FT leads publishers in switching online platforms to HTML5
NMA, 12th August
The Financial Times is making significant investment in HTML5 as it looks to create a coherent presence across platforms and devices.
The move comes as HTML5 starts to attract increasing support in the online publishing industry.
FT.com MD Rob Grimshaw said HTML5 is a good way to “keep down complexity” as channels proliferate and the market shifts towards mobile - developments that publishers are still getting to grips with.
The Pearson-owned finance news site is updating its second BlackBerry app to an HTML5 Android platform, and is considering developing an HTML5 version of its How To Spend It site. The advantages of the platform are that it can support rich media, complex fonts and layouts in a simple way across multiple platforms and devices, according to Grimshaw.
“As the market shifts towards mobile, we need to understand how readers consume content through devices and apps. What we want to do is give readers what they want, when they want it and on whichever device they want,” he said.
“It’s still early days, but the HTML5 app could end up being the standard BlackBerry app, while working on the desktop just as well, or any of the tablet devices,” Grimshaw added.
“Almost every browser renders content differently, and when you’re developing you have to test each device and each browser. It’s a horrendous process. What HTML5 will do is sweep all that away.”
This is important, he said, when apps like the FT’s iPad app are updated automatically or by editors working on cross-platform content.
Sam Andrews, creative director of digital agency Snow Valley, which is developing a mobile site in HTML5 for Liverpool Football Club, said, “You don’t want to have to recreate something each time for different devices. You’d need different teams maintaining different devices, and that’s inefficient for publishers trying to keep overheads down.”
Google publisher account manager Benedicte Autret - who at an AOP conference last month presented Google’s HTML5 prototype Sports Illustrated magazine site as an example of how the platform can enrich traditional print titles across laptops, notebooks and tablets - said publishers should be asking whether they need to be optimising sites for mobile. “Thinking about developing on apps, publishers need to ask what they can do with an app that they can’t do with a website,” she said, pointing out that HTML5 removed the need to develop a separate mobile site.
Howard Furr-Barton, director of Baber Smith Mobilise, said that while HTML5 is good in principle and publishers can be good beta testers for technology, its success depends on commercial take-up. And right now “there are a lot of barriers”.
Andrews added, “The biggest one is that Internet Explorer is the browser most people run, but it’s also the least capable and content may not render correctly. This is hindering adoption.”