The battle [2] between Adobe's Flash tech and Apple [3]'s push for clever HTML5 code continues: Adobe's touting [4] next-gen 3-D capabilities, and Apple's heading toward sophisticated multitouch Web apps through SproutCore coding. Who'll win?

Sure, Adobe is angry at Apple for excluding its tech from the iPad, and European regulators (with a firm grip on the wrong end of the stick) are getting antsy [5] about the matter... but the fact is that Web tech is rapidly evolving beyond the limited--and very slow-to-evolve--capabilities of Adobe's Flash. Maybe that's why Adobe product manager Thibault Imbert has been [4] "leaking" hints about the interesting technology that'll be included in the next-generation of Flash. Among the gems, Imbert notes that there'll be an API for 3-D graphical rendering in Flash, which will potentially enable Flash-based web games to really evolve toward the graphical richness that their desktop game cousins have been managing for years. Imbert's enthusiasm, aimed at teasing a session at the Adobe MAX 2010 conference on "Flash Play 3D Future" seems to know no bounds: "forget what you've seen before, it is going to be big."

But does Flash, a proprietary code system remember, have a big future in Web coding? In the Apple-versus-Adobe imbroglio, a significant chunk of the "blame" should be laid on Adobe for its complacency in not delivering a powerful, power-friendly installation of Flash suitable for the smartphone in time ... as well as for its glacial upgrades to Flash for Macs. Moreover, online video is rapidly moving to non-Flash HTML5 alternatives, and multitouch UIs are proliferating--with in-built unfriendliness to some of Flash's core working methods.

And Apple is keen to develop HTML5's powers still further. SproutCore, which is behind the rich web-app code Apple's using for its MobileMe system, has moved ahead independently of Apple, but with their support. As they note at AppleInsider [6], SproutCore is inherently multitouch friendly, and if it can make its way onto other tablet platforms apart from the iPad. It'll definitely advance the cause of clever Web-app programming. Indeed, one powerful use for SproutCore is to produce "rich" e-book or e-magazine offerings, in a directly rivalry to Adobe.

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