Windows 8 will be two versions of Internet Explorer 10: a conventional browser who lives on the Office of the legacy and a new browser Metro-style, touch-friendly in the world of Metro. The second of these, the Metro browser will not support plugins. If Flash, Silverlight or some app custom business, sites who need plugins only will be available in the non-touch, Office-based browser.
Should it ever arrive through a page that requires a plugin, the browser of Metro has a button to go to that page in the desktop browser. This you yanks of the experience of Metro and you place on the traditional desktop.
The rationale is a familiar: content plugin shortens the battery life and comes with problems of security, reliability, and privacy. Sites currently depend on the capabilities of Flash or Silverlight should move to HTML5.
Microsoft has been vigorously promoting HTML5 for the last year and a half as the best way to provide rich interactivity on the Web. HTML5 potentially achieve well beyond that of Flash, since it can affect conventional browsers and closed ecosystems (such as iOS) both. However, until now, the Microsoft messaging was somewhat temperate: use HTML5 when you can, but if you do not - if you need support Media DRM-protected streaming, for example - then it is reasonable to switch to alternative technology-based on the plugin.
With Windows 8, however, these reasonable decisions to use Flash or Silverlight will now strongly penalized. Technically, it is nothing wrong with the desktop browser, of course; the rendering engine and performance will be identical between the Metro and Office. But the experience will be significantly lower. The desktop browser is not designed for touch input, which means that users will switch to a mouse and a keyboard or escaped with an interface which was not built for the fingers. The switch to the desktop browser also seems to throw things like historical back button and the current state of the page.
This puts the browser Metro in a particular situation. Microsoft has positioned tablets as just another type of PC. Which the company supports, provides functionality not possible on the iPad-style devices. But PC browser plugins - more generally, they have the ability to use technology to work. If Metro does not include this flexibility, which could be regarded as diminishing the "PCness" of the platform.
HTML5 is not a total replacement for plugin technologies. The gap is narrowing: Web Sockets, Web workers, integrated support for webcams and microphones and more, are all coming from HTML5 browsers (or are already available), and these features obviate the need for plug-ins for many applications. But some corners are likely to remain; Protected by DRM video, for example, could never be impossible in HTML5, and while many people find unpleasant DRM, many broadcasters feel they have little choice but to use it.
The solution to this dilemma on the iOS platform was the app: companies like Netflix and the BBC have applications to watch video on these devices. The result is that in the desire to push an open, free plugin, Web businesses are forced to migrate away from the Web entirely. Silverlight developers, will have at least an easy migration available path: the new Metro development environment used to produce native applications of Metro, borrows strongly Silverlight and making the switch to an application in the browser plugin for a standalone application Metro should be relatively easy. Flash developers will have to wait and see what tools Adobe offers.
Design and developer of HTML5 tools remain as low, even if the situation improves with the creation of products like Adobe Edge.
With the promotion of Microsoft of HTML5 and the precedent of iOS, the decision to get rid of the plugins in the browser of Metro is perhaps not surprising. But it is not clear that this will really help Windows 8; clumsy user experience penalizes users who, for no fault on their part, need to use the plug-ins and removes PC from Windows 8 claims. A switch to a more HTML5-powered Web site occur despite everything - Microsoft really need to force the question like that?
