There’s been a lot of talk lately about HTML5, which is the latest incarn­a­tion of the language we use to write the web. So far, most of it has been about the new struc­tural elements it brings, which is a great start, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Thanks to HTML5 and a handful of other stand­ards, in the not-too-distant future web browsers will do all of this without the help of plug-ins (e.g. Flash):

• Vector graph­ics (SVG, Canvas)
• 3D Graphics (Canvas3D)
• Animation (Javascript, SMIL, CSS anima­tion and transitions)
• Rich media (native handling of audio and video)
• Javascript at speeds close to native compiled code
• Proper layout and typography (through advances in CSS)
• Complex form handling

This all all poten­tially awesome stuff, but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. I have questions.

Do plug-in techno­lo­gies like Flash, Java and Silverlight become irrel­ev­ant? Or will they continue to do things that the browser alone can’t (yet) do? What are those things?

What will it take to bring these new capab­il­it­ies into wider use? The likes of Webkit & Opera are already bring­ing much of this stuff to millions of users through their mobile phones and games consoles. Will that be enough, or will the domin­ant desktop browser (Internet Explorer in case you hadn’t guessed) hold them back?

Will efforts to hack support into IE by other means (e.g. Raphaël, which uses IE’s propri­et­ary VML to fake SVG support) be a good enough stop-gap measure to help with the adoption of these techno­lo­gies? Can we lever­age the likes of Flash, Java and Silverlight to help out where IE is lacking? (Will cross-browser headaches ever really go away?)

Then there’s the question of developer tools. The avail­ab­il­ity of decent author­ing software helped the adoption of Flash massively. Will such things appear natur­ally when enough people are hand-crafting these techno­lo­gies, or will the tools drive adoption?

Obviously I don’t have any answers. I can’t wait to start playing with it all though.