design over matter

I attended a Java User Group Meeting and the topic was HTML 5.  Over 400 people attended.  The speaker from  Google gave an overview HTML5 bells and whistles.  It's very impressive.  The speaker Microsoft demoed IE 9 Beta and showed how much better it is than the current browsers in the market.

This all left me with a sinking feeling.  Excited about the possibility of HTML 5 ... contrasted with the reality that it will be some time before the browser makers all get on the same page.  Then EVERYONE needs to upgrade their browsers.  Can anyone say IE 6? 2001-2010 RIP.

Meantime, the rest of us will struggle to decide when to use HTML5 and all the hacks, and "graceful" alternatives for those older browsers out there.

Many companies and developers will develop RIA's in Flash.  And many will package those apps with AIR and deploy them to multiple desktop platforms.  They won't deploy any Objective-C RIA's to Windows.

Write once, run across all devices is dead for now, but Flash certainly isn't.