I was talking to a co-worker today and had a realization. HTML5 can never replace flash.

One of the primary goals of HTML and JavaScript is transparency, the accessibility to the code that drives the page. Exposing code so that others can learn from it. In fact this attribute is credited with the proliferation of the web. This poses a serious risk for some web content. If you produced a highly interactive, community driven game would you want you intelectual property (ip) exposed? Web sites don’t expose their business logic. No one expects Amazon to expose how they drive their shopping logic. If Poptropica, a popular game/community for kids, was produces in HTML and JavaScript anyone that visited your site could copy the code, modify it, republish it, and monetize that ip. Who would want that? So think twice before wishing that HTML5 should replace Flash.

I have started working with a new client for some web design work and they were reviewing my site to see my skills… When whammo, my menus are broken and they can’t get into my portfolio. I immediately open IE8 to see what is wrong and I don’t see anything weird.

That’s when I remember that I installed with compatability mode disabled by default. I turn it on and kablooey! my menus break.

So if you develop using standards put this meta tag in your document head. Or in the wordpress header file.

<meta http-equiv=“x-ua-compatible“ content=“IE=8“>

Now my menus work again, stupid Microsoft.