Is HTML5 a killer for Flash and Silverlight?

Microsoft Director Brad Becker, recently published an article about the Future of Silverlight. Becker gives a decent argument why there is space for Silverlight on the planet, even though HTML5 is coming.

I would approach the argument from a simpler angle. Back in 1997, Java was only one year old. Evangelists predicted that Java would be on every thinkable device on the planet, even your refrigerator. Java would also conquer the Desktop. Well, Java was useful in many ways, but absolutely did not conquer the Desktop. Being platform independent, Java could not support the rich Windows features, which weren’t available in e.g. X11. Java didn’t conquer the desktop, because it supported a platform common denominator.

That’s the problem with being on many platforms, you can only support a smaller feature set than the richest platform.

Flash was ported to many platforms, taking Flash’s own features to the new platform. Silverlight is taking the same road. While a standard like HTML needs to be available on any platform, Adobe and Microsoft are the ones who choose which platforms they want to support; keeping the weak platforms out of the game.

So in this constellation, HTML5 will always be average, compared to Flash/Silverlight, which are designed to be excellent. And that is really all there is to it.

People like excellence, while developers – not normal people – like standards. As excellence sells, I expect that HTML5 will never be a killer for Flash/Silverlight.