Is javascript / HTML5 capable of supporting "flash like" animation and drag and drop

Question

With apple browsers not supporting flash or silverlight, there is a real incentive to avoid flash / silverlight to avoid losing that audience when building a web site. That being said there is certain functionality that it seems like you can only really do in flash / silverlight

for example alot of simple games where you can move things on the screen like this site all seem to be built in flash. also, a lot of drag and drop functionality where you can drag one object onto another like these game sites. After lots of searching I can't find any that are not either flash or silverlight based.

In particular i am looking for drag and drop support of one element onto another

my question is if you need this type of functionality is javascript / html 5 able to do this type of stuff (so you can support iphone / ipad) or are you out of luck.

is there any resource that highlight examples or suggestions of trying to do this type of interactive functionality and how / if you can do this type of stuff without silverlight / flash. also, if anyone has any good examples of existing site who are doing that today that would be great as well.

Answer 1

This is going to be a long discussion about the ability of html5 to compete with flash.

In my opinion jquery is not any close to performance flash or silverlight animation give.

if the comparison is in terms of drag-and-drop, menu dropdowns, fadeIn.fadeOut - jQuery is competitive.

If i will see the jQuery cartoons with lot of layers and objects moving simultaneously - i will probably agree that jQuery has competitive performance.

the things are compare to see the difference:

1. magnifying glass over the raster picture

2. smoke/water/fire emulation

3. compound 3D objects like fractals with deep branches

when HTML5 will have it - then i will agree that it has competitive performance. All that i see today is picture slideshows and couple of games that work on html5.