout 2012 more and more web designers and software developers will begin utilizing this tech instead of Flash, in-time this will mean that people won’t come across as many sites which utilize Flash and thus not desire it as much, also let’s not forget that you can watch Flash videos on your iDevice by using Skyfire!

So there you have it folks, we strongly believe that no iOS-based device will ever boast Flash support, but what are you feelings towards this? We find it a little worrying that Apple is in such a strong position that they can pick and choose what sort of content its devices can display – surely if Microsoft did something similar there would be antitrust issues.

We would love to hear from you if Apple’s lack of Flash support affected you quite seriously, did it make you jump ship to Android? Did you have to learn to develop using HTML5? Will no Flash support result in you not buying an Apple device in 2012? We’d love your answers in the comments section below.

There is more to come from Facebook v4.0, but the app is a huge relief to those who could never play their flash-based games, such has World War and iMobsters. However, we still await support for the likes of Farmville and Cityville. It will be interesting to see the effects that this app will have on the iPad, there could be a performance difference between the first generation model and the iPad 2, as the two have different hardware. However, one would assume that Facebook would have done enough for the performance difference to be marginal.

Below we have embedded a hands-on video of the Facebook app for iPad. Once you open the application you will see on the top bar a menu appear, which is where you can navigate to different features on Facebook. Overall the app is pretty slick, so why not give the app a go and let us know what you think.

Some of the main features are as follows: Bigger and better photos, fast navigation, play game son the move, easily send messages and so much more. However, there is no getting away from the fact that the real draw is support for HTML5.

Of course, Adobe Edge wont always be free. Adobe are currently still testing the software themselves, and although it is still pre-beta, they want designers from all walks of creative-life to help them shape their product to make it the best, and easiest solution to helping HTML5 become a part of regular internet browsing life.

If you have concerns with using the software, we can tell you that Adobe Edge content will be compatible with all major browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Internet Explorer 9, as well as Android, BlackBerry PlayBook, iOS, and HP webOS based browsers.

Adobe state that Adobe Edge can also be used with existing websites as well as newly created ones, and can transform your existing website into some HTML5 animated goodness without destoying your current code. SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF files are all supported, and can be styled using CSS3 which then can be manipulated in any which way you wish.

Obviously, Adobe has a lot riding on this software which will fit in nicely with their current existing web-tools such as Dreamweaver CS5, Flash Professional CS5, and Flash Builder 4.5, and are asking you to freely use this software until the day comes where they will put it on the shelf themselves.

You can download the Adobe Edge HTML5 tool free from Adobe Labs, or you can check out more information such as system requirements via the Edge preview page. You can also check out the official Adobe Edge video preview below.

Have you test-driven Adobe Edge yet? What are your first impressions on HTML5 creation within the software?

Two former Apple engineers developed the app; they decided to form a new company called Tumult. Their main goal was to benefit not only developers but users as well, and that was to address the issue about the lack of authoring tools for HTML5. According to 9 to 5 Mac this app takes all the hardship out of creating some of the visuals that we know and love, but not using Flash.

The cost of the app is $30, and is a small price to pay for what can be achieved. Hype Mac application must be good, as it is said to be Mac App Store’s top grossing program. What we love about this app – apart from it being able to increase the amount of HTML5 websites – is the fact that this start-up has made a success of themselves. We often hear that new companies try but never make it after the first 6 months to a year.

The main reason why the two guys got together to do this was the lack of tools available to build a HTML 5 rich website. The ones that were on the market were difficult to use – maybe this is the reason why Flash is still popular and HTML5 has been slow to catch-on?

If you are considering building an online magazine to utilize HTML 5, then Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 could be just what you need. More details on this can be found in our recent post.

Aditya Bansod of Sencha has recently tested both devices to see how they perform. With the Motorola Xoom they were really looking forward to the first purpose built Android operating system for tablets. But unfortunately the Xoom and Honeycomb were found to be disappointing. It had issues in both CSS3 Animations and CSS3 Transitions, and the browser crashed and hung.

Besides the HTML5 features there were also web rendering issues including form element borders disappearing unpredictably at various zoom resolutions, the accelerometer object being upside down, amongst other things. It is hoped that a patch will soon fix this.

With the iPad 2 it was concluded that the Safari browser was the best implementation of WebKit on a mobile device. The browser had everything thrown at it but it still managed to keep up with the most advanced CSS3 and HTML5 websites.

