Goldilocks and the Three Web Development Tools

Grant Cline
Product Manager

Once upon a time there was a war between Adobe and Apple over Flash. A little over a year ago, Steve Jobs declared that Flash was dead and that it would never find it’s way onto Apple’s iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) because the world is moving to HTML5. This war of words between Apple and Adobe caused a lot of people in the technology sector to re-evaluate their current direction.

When it comes to rich ‘web apps’ (websites that have the same type of feel that an app installed on your machine has) there are a number of different tools/languages that can be used, but three seem to be at the top of the list.

The first, and most recent to emerge is HTML5. HTML5 is an open standard that has been in the works since 2004. With HTML5, developers can better manage media (video, graphics, etc.) and can create web apps with a much more modern feel than was previously possible with HTML.

Even though the HTML5 standard has been in development for 7 years, not every web browser supports it. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 (released in 3/14/2011) is their first browser to fully support HTML5. Unfortunately, IE9 is not available to users on Windows XP, or previous versions of Windows. Over 77% of NETtime’s users are on Windows XP and most of our XP users run Internet Explorer. XP users are not without options; they can opt for Firefox, Chrome or Safari to meet their HTML5 needs. If NETtime were to utilize HTML5, an unacceptably high percentage (over 80%) of our customers would need to make a browser change.

Next on the list is Adobe Flash. Flash has been around for a long time, and it has been a staple on most video web sites including YouTube and CNN. Flash gives developers an amazing amount of control over how an application looks and feels to the end user and they are able to make the experience the same for each user.

Flash sounds great, until you look at the long list of downsides. The three major issues I see are that it requires a download to be installed on a machine before it is used, which often requires the IT department to assist. Flash uses a large amount of system resources, which can cause a computer to feel sluggish. Lastly, Flash based web apps need to download a large amount of data each time they are used, causing the user to wait while the application loads.

Rounding out the top three is jQuery. Without boring you with the technical details, jQuery allows a web app to feel a lot like a Flash based site without the pre-installed application, sluggish performance, or large download file. It allows for a very modern look, similar to how a lot of HTML5 sites appear, but it is using standards that have been around a while and are supported by all the major browsers. If NETtime utilized jQuery, a small percentage (less than 5%) of our users would need to upgrade their browsers.

When building a web-based business application the most important aspect is ensuring that the product will work for the vast majority of your customers, with little or no impact to their current environment. Of the three tools we looked at today, the first, HTML5, is often found to be too new, and user adoption is too low to make it practical. The second, Adobe Flash, is a burden on the companies’ IT resources and negates the benefits of web based apps. The third, jQuery is one of the most popular choices and is currently being used by 46% of the top 10,000 web sites.

To paraphrase Goldilocks, when it comes to web apps: HTML5 is too new, Flash is too cumbersome, and jQuery is just right.

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