Announcing a one-day conference at the Royal Society, London UK, on the 14th of May.

Just a few years back I wrote a white paper titled "Flex, Silverlight or HTML5? Time to decide ..." with the help of a couple of my colleagues, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the three competing technologies. This paper was aimed at helping developers make an informed choice when faced with developing an interactive web site or complex web app.

Don't bother reading that white paper now! It was only written two years ago, but is now so out-of-date that it might as well have been written ten years ago.

Here's the penultimate paragraph:

"It is very difficult to predict where we will be in a few years' time and whether there will be some technology casualties along the way. Can all three technologies co-exist? Or will one or more be relegated to the internet history books like Java Applets and ActiveX?"

Yes, there have been some casualties, both Silverlight ... and Flex!

The rise of smartphones and tablets has accelerated HTML5 adoption to the point where plugins are considered a legacy technology. Invest in them at your peril!

The problem is that enterprise-scale HTML5 development is far from easy. With Flex and Silverlight you have the comfort of working within a shrink-wrapped development environment, whereas HTML5 is like the Wild West; assembling a workable set of tools, framework and processes is not an easy task.

This is why we decided to stage our own conference - we want to talk about the challenges of enterprise scale HTML5 development, and how to tackle them.

If you are interested, and are thinking of signing up, take a look at the conference website - html5-it-just-got-real.com - there will be talks on a range of subjects, ranging from practical and insightful to radical and fun (we have a BBC presenter and a guitar-wielding JavaScript rockstar).

Regards, Colin E.