HTML5 vs Flash & Thoughts on Cloud

I have no expereince in HTML5 (and even HTML4 a few weeks ago) and actually I knew nothing about javascipt before the first assignment was issued. But since I have some experince in ActionScript, I feel that it is similar to javascript to some extent (actually they follow the same standard). No wonder why Apple is relunctant to support Flash because they think HTML5 can throw Flash away. :)

But currently what annoys me is the debugging of javascript. I need to use add-ons and debug it in a browser, whereas for actionscript, it is much easier (at least for me) because the debugging is integrated in the IDE. Since I am only a newbie, I am not sure whether there is a more efficient way, but I hope there be a HTML5 IDE with javascript debugging supported. :)

From the guests' speech, I agree that HTML5 is really cool. It supports more tags; it has a canvas; it supports non-flash videos and audios. Basically, it seems that it can do whatever Flash is capable of. And it really gives me an impression that a web page is not a page anymore, it can be an application - same as those on our hard disk.

I like this idea: data is stored in the cloud and what we have is only a front-end. This can be quite convenient since we don't need to sychronize our devices.

But there are also some issues.

One issue is safety. Currently the cloud service is provided by some giant companies which own a huge number of servers. What if my data is lost? Who should be responsible for it? I guess for those service providers, they will have some terms like they are not responsible for data loss. If this really happens, then WTF.

Another issue is privacy. The customer really don't know the back-end of the service and they even don't know if their privacy is violated (and continue to use the service).

As we can see, more things need to be negoiated and there is a long way to go. Currently I doubt if I am willing to put my important files into the cloud...