I thought that that war between Flash and HTML5 was something that would really get going in 2011, possibly 2012. However, I had forgotten something very important. The energies driving HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript performance in the big HTML5-CSS3-JS browsers are open source projects, and very well run focused ones at that. Firefox and Webkit are moving quicker than Adobe can, and the tie between the authoring tools and features and the player and it’s features is another source of drag.

The result? Firefox 3.6 is out with more HTML5 and CSS3 support. YouTube and Vimeo both supporting the HTML5 video element.

The only sadness is that every Windows user starts with IE (I feel the same about Safari on the Mac, it just so happens it’s WebKit) and that firefox doesn’t support H.264 yet. I say yet because it will.

However, it’s starting now. I used to judge which version of Flash I could get away with supporting when YouTube moved to a new version. Clearly they are not switching yet (and won’t for a couple of years I’m sure), but make no mistake, we are approaching a tipping point.