The flashblock addon does something similar for Microb

I hate flash, because I cannot know and noone cares enough to warn on every flash-blob what information from my machine is sent through the Internet when I accept some binary blob when a flash blocker extension asks for a confirmation.

So yes, I prefer HTML5 support in microB before Flash-support.
Steve Jobs is right in this issue. Flash is a security risk we wouldn't need to take.

Want to know what information is being sent by Flash... use a packet sniffer.

Flash isn't as much of a security risk as QuickTime or PDF's - which are worse offenders. HTML5 vs. Flash... such an often wrongly argued issue.

What could it possibly send? The flash itself has no outside access and the plugin by Adobe is unlikely to make a market booboo as large as to collect and send info to home.

I agree with gerbick here. Security issue it's not. Stevie is just being a behind like we all know he can be, making a move like this knowing publicity is going to be massive for Apple. He's probably already sniffing HTML5 or some other alternate technology he'll move to (or launch one) and is using the opposite of quietly leaving to generate some buzz.

I don't buy that an Apple crashes mostly because of Flash. That's insane. If Flash can crash your platform, your platform is bad, mmkay?

I still do not get the premise of this thread. It's like asking for something to eat while eating a fancy dinner.

Let's consider real HTML5:

Firefox/Fennec nightly already has the best HTML5 support of any browser. Indeed, it is the only browser to have a feature complete HTML5 parser, including inline SVG and MathML.

Both Webkit and Gecko are quickly closing the gap to Opera in supporting HTML5 form enhancements. All three are working on adding support for other elements, like <mark>, <details> or <figure>.

Gecko, Chromium and Opera all have experimental builds with WebM support. They all have Canvas.

What's left is implementing a few more details and the sectioning algorithm (Gecko is halfway there) and making the new features accessible (once again, Gecko is halfway there).

Exactly what HTML5 feature are you guys afraid of not getting on the Maemo/Meego platform?

And when we misuse the term "HTML5" to mean anything new and cool:

Webkit and Gecko both have experimental support for WebGL. Opera says they will join that party as well.

Opera has superb support for SVG. Webkit and Gecko both have strong support. Gecko is missing support for SVG-fonts (who needs it?), but has GPU acceleration instead. In a year from now all three of these will support using SVG as <object>s, <embed>s, <img>s and CSS-backgrounds. Within two years from now they all will support inline SVG, just like Firefox nightly does today.

All three of these support the following CSS 3 modules really well:

• Selectors
• Colors (HSLA ands RGBA)
• Media queries

They also support downloadable fonts. Chrome has recently joined Firefox in supporting WOFF, Opera is expected to follow.

All three have experimental support for CSS transforms and transitions, i.e. you have to use the vendor prefix. Opera support CSS 3 borders without prefix, the other two with a prefix.

BTW, Opera Mobile in Maemo is the only mobile Opera to support this!

All three have really fast JavaScript performance. Gecko is way ahead of IE in DOM performance, but trails the other two. This is aggressively being worked on right now. Chrome and Firefox both support worker threads, Opera is working on it.

Firefox nightly is almost complete in its support for ECMAScript 5th edition. Carakan (Opera) and V8 has some support, but not yet the most important part, "use strict".

Firefox nightly has added a few features from the proposed 6th edition. E.g. proxies, ephemeron tables and opt-in block scope using "let". The last feature has been in Firefox for ages.

Gecko is gotten an overhaul in its rendering engine, a.k.a. its use of "layers" , that will bring dramatic speed boosts. It is also getting tons of GPU acceleration. The GFX engine in Opera is super duper fast. Webkit is well known for its fast rendering.

So let me ask you once again: What "HTML5" feature do you fear is not coming to Maemo/Meego?

If Nokia messes up the WRT, we can always use xulrunner or Opera widgets.

As for MicroB, it is a safe bet that Nokia will switch to Gecko 1.9.3 as well, If they do not, just use Fennec.

WebGL was enabled in PR1.2 upgrade. Point your N900 built-in browser to:

http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Demo_Repository

for the fun

SVG seem to be turned on as well in MicroB since 1.2, but not the HTML5 parser (understandably).

Principally I still think that Nokia should support Fennec and work to improve it, though.

Perhaps they do indirectly.... Does anyone know if Nokia has made any commits upstream to Gecko, SpiderMonkey, Tracemonkey or any other Mozilla code?

I have alot of faith in what will be VP8 support in HTML5, and will look forward to seeing multimedia online again. I despise Flash and have always done so. Flash is perfect when it comes to showing the disadvantages with closed software. I am only running non-x86 architectures in which there doesn't exist any compiled Flash binaries for, only Gnash/swfdec. And since Flash is closed software, not free, I cannot compile it to work on my computer systems. If there is anything I would like to see on YouTube, I just use TinyOgg.com or WatchVideo

Is there any way to uninstall Flash on N900/Maemo 5?

Not uninstall that I'm aware of.. but there is flashblock in the repositories that will effectively disable flash areas of the web unless you specifically click on them.

Well, you can always remove libflashplayer.so but there is more of an elegant solution - in MicroB go to Options / Add-ons, click on the Plugins tab, click on Shockwave Flash and then on the Disable button next to it. The change should be immediate if nothing with Flash content is opened in the background, but if it doesn't stick, right after disabling the plugin jump to xterm and reset the browser stack by hand: