The Past
I’m stretching the definition of “the past” a bit , but in my session Styling Text for the Web Using CSS, I will talk about how you can take the traditional typographic techniques you might be very familiar with in print (such as leading and kerning) and translate them to the Web using Cascading Style Sheets. I’ll also take a quick look at Web Fonts, which are a new and exciting development allowing web designers to use more and higher quality fonts than ever before.

The Present
Dreamweaver is the world’s most popular WSYWIG web editor and Adobe seems committed to updating it as quickly as possible in order to keep up with the rapidly changing world of the web. In my session What’s New in Dreamweaver CS 5.5, I discuss and demonstrate new features largely relating to mobile design. I’ll spend a fair amount of time talking about the Multiscreen Preview which helps you design pages for mobile phone and tablet devices.

The Future
Take a thrilling look into where the Web is headed. HTML5 and CSS3 are where you’ll be spending some time with me in my session Future of the Web:HTML5. Here, you’ll take a look at features that can be used today to make websites and web applications more useful and visually interesting such as Geolocation and Web Fonts. You’ll also see the more experimental and evolving features that aren’t ready to be used today, but might be a part of your web future!

The web community was reminded of this in the beginning of November when news began to emerge that the new HTML5 <time> element was being pulled from the HTML5 specification. This element was among many new elements that have been introduced since development of HTML5 began in 2004. The news came as a surprise to many designers and developers (particularly those who had used the element in completed projects).

The essence of the matter is this: the <time> element was intended to tag HTML content that included the date and time for any reason: a blog post, or the time an article was posted or any other scenario where the time was important enough to warrant being tagged. I’m not going to explore why this happened here (although if you are interested in learning more, there are many places to look), I’m more interested in the fact that it happened at all.

The fact is, the language of HTML5 is still being defined. Although the majority of the new elements are here to stay and there will unlikely be many new elements being added, the dropping of the <time> element is a good reminder that the use of HTML5 requires some caution and attention to detail. It is a delicate balance to walk: builders of next generation websites want new tools in order to create new experiences for users, but these tools don’t just get dropped into our laps. They emerge slowly and come into focus over time, hopefully based on community consensus. Ultimately, I believe this will make the foundation of HTML5 stronger than anything we have seen up to this point, but until the day the specification is finalized, keep a close eye on what’s happening!

Let’s take a step back and review the primary role of Flash in the year 2011, primarily we see Flash on the web being used for: a.) Web video, b.) Multimedia content such as web banners, games, interactive charts/graphs and c.) Rich Internet Applications embedded within web pages (examples include anything from music players to financial applications.) On the desktop, Flash requires a browser plugin to deliver all of this content and the plugin has had incredible success over the years, with the vast majority of web browsers having some version of the plugin installed.

Translating desktop success to mobile proved to be much more difficult for Adobe. Apple’s Steve Jobs famously spoke out against Flash in 2010, claiming that tests of the technology resulted in poorer performance on the iPhone (among other things) and made it publicly clear that Flash would likely never be supported on Apple iOS devices. Although mobile versions of Flash are supported on the latest Android devices, the widespread popularity of Apple devices must have contributed to Adobe’s  decision to discontinue development of mobile Flash (although they will continue to support existing versions).

Another factor in Adobe’s decision is the rise of HTML5, a collection of new features and technology for the Web. Many of the features that Flash has come to stand for (see above) can be accomplished with HTML5, which does not require a browser plugin and is not a proprietary technology but one based on web standards and not owned by anybody. So web video and audio, animation (using both the new Canvas API as well as CSS),  and many other features can now be built with a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and work just as well on a mobile device as it does on the desktop.

For designers and developers, the path now could not be more clear: if you are interested in creating content for mobile devices then HTML5 is one of the main roads to take. Another main road is the development of native applications for mobile devices, which  Adobe also has a stake in with Adobe Air and their popular applications Flash Professional and Dreamweaver.

Adobe’s decision to focus on HTML5 for mobile is a good thing for all of us in this continually evolving industry. The major players on the Web including Google, Microsoft, Apple and many others, have all put their support behind HTML5 and this means designers and developers can get down to the important business of creating great content without having to worry about which technology they are choosing.