AFAIK, HTML 5 standard is still some 8-9 years away, and even the W3C is trying to slow down the hypecycle on HTML 5, saying that the standard is still in a very early stage of development. IE9 is optimized for whatever MS thinks is HTML5 standard today, which could lead a bunch of propellerheads to create web sites and web apps with HTML5, which in turn could lead to another round of browser incompatibilities. I thought we were done with this crap by now.

An interesting aside, though, is that the current HTML5 draft includes local cursors. Can you believe it? What Boy Genius came up with THAT idea? (Yaaaaaaaaawn.) Sounds great in theory, but in practice there are a bunch of security and other concerns that haven't been addressed yet. Then again, what would you expect? It is a DRAFT, after all, and just like you wouldn't want to try to cross the Pacific Ocean on a RAFT, you wouldn't want to try to build a mission critical web-based LOB app on top of a DRAFT <g>


>From a couple of articles I've read, this is an "attack Apple where they are weak" approach. If Windows developers develop for HTML5, their apps will run on Microsoft Enterprise servers (an area where Apple is weak), and show up on IPhones. It's a way of fouling Apple's soup, of loosening their hold controlling the iPhone apps.
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>Both Google and Microsoft are making the same bet: that the app in the browser will win the war. Given that most of my day when not developing is spent in a browser doing something, this being a very small part of my day but obviously in a browser, I think that's a good bet.
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>Hank
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>>>Silverlight is now a developer tool for WP7, not THE solution for crossplatform development.
>>>http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-our-strategy-with-silverlight-has-shifted/7834
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>>Oh, boy. This sounds so, so, oh so familiar. I think the entire Microsoft organization has a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder, and hence they can't stay focused on any one thing long enough to make it perfect. Or if they do, they usually kill it anyways, sometimes at the height of perfection.
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>>The idea of demoting SL to a Windows 7 development tool is absurd, considering how much work has gone into making it a great cross-platform web and desktop development tool. Maybe something got lost in translation in that article. Maybe I'm an eternal optimist.