Everyone remembers the HTML vs Flash debate from a couple of years ago, when it seemed like Adobe fought hard for Flash to stay relevant, when Apple declined to support it on iPhone. Fast forward to today, and look, ma – Adobe embraced mobile and web stardards, and more than that – now it owns 2 fascinating technologies that were discussed at the last Show&Tell meeting presented by our UI guru Brian.

PhoneGap (also known as Apache Cordova)

What it is

Mobile development made easy – build apps for 7 mobile platform using web standards (HTML/CSS/Javascript)

Why use it

Quicker development for multiple platforms. Instead of time/effort investment for native iOS, Android, Windows development separately, use one codebase and PhoneGap will adapt your app to multiple platrforms. Allows access to native device stay relevant.

Why not use it

Some complex functionality will not be possible – augmented reality (AR) apps, high-performance games, so in these cases you will still need to develop native.

However, looks like for a good chunk of apps out there, PhoneGap would be a great way to go. One of the examples of their site is BBC’s Olympics app. Also, read their blog post on questions and myths about PhoneGap.

CSS Custom Filters (also known as CSS Shaders)

What it is

Web-standards, CSS-based cinematic effects in your browser. So you can warp your text in crazy ways, while adding blur or color inversion to your whole web page.

Why use it

Because the technology is moving forward fast and you want some crazy effects done with web standards! Forget Flash :)

Right now it’s in experiment mode and only works in the latest Chrome Canary or WebKit release, but give it a try – it’s really REALLY cool!