Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer project at Microsoft, confirmed (again) their support for open web standards and HTML5 as the technology of the future.

In a blog post:

“The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.”

Pretty self explanatory, and it’s good to see Microsoft trying to do things good for IE9.

On the other hand, it’s Adobe that’s moving forward. They don’t seem to have a proper answer to Steve Jobs’ letter, for this reason they’ve stated (one again) that Apple is blocking their “widely used runtimes”, and so they’re moving forward - to other platforms.

Adobe cares about quantity (number of people who use Flash) more than quality (of Flash).

I think this is standing still, rather than moving forward.