Unlike Flash applications, any device with a modern web browser can interact with HTML5 web content. So, with the help of CSS for dynamic resizing of viewable content, your HTML5 applications can be used without the need of application installation or dependencies on desktop or mobile platforms. Developers can also use technologies such as Phone Gap (http://phonegap.com/) or Appcelerator (http://www.appcelerator.com/) to easily convert their existing HTML5 web content to packaged mobile applications for market in all modern mobile operating systems. Packaged applications can be integrated and sold using common mobile application services such as Apple's App Store (http://store.apple.com) and Google Play (https://play.google.com). On top of that, Microsoft Windows 8 desktop application development now supports a whole suite of different programming languages, one of them being HTML5 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br211386.aspx). With the ability to package HTML5 content into installable applications, developers can now begin to easily monetize their work by sale on the various application distribution outlets.

As just mentioned, HTML5 hosts a suite of new and exciting features, many of which will be covered in the following chapters of this book. However, to allow you to better understand why HTML5 is so exciting and important for Flash developers and the web development community, here is a more detailed list of some of those features.

As more devices become integrated with Internet accessibility, the need for streamlined, multiplatform applications that allow for low overhead and integrated device access is at an all-time high. Almost all modern mobile browsers already support many features of HTML5, which web developers can harness to build mobile applications that rival many natively built applications for specific mobile platforms. Features such as Geolocation, local file access and offline storage allow applications to easily integrate themselves into the device hardware that is running them.

One of the biggest driving forces behind the advent of HTML5 was mobile. Mobile application development requires a slightly different approach than typical application development as the platform running the application not only has fewer resources as compared to a typical desktop configuration but also things like battery life, screen resolutions, and touch interfaces need to be taken into account. Dealing with all of these requirements while developing applications with Flash can get a little bit tricky. Flash applications traditionally tend to be a bit heavy on resource usage, though optimizations can be made to compensate for some of these issues while running applications on mobile platforms.

Since the advent of iPhone, Flash developers had to deal with the fact that their web-based Flash content would never be viewable from the integrated iOS web browser. Apple made their stance on the usage of the Adobe Flash Player clear in a publicly address letter from Steve Jobs in April 2010, which stated that the Flash Player did not deliver the device or application performance that Apple required on their device.

In June 2012, Adobe released a public statement regarding the future of the Adobe Flash Player for mobile. As of August 15, 2012, Flash Player for Android will only be available to devices certified to run the Flash Player as Adobe has suspended the development of the mobile version of Flash Player. Users running Android Version 4.1+ will be unable to run Flash content within their browser and all web content will rely on the use of the technologies within HTML5.

With the Flash Player removed from the mobile market, a Flash developer's only resource, at this point in time, for creating mobile applications is developing them with Adobe AIR and packaging their work as standalone applications rather than on the Web.

Flash developers transitioning to HTML5 development have a leg up when it comes to learning tricks to create amazing applications with purely HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Not only will all the lessons learned about handling and optimizing media elements transition over, but also their ActionScript 3 skills will allow them to understand and use JavaScript to its full potential.

The time developers invest to learn a programming language such as ActionScript 3 is far from a short endeavor. Fortunately, both JavaScript and ActionScript 3 are built on the ECMAScript scripting language standard (http://www.ecmascript.org). In a nutshell, this means that many of the method, variable, and property syntax setups are extremely similar in look, feel, and usage. As we dig deeper and see more examples of HTML5 in action, if you have experience with ActionScript 3, you will instantly notice many similarities when utilizing JavaScript.