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If you want a web trading app with great performance and functionality, what are you going to do?

Install a Silverlight plug-in? Upgrade to the latest version of Flash? Use Webstart? They all require downloads and installs with admin privileges.

Or you can just use a modern browser, which before too long everyone will have, and use HTML5. Problem solved.

Or is it?

HTML5 adoption is coming on in leaps and bounds. Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera and IE9 are all now rushing to support the emerging standards. Mobile devices seem to be converging on Webkit-based browsers (the open-source renderer used for Safari and Chrome), and everyone is agreed that HTML5 is a revolution in browser-delivered content.

Finally the term ‘browser wars’ has been redefined to mean who can support the most standards, do so faster and with a better UX rather than the old definition of ‘my way is best’.

But what about those poor souls stuck on IE6, 7 (and even 8)? If you’re using a framework like Caplin Trader that supports graceful degradation then you will get reduced, but still usable, performance and functionality.

But there is another option… A year or so ago Google released the Chrome Frame plugin (primarily to support their ill-fated Wave project, but that’s another story) and recently it left beta to become a stable release. This plugin brings Chrome rendering capabilities and performance to older IE browsers, essentially allowing them to play with the HTML5 big boys.

It still requires admin privileges to install (though they’re planning to remove this soon, apparently), but so do the other plugins…

Filed under: Rich Internet Applications, Technology Trends |