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I think it's harmless, and it crystalizes the idea that things are changing, the same way that the term "Web 2.0" did. Muggles have a lot of trouble with nam
by terra_t 16y ago
I think it's harmless, and it crystalizes the idea that things are changing, the same way that the term "Web 2.0" did.
Muggles have a lot of trouble with names. I worked for a big Uni back in the age when Mozilla's browser was caled "Mozilla" and it was impossible to get anybody to take Mozilla seriously. This was a place full of Unix-heads and Microsoft-haters, and we found that in 2002 we still had a 30% market share on campus of the despicable Netscape 4 browser.
When "Firefox" came out, all of a sudden the muggles realized there was an alternative to IE, so Netscape 4 finally died for us.
The project to obliterate flash and replace it with something open needs a name... And "HTML 5" is as good as any, inprecise as it is.
- knowtheory 16y agoYehuda's point is actually that HTML5 is NOT like Web2.0. Everybody knew that Web2.0 wasn't a thing. Now there are people confusing HTML5 as a thing with the process of making the web better.
- catshirt 16y agoperhaps i'm living in blissful ignorance, but who?
- terra_t 16y agoPeople regularly convert verbs into nouns. It's a semantic error, but it makes the invisible process of "making the web better" visible to the muggles.
- Qz 16y agoIt's not an error, it's a feature! In all seriousness.
- knowtheory 16y agoverbing nouns does indeed weird language, but that's not the point here. The point that analysis of HTML5 as a standard is not the point of the current effort to improve the web, and improve computing in general. It does not matter where HTML5 and Flash happen to stand at the moment in aggregate usage across companies. Who cares. There are many reasons for adoption of each technology, dependent on the circumstance of each company and their business models. That's why HTML5 as a noun is a bad banner, avatar, symbol, whatever. Web2.0, nebulous as it may have been, could not be confused with an actual object. HTML5 suffers the same problem that XML did. People thought anything that touched XML was going to be the wave of the future, and improve everyone's lives, and be both machine and human readable, and lead to a revolution in how metadata was transported. It is true that XML lead to cool new capabilities on the web. It also was not a panacea, nor did it instantly make any project that used it awesome (XML config files are one of the most heinous digital inventions ever). People should not confuse the movement to create better web technologies, with the web technologies themselves, or we will all miss the point.
- kreek 16y ago"The project to obliterate flash and replace it with something open needs a name..." How about 'Throwing a perfectly good technology out with the bath water in the name of open source zealotry so that we can replace it with a mish-mash of SVG and Canvas graphics, multiple non DRM video codecs, and an ever moving WebSocket spec'? :) Let the down votes begin!
- terra_t 16y agoNote that Microsoft and Apple want to obliterate flash just as much as anybody does... IE9 shows that even Microsoft realizes that "HTML5" is a far deadlier weapon than Silverlight.
- kreek 16y agoActually if the rumor from the front page is correct Microsoft want to buy Flash (and the rest of Adobe).
- wingo 16y agoI'm really amused that you called them muggles, and that everyone knows what you mean :)