HTML5 - bringing consistency across platforms

I was blown away by the FT’s new ‘non-app’ app – for itself, for its potential to change the mobile applications landscape and particularly for the way it gives publishers a different route to tightening the relationship between print and digital branding.

For publishers, there was always a certain amount of tension created by having to run iPhone and iPad subscriptions through Apple’s iTunes gateway, not least because of Apple’s insistence on taking a 30 per cent cut of the revenue.

But some publishers were of the opinion that if Apple were going to take away the pain of managing subscriptions so that essentially they became the fulfilment house – and 30 per cent was what it cost – then so be it.

For others, though, it wasn’t just about giving away a chunk of revenue, it was about losing one of the key benefits of digital subscription – and that was the potential to build much closer relationships with the customers, the subscribers, the readers.

We spoke about the importance of that relationship at Publishing Expo in London earlier in the year. A lot of regional newspaper publishers already have it because they have a close connection to the people who push papers through letter boxes. Taking control of digital subscriptions would bridge the gap in the world of pads, pods and phones.

Doing it the FT way means publishers don’t have to jump through the Apple hoop at all. So that’s subscription sorted – ish, probably...

The other thing is that HTML5 means publishers can get their digital offerings out to multiple platforms – including the good old web – using pretty much the same codebase whatever the output.

For us that’s really important. We’re always talking up the benefits of what we call ‘concurrent multi-publishing’ and that is the ability to publish pretty much the same content  simultaneously to many channels in exactly the right format for each and it’s what we built our Knowledge digital content management and publishing system to do.

And we know from our own experience that those channels can change pretty quickly. One minute we’re developing for e-reader, say the Irex, then along comes something like the iPad which turns the market on its head and creates a whole new set of challenges – and opportunities of course.

As an event, the FT’s adoption of HTML5 may not have been as seismic, but you can bet they’re feeling the rumble down Cupertino way.

HTML5 brings a level of consistency into creating digital content for multiple platforms. That helps publishers to maintain the look and feel of the brand, even if we as developers do have to take into account the many hows and whys of getting content out there.

And we know that once we have the wrapper looking good, we can fill it with content exactly how and when we want – and change the dynamic of the way it’s done so that publishers can make the whole process more efficient.

We’re demonstrating at two of the UK’s most complex evening print publications that creating and processing content for multiple platforms is a unified process  – and we’re sure we can offer even more efficiencies in that area.

We know from talking to other publishers that in these straitened times they’re going to be looking for even smarter ways of maintaining the level of service with a much lower cost base.

For us, feeding HTML5 into that strategy is pretty much a no-brainer and the potential benefits are huge.