<p>HTML5. CSS3. Canvas. H.264 or Ogg for <video></p> <p>Web developers care. The folks who build browsers care (and boy are they competitive about it with their speed demos and compliance tests).</p> <p></p> <p>But users?</p> <p></p> <p>They don’t care about the technology. They want their game to run, their video to play and their photos of Aunt Bertha’s 50<sup>th</sup> birthday party to load.</p> <p></p> <p>Ask them what version of Flash or Silverlight they have, or even what a cascading style sheet is and they’ll give you a blank look. Heck, most don’t even know what browser version they’re running (with Chrome that’s becoming a challenge to keep up with updates!)</p> <p></p> <p>In fact, with sites like Facebook and Twitter, Bing and CNN or aps from the various app stores on Windows, Android and iPhones undergoing almost constant innovation and evolution users don’t have a good way to keep track of where things are.</p> <p></p> <p>So what does this mean for web developers? It means you need to write smarter code that tests for the features you need and degrades gracefully – on desktops, mobile devices, internet connected TVs and who knows what. Keep is as simple as possible and get the basics right.</p> <p></p> <p>And for users? Well, hopefully the new advances in capabilities will make for richer, faster, more capable apps, and better experiences. Hopefully this period of change won’t make for the troubles of the last “browser war” where users had to choose what browser they visited certain sites in, developers would post snarky “better with X browser” messages and nobody really wins.</p> <p></p> <p>Here’s looking for the next generation web … and hopefully smooth evolution without the pain of artificial revolution</p>