> That you can have video (just like Flash, except slower)?
Actually HTML5 is faster, and Flash is slower [for me]. So video on the web is a big deal with HTML5.
> HTML5 is one more step in the direction of web pages pretending to be applications.
No, it is one more step in the direction of web pages becoming applications. You can't possibly tell me that Gmail isn't a full application! It's much faster and more responsive than any desktop mail client I've ever seen: searching mail takes < 1 second vs 1-2 minutes in Outlook. It's better in every way. And it's on the web.
Personally, I just find web applications extremely painful to develop (on all the frameworks/dev environments I've tried, not just Microsoft ones). Desktop development is a lot more fun, but web apps are where the jobs are these days, unfortunately.
Actually HTML5 is faster, and Flash is slower [for me]. So video on the web is a big deal with HTML5.
> HTML5 is one more step in the direction of web pages pretending to be applications.
No, it is one more step in the direction of web pages becoming applications. You can't possibly tell me that Gmail isn't a full application! It's much faster and more responsive than any desktop mail client I've ever seen: searching mail takes < 1 second vs 1-2 minutes in Outlook. It's better in every way. And it's on the web.
Why are you opposed to web applications?