There were a few minor issues such as Acid3 rendering artifacts, and a couple of inconsistencies in the Modernizr results. In the future it would be nice to have support for Media Capture APIs, but Apple’s products are great for the HTML5 developer. Aditya Bansod of Sencha has done detailed tests on both the iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom which you can read by clicking the links provided.

The AirPlay hack was thanks to Cydia, and allowed a guy to stream live TV content from his Apple iPad direct to his Apple TV. 9 to 5 Mac believes that this is just the start and more is to come. What other things have you managed to do with AirPlay, let our readers know by adding a comment below?

Another hack showed you Web browsing and Last.fm; 9 to 5 Mac now has a video walkthrough for you to view. In this video you will see HTML5 video playing on the new Apple TV device.

With so many hacks coming up it is hard to pick what ones we need to cover, what ones do you think deserve a mention the most? Maybe you do not hack, tell us your reasons?

Have you been one of those affected by recent problems with Apple TV, more details can be found in our recent post.

Recently W3C ran tests across 5 popular web browsers to see which had the best support, in the tests they used Microsoft Internet Explorer Platform Preview 6, Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 beta, Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta 6, Opera 11.00 alpha (build 1029) and Safari Version 5.0.2 (6533.18.5).

Microsoft’s browser delivered the best results, you can see an image embedded at the end of this post which compares Internet Explorer’s results against with Chrome’s and Firefox’s.

If you would like to see a fully detailed breakdown of the results check out this link, here you can see the results for all of the individual features tests with all of the web browser builds, I was quite shocked to see that Safari was so far behind considering Apple’s fondness of HTML5.

Safari was the only browser tested which wasn’t either a preview version or in its alpha or beta stages, it is strange that Apple has not worked harder with their browser to support all of the HTML5 features, perhaps they will release a new version with better HTML5 support soon.

Source: WC3

The experimental video only works in Chrome, and I must admit it is pretty impressive, it cleverly collects images from Google Street View and puts them into the video, the images are joined together to create a seamless view of your surrounding area. Towards the end of the video the Street View images with new trees sprouting up left right and center.

It is thought that the same sort of video could have been created with Adobe Flash, however the load on your PC would have been greater, perhaps this is why Apple has snubbed Flash.

Check it out for yourself here, come back and let us know what you think of the HTML5 demo.

Source: Cnet

You can see a long list of HTML5 demos if you head over to HTML5Demos, here you can see if your web browser is compatible with the demos, if so you can get an early look at what functionality HTML5 offers.

If you are running Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari or Google Chrome most of these demos work, however Internet Explorer seems to offer very limited HTML5 support (at the moment). For users running the above mentioned browsers (make sure they are the latest versions) you can see a video playback demo here, I was particularly impressed with the quick load times and the extremely clean look.

My favorite of the demos is called contenteditable (can be seen here), this is pretty self-explanatory and lets you edit content in a grey box, which is stored on your local machine, you can then come back later and check what you wrote and edit it, this could be great perhaps if you could allow only certain IP addresses to edit the content and store the information on the server (I would imagine this will be the case).

There are plenty of other demos here, check them out for yourselves and let us know what you think in the comments section at the end of this post.

Apple have also posted some HTML5 demos which show of the new web standard, you can see them all here, however you will need to be running Apple Safari.

Microsoft HTML5 demos are my favorite, you can see all of them here, however I recommend checking out the IMDb Video Panorama demo and the HTML5 Audio XML Playlist demo.

Do you think that HTML5 will replace Flash? I do.

Although HTML5 and CSS3 have not yet been finalized an interactive chart shows quite cleverly what features current web browsers support, the most obvious thing this chart shows is just how far behind Microsoft Internet Explorer (7, 8 and 9) really are.

The chart shows 28 different HTML5 and CSS3 features which browsers may support, Google Chrome 4 came joint top with Apple Safari 4. Both web browsers supported 26 of these features, the only two features Chrome 4 didn’t support were SVG Filters and 3D Transforms, whereas Apple Safari doesn’t offer geolocation or SVG Filters.

Firefox 3.7 was next in line supporting 24 of the features, whereas Opera 10 supported 23 of these features. Quite embarrassingly Internet Explorer 9 only supported half of the HTML5 and CSS3 features.

If you check out the chart it also includes Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8. Obviously software developers may release updates for their browsers which will add support for these features, this will probably happen when HTML5 becomes a widely used standard. For further details check out the link below.

Source: Mashable