Watch Aviary to see how far HTML5 can go in replacing Flash

A screenshot of Aviary’s photo-editing app.
Photos: everyone understands them, everyone can take them, and everybody does. Just raise your phone and press. Share on your social networks, and bam, you’ve done your part in assuring your virtual world that you are alive and doing wonderful, exciting and photograph-worthy things.

Ah, but wait: your poorly composed shot demonstrating the limits of over-exposure communicates more about your lack of skills than the spirit of the captured moment. Enter magic one-steppers like $1b Instagram and Aviary. The business of magicking your pics with simple clicks on your pocket computer is so good that Aviary decided to abandon its online tools for more advanced editing. The company’s e-mail gives a couple of reasons for this: the widespread adoption of their simple photo app makes it worth prioritizing, and updating Aviary’s Flash-based advanced editors stopped making time-sense given Flash’s “decline as a platform over the last few years.”

I remember when having Flash on my journalism resume could mean another point in the game of hire-me/hire-me-not. No more. Given HTMl5, Flash programming will fall to very high-end specialists (if it has not already claimed this status for years). But can HTML5 do all the tricks up Flash’s sleeve? It will get there. When: dunno. Aviary won’t be redoing its tools in HTML5, but it’s as good a place as any to watch the language flex its way forward.

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