• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, July 12, 2010

The ongoing tussle over HTML5 usually gets framed as a battle between Adobe and Apple, Flash vs. the emerging HTML standards. Actually the more interesting fault lines may lie on the iPhone itself, between app and Web apps that are becoming increasingly rich under HTML5 development. To wit: the release last week of YouTube's new mobile Web site at m.youtube.com that leverages HTML5 to make a damned fine app that circumvents the usual app download.

The re-engineered mobile web page really does approximate the functionality of the YouTube app that is baked onto every iPhone and iPad. Simple button operations let you like, dislike, fave and comment on clips without page reloads. An icon-driven home page lets you preserve settings and make and view playlists. Drop down menus help you browse through categories quickly. And the speed and video quality are excellent. There is an HQ button for viewing higher res versions of the clip when bandwidth allows. In fact in my head to head comparison of the iPhone's native YouTube app and the new mobile Web site, the latter proved more efficient and easy to use. Some early impressions have claimed superior video quality from the HTML5 Web-based version, but I am not necessarily seeing that on the videos I tested. And while YouTube boasts that the new site is very fast, I see that more in actual video loading than I do in overall site performance, which doesn't bring up search results or pages for me quite as quickly as the app does.

There are no ads apparent in these videos for now. Developers working across the various platforms still say that implementing pre-rolls and especially back end tracking/accountability tools in HTML5, which is not a finished standard anyway, remains challenge.

Regardless, YouTube for mobile Web is more than good enough for most common uses of YouTube and a fair demonstration of how powerful HTML5 could become in taking some steam out of the mobile app juggernaut that seems relentless. There are some distinct advantages to developing straight for the mobile Web, not the least of which is skirting the Apple iTunes store's business models and limitations. Rather than wait for every app upgrade candidate to go through an approval process and get downloaded by your subscribers, HTML5 lets you deploy any changes to a site iteratively, universally and immediately. With iPhone, Android and reportedly the next Blackberry browsers all supporting HTML5, there is less need for costly app versioning. Cross-linking across sites or Web apps is easier, and your site/app content is visible to search. And on the mobile Web there is no question over who owns the customer, the data and ad relationships. Yeah, we're talking about you, iAds.

For the time being there likely is more power and design flexibility to the discrete app, but I would expect to see many more brands and publishers follow YouTube's lead this coming year to see how far an HTML5 mobile Web site will get them.