Gary Kovacs, CEO of the company that makes the Mozilla Firefox web browser, encouraged his audience today to support HTML 5 as a way to insure that users will have a world of choice when it comes to mobile apps. “It is impossible for me to believe that one or two companies will be able to curate all the content,” said Kovacs. “Imagine the explosion of innovation if we could unload 5 or 6 million developers onto the ecosystem that is the web.”
Kovacs believes that HTML 5 will enable this level of innovation because of the sheer number of developers programming in the language. “There are 3 million HTML developers around the world,” he said. “It is the language that they are speaking and when asked to choose, they choose HTML 5. HTML 5 is optimized for what the web has become today: apps, video, music, and immersive experiences.”
Kovacs also admitted that the makers of today’s web browsers have not yet done a good job adapting websites for mobile devices. “The single best mobile innovation we have been able to deliver is shrinkage,” he said. “The only thing we have forgotten to deliver is a set of glasses so that those of us who are getting older can read it. We cannot let our legacy be shrinkage.”
Kovacs believes that HTML 5 will help developers evolve websites so that they are optimized for mobile devices. He noted that for many people around the world, mobile devices are giving them their very first exposure to the Internet. Therefore in many cases, developers need to think first about mobile when designing a site.
