HTML5 Web Sockets - not just a browser thing

There is a lot of hype going around at the moment related to the wonderful functionality that websites will be able to offer once browsers implement the so-called "HTML5" features.

Some features should enable graphical capabilities without requiring a plugin (bye bye Flash), others are targetted at mobile devices - such as enabling the capture of an image from a camera.

The one that has been most relevant to my current project is Web Sockets.

In my opinion the key to Web Sockets living up to their full potential is that http servers must be able to support the model of keeping connections open.

At the time of writing, Apache httpd does not support this as it is architected for synchronous processing of requests and sending of responses.

Flash or no Flash?

While working with graphic designers on various websites in recent years the decision of whether to include Flash or not came up on a number of occasions.

Things progressed from, "Let's not", to "Okay, as long as we have some Javascript to serve alternative content", to "Flash is so prevalent, alright you can use it for content that won't need to be maintained by the customer"

Now that the iPhone and iPad and various other mobile devices are moving up in the ranks of common browsers Flash may have to retreat again.

HTML5 support might make this less of an issue, but I don't particularly fancy moving to having multiple versions of presentation based on browser type (User Agent header supplied in request).