by Eric Rowell (cofounder of www.adollo.com)
As you might know, there’s a lot of buzz going around about new RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology, in particular with regards to Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Google’s HTML 5. What’s the difference between each one?
What’s the difference between Flex, Silverlight, and HTML 5?
Well, Adobe Flex has been out for awhile. It’s an alternative markup language that uses MXML instead of HTML and uses actionscript as its scripting language (very very similar to JavaScript). Unlike HTML, Adobe Flex has a lot of built in components like advanced data grids and charts, while providing other advanced style options for fundamental components like text areas and select boxes.
Microsoft Silverlight has recently come out as a response to Adobe Flex (Yea, they copied the idea), and it’s pretty much the same thing except that it’s a Microsoft product that uses the .NET framework. Both Flex and Silverlight can be embedded into HTML pages (meaning they run inside the browser).
HTML5 on the other hand is something completely different than Flex or Silverlight. It will be the new standard of HTML, which is currently being documented and developed as we speak by Google. You can see the evolving documentation here:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
HTML 5 will revolutionize web design as we know it, and may possibly make multi-media browser plug-ins like Flash obsolete. HTML 5 will include a whole new set of tags like <audio>, <video>, and <progress> that give developers access to very complex web elements without needing to use plug-ins.
For more information about HTML 5, check out:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-content/html-5-new-elements-new-draft-update-report-002819.php