ReadWriteWeb

Adobe will soon introduce its Creative Suite 5 to the public. A tool in the new suite will allow for easy import of Flash animations into HTML5 Canvas code. Once IE9 launches, all major browsers will support Canvas. At that point, any Flash creation can be viewable by just about anyone without downloading the Flash plugin. It also means, clearly, that devices that cannot accept the plugin can nonetheless run the animations built on it.

Those who are excited about this probably think of Flash is a space hog. As ReadWriteWeb has discovered, it sometimes is, though not always.

SublimeVideo, an HTML5-based video player from Switzerland-based development and design firm Jilion now includes a "fall back to Flash mode." This means that when a web surfer using a browser that doesn't support HTML5 visits a page that uses the player, it will automatically switch over (aka "fall back") to Adobe Flash, the plugin-based technology that older, non-HTML5 web browsers use.

Why is this important? In addition to providing a path to move from one technology to the next, a transition that will take years at best, SublimeVideo could ease the workload for developers tasked with creating web pages that the entire web audience can access.

Will popular websites, especially those from news and entertainment companies, work on the iPad? Apple, in an arguably brilliant PR effort now has an answer: an online collection of iPad-Ready sites.

The Cupertino-based maker of iPods and iPhones made a bold, potentially Internet-changing decision when it decided that the upcoming slate computer known as the Apple iPad would not support Adobe Flash technology. This browser plugin, used across the Web for everything from streaming video to casual games, is slowly being phased out by HTML5, the next revision of the core markup language used in the creation of Web pages. The video support included in the upcoming Web standard requires no downloadable, installable plugin in order to work. But HMTL5 is still new, and details - including what video codec it will support - have not been ironed out.

Video platform provider Brightcove just announced the launch of a new tool for website publishers called the "Brightcove Experience Framework for HTML5." The framework allows the company's 1,300 customers create HTML5-compatible websites for delivering video content to Apple mobile devices, including the upcoming slate computer known as the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

There has been a lot of debate about the move to HTML5 for Web video support, an area previously dominated by Adobe Flash and its accompanying Web browser plugin. Some publishers claim making the switch is a burden while others, most notably Apple CEO Steve Jobs, say the move is "trivial." The truth, says Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, is that "it depends." For some publishers using homegrown video solutions, building a new HTML5 website is indeed hard work, but for customers using platform solutions (like his, of course), the transition is much easier.

CBS.com is apparently adding itself to the lineup of big-name media properties scrambling to get their websites ready for the upcoming Apple iPad, due out on April 3. Recently, both the Wall St. Journal and NPR.org confirmed that they were revamping their sites using HTML5 markup language, the upcoming Web standard that supports video playback without a Web browser plugin. The reason for the overhauls? Apple does not support Adobe's Flash technology on their mobile devices, a lineup that also includes iPhones and iPod Touches. That means that CBS.com's Flash-based streaming video wouldn't play on Apple's new slate computers - devices expected to land in the hands of anywhere from 1 to 6 million customers this year, depending on which analyst predictions you go by.

With the impending launch of the Apple iPad, the Cupertino-based company's shunning of Adobe Flash technology has been brought to the forefront of technological discussions. While it was one thing to forgo Flash on a small, mobile device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, some are questioning whether lack of Flash support is going to be a make-it-or-break it feature for the new slate devices arriving next month - devices which, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs - are "better than netbooks."

On the flip side, Apple supporters echo the company's sentiments that "Flash is a CPU hog" and including support for the technology in Apple's mobile line-up would negatively impact battery life.

Today at the Mobile World Congress 2010, Adobe announced several initiatives designed to cement their company's relevance in a world where Apple, one of the top smartphone players, has banned Adobe software from inclusion on all mobile devices including the iPhone, iPod Touch and the soon-to-launch iPad. Without Adobe's Flash runtime, thousands of websites don't work, streaming videos won't play and a number of online casual games are broken. Apple, of course, is fine with this, having worked around the issue thanks to the 150,000+ iPhone applications that deliver the same functionality...although sometimes for a fee.

Adobe, meanwhile, is focusing on the other up-and-coming smartphone platform, Google's Android OS, with the launch of their "AIR for Android" offering. With this and the newly announced Flash Player 10.1, wannabe mobile developers don't need to learn specialized code, but can instead leverage their existing development skills to build Flash and AIR-based applications. They can then have those apps run anywhere: PCs, Macs, Linux and mobile...including, surprisingly, the iPhone.

Salesforce.com and Adobe have entered a partnership that allows developers to create rich Internet and desktop applications in the cloud. The partnership is just one more example of how an ecosystem is developing between Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors and application developers.

In recent weeks Salesforce.com has partnered with a host of companies, including Box.net last week and an integration with Cisco earlier this month.