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According to this article and the W3C, HTML5 will provide some great enhancements to the HTML spec. One of which is the ability to embed audio and video directly into a website using new <audio> and <video> tags.

I hear and read quite a bit where people are making the claim that HTML5 is a Flash killer. Honestly I think these people need to have their head examined, but more appropriately they need to understand the Flash platform itself. Yes, it is true that Flash is the primary platform used to distribute video content on large sites such as YouTube, Hulu, and Xfinity’s Fancast. YouTube, of course, recently announced that they are starting trials of HTML5 video in place of the Flash player. Therefore it’s quite true that for video content, HTML5 will eat into Flash’s video marketshare.

Misconception #1: HTML5 is ready for primetime. It’s not. Understand that the browser has to support these new HTML5 elements. As you can see on this layout engine chart, not every parser is currently supporting the new tags such as <video>. Most notably is Internet Explorer’s Trident engine. HTML5 isn’t even prepared to be finalized as a specification until 2012, and then not even recommended by the W3C until 2022.

Misconception #2: Flash is only used for video. Obviously not. People have been using Flash to play games going back to the Yeti hitting the penguin, Bejeweled, and more. With the advent of Adobe Flex, the world is also seeing more Rich Internet Applications being developed on the Flash platform, not just with in-house applications for corporations, but also for the everyday consumer such as photoshop.com. While Flash’s ubiquity is highly contributed by video playback, video simply isn’t the only thing the platform can do. HTML5, in and of itself, does not play any more part in stealing marketshare from Flash as an application platform than HTML4. AJAX and other low-impact client-server technologies obviously play a part, but that is independent of the HTML5 spec.

Misconception #3: HTML5 will diminish Flash because Flash crashes browsers with high memory usage, high CPU usage, and for being insecure. Wrong again. Despite what Steve Jobs may feel about Flash, Adobe, and previously Macromedia, has painstakingly worked on the Flash platform to minimize its own memory and CPU footprint as well as provide many security constraints to thwart content injections and misuse of applications. As with any other platform (OS-level or VM-level), it is up to the programmer to profile their application and determine where high CPU usage occurs and memory leaks can be found. Flash as a platform is not the reason browsers crash. Faulty programs are. This is true in almost every form of any operating system or virtual machine found today.

While I would agree that HTML5 is going to become yet another good enhancement to the HTML specification, and that it will provide an alternative to Flash concerning audio and video embedded content, it is by far never going to cause Flash to meet up with Elvis and the do-do bird. People who are employed in Flash and Flex jobs have nothing to worry about in the coming years. In fact, Flash and Flex jobs currently are a booming market. People have criticized Flash since its inception, but the platform perseveres and the new 10.1 version offers a lot to be excited about especially in the mobile market.