“When I’m introspective about the last few years, I think the biggest mistake that we made as a company is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native. Because it just wasn’t there.” -Mark Zuckerberg, Techcrunch Disrupt SF, September 2012.
Some of us aren’t ready to give up on HTML5 yet. At Filepicker.io, we are BIG believers in the future of HTML5; both for web and mobile apps. That is why we are ardent supporters of the HTML5 Developer Conference to be held on October 15th and 16th in San Francisco.
Even if Mark’s view is correct (debatable), the only way HTML5 will ever ‘get there’ is if the developer community continues to build apps on HTML5 that push the boundaries of performance. To encourage this, we are happy to gift 4 complimentary tickets to the HTML5 Dev Conf for the most interesting HTML5 hacks and apps. If you are from out of town, we will even house you in SF, Airbnb style.
Choose any technology or any API you want and build a mobile or mobile-web application that showcases HTML5’s capabilities . Send us your apps/hacks by 12th October end-of-day PST to contest@filestack.com and we will announce winners on the 14th. More details at the end of this post.
So why do we care so much about advancing HTML5?
1. HTML5 allows us to live and work online
Remember being excited when Google came up with the Chromebook? We were. We believe deep down, that we should all be able to live and work entirely online. The Post-PC era is already here; multiple devices and multiple data sources are generating various kinds data strewn across the user’s cloud. However, that content is only as valuable as what users can do with it. HTML5 allows you to build those kind of content rich applications that can display, modify, combine, and save the users content.
2. Because web apps will eventually be better than native apps
The key thing that was lost in the media storm over Mark’s comments was-“Because it just wasn’t there”. The Apple camp would like us to believe that the native apps is the way to go, but we believe that the quicker iteration cycle and shorter development time means that web apps will eventually out-innovate installed apps. We saw the computer go through a remote to local to remote transition: We were all telnet’ing into mainframes, before buying Microsoft and Adobe installs in the 90’s, and now increasingly using web applications in the 2010’s. Native apps are a transitory state in the evolution of apps. We don’t know how quickly that will happen, but we know that pushing forward on technologies like HTML5 is part of the answer.
HTML 5 dev. conf.
The HTML5 dev conf. is bringing together some of the best minds in the developer community to explore the future of the technology. Some sample talks on the schedule:
– Broken promises of HTML5 and what’s next?
Christian Heilmann, Principal Developer Evangelist, Mozilla
– Solving Performance for 2D and 3D Web Apps – Finally
Steve Newcomb, CEO, famo.us
– Building an HTML5 Video Player
Steve Heffernan, Video.js Zencoder
– Using HTML5 and Amazon S3 to build Server Free Global Databases…
Tony Sukiennik
– Using Multithreading to Increase Performance of Real Time High Performance Web Applications
Dr. Corey Clark, Professor of Game and Simulation Programming at DeVry University in Dallas
– That’s Web? Extreme Optimization for the Mobile Web!
Glan Thomas, Senior Platform Engineer, Disney Interactive
Hack/app content for complimentary tickets
The rules are fairly simple.
– Must be a HTML5 app
– Use any technology or API that you want to use/learn (doesn’t even need to use filepicker :D)
– Both web or mobile web apps are fine. As long as someone can reach it with just a url and a browser.
Prizes
Win 4 tickets to the HTML5 dev. conf. conference on 15th and 16th Conference.
If you are from out of town we’ll house you airbnb style in SF/Bay area if you wish.
Send us your apps/hacks by 12th October end-of-day PST to contest@filestack.com and we’ll announce winners on the 14th.
Feel free to direct comments/questions/concerns to
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Filestack is a dynamic team dedicated to revolutionizing file uploads and management for web and mobile applications. Our user-friendly API seamlessly integrates with major cloud services, offering developers a reliable and efficient file handling experience.