Like many Mac users, I complain about the fan noise and heat and CPU usage of Flash when it seems to take over the computer. Coupled with Adobe’s constant problems with keeping the hackboi crowd away from their software, I always rejoice when I can take a step from using it.

Thus, happy to join the YouTube HTML5 Beta– a tasty little logo comes up to tell you that non-flash is going to play soon.

Adobe claims that they will prove Steve Jobs wrong when Flash version 10.1 is stable and released. With reports that the uninstaller doesn’t remove 10.1 betas, and that it crashes on certain sites, I’m not willing to play victim. Staying up to date isn’t as simple as finding an application and clicking Search for Updates, so we have placed a Flash Version Check in the column of important links on the front page. 

I have messed with ClickToFlash for Safari and Flashblock for Firefox, finding them slightly frustrating to have to load it when a site comes up with something I might want to see…but it is small pain…then I try the next version of Flash until is locks up Safari and spins Firefox into using all my RAM, and hard disk and asks for a USB stick to consume as well.

Your milage may vary, but this foray into the coming HTML5 standard does me fine.

More as it happens, 

C J Flynn

PS—The newest Open Standards coming online with HTML5 are CSS3 and SVG (for web based vector graphics). For an interesting table, see; When Can I Use?

Want to see what SVG can do? SVG Edit

For seeing what HTML5 and CSS3 will mean for the future: The HTML5/CSS3 Cheatsheet