HTML5 supporters are lying
I am not going to name names, but several HTML5 supporters have uttered the following lie: "Everyone just uses Webkit anyway". How is this different from Internet Explorer 6 plus Flash in 2001 ?
The reason many people use Webkit is because many billion dollar companies do not want to pay for web browser development. So they leach off some open source project instead and then call it an open platform. Even when the platform (Google Android, Palm WebOS, Apple iOS) is totally proprietary. Oracle Solaris and Microsoft .NET are partially open source, but nobody calls them open platforms. Code signing, hardware DRM and API lock-in is now more important than owning the source code itself.
Why is HTML5 winning when Webkit is the next Internet Explorer ? Several iPhone and WebOS HTML5 applications do not work in IE, Opera and Firefox. How is this "open" and "standards based" ? Some developers even check for the Webkit user agent string and then refuse to work in Firefox. The last time I saw this was when Microsoft tried to piss off Opera.
I have worked with browser incompatibility issues for over ten years. Today's browsers are amazingly similar. You just have to use standards based code. If HTML5 means Webkit only then why not use native code instead ? Almost every single mobile device uses some kind of ARM processor. The only problem is the myriad of GPU systems. Which will be replaced by CPU/GPU hybrids in the future. If HTML5 continues down the current path my C++ might become more portable than my Javascript.
I love the web. But I never code for Webkit only. Why is this even logical ? HTML5 is winning because everyone is cheating ?
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