For all the saber-rattling and support for the upcoming HTML5 specification, the standard isn't actually ready for production yet. Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C Interaction domain leader, noted that despite the excitement for HTML5, interoperability issues mean that it's a "little too early to deploy it" at the moment. The real problem, Le Hegaret told Computerworld, is whether "we can make [HTML5] work across browsers and at the moment, that is not the case."

HTML5 was thrust into the limelight recently, due in part to Steve Job's open disdain for Adobe's (NASDAQ: ADBE) Flash technology, citing HTML5 as the technology replacement for Flash. Indeed, Jobs refused to support Flash in the Safari browser on the iOS, and until recently, went as far as to prohibit even Flash-derived executables. 

While there is little doubt that HTML5 will eventually become the de facto standard for websites, it might be some years yet before that will happen. More notable are the shortcomings that prevent it from competing with technologies such as Flash and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Silverlight--for example, HTML5's glaring lack of a video codec.

In addition, the absence of Digital Rights Management support also means that video producers will not be keen to stream their content over HTML5 even if a patent-free codec were to be implemented eventually.

So while HTML5 can probably be safely deployed on computer Intranets, the situation is different on the Internet due to the varying state of HTML5 implementations in browsers. "Sure, it's fine to experiment with HTML5 and existing implementations, but don't expect stability," Le Hegaret wrote in a tweet.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at The Inquirer
- check out this article at IT Pro

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