HTML5 is a huge step forward in terms of web usability, of web coding, and web design. It makes things incredibly easy to do, clean, and makes websites suddenly have a no-frills attitude. How easy is it to type in a simple code line <video src=”blah.avi”> on your website? That wasn’t hard, right?

So I suppose you’re happy, right? And in a way, you should be happy. Because instead of hours of work, bam, that took three seconds, right? You didn’t need to convert it to .flv to watch, heck, you didn’t even need a video player to come with it. Just pow, one line of code.

But is this too easy?

Let’s think about this for a second in a normal way before you go off yodeling about HTML5 being better, because it IS better. Just consider it this way:

Web design is long known as a service based on knowledge and skill. That’s it, in fact. With the right knowledge of languages and the skill to create an artful design, designers earn money. Earn money for something that is freely available on the Internet, that each and every user can see when they have downloaded.

So if someone walks along, says, “Hey, this looks really easy. I’m going to learn it so I can make my business website.” When they say this, some designer in the world has lost a client, an opportunity. Why? Because design is so easy.

When something becomes easy to a certain extent, people will no longer hire out people. For example, running a computer ten to twenty years ago might have required lots of technicians who knew what they were doing.

Now, however, it has evolved into something so easy that you and I can do it. The interference of these technicians is no longer needed. Technicians who have spent their lives learning how to maintain these computers find themselves jobless.

As web design becomes easy to a certain extent, designers will lose jobs. Personally, I’m all very supportive for HTML5, but it’s just so easy now that I doubt people will hire people anymore.

I myself might be an example: although I might be talented, I’m still just twelve years old. I’ve managed to learn a full set of skills a designer needs.

So what will HTML5 turn out to be? Great. But making things too simple might not be for the better. Of course, the world needs progress, and being negative just to keep a job doesn’t help. Web standards help, but someday people will realize these people are obsolete.

Update 7/8/2010: for anyone digging through my archives, just know that this is no longer my view on HTML5.