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'(Left Intentionally Blank) is Dead' ... yep that's the headline I'm writing right now for some point in time in the near future when there really is a victor in what has been a long and drawn out battle for what is the best type of code to use to build a web page.

If I write a headline like that now and add an article to it ... leaving lots of intentionally blank spaces ... I can leave it up to the editor to fill them in if the war between HTML and Flash is ever won.

Actually I'm pretty sure who is going to be the winner ... it's just that one of the contestants has yet to realize that they're dead ... and the reality has been that they were dead almost from the time they entered the battle but only savvy webmasters knew it.

So while the battle rages on and the dead continue to look like they're alive what should we be doing?

Well obviously the first step is to look beyond the obvious battle. Just because Steve Jobs is never going to allow Flash to run on his latest gadget is not a clear indication that Flash is dead. And just because there are plenty of web developers out there who spooge their pants just thinking about what they can achieve in Flash doesn't mean that HTML is dead either.

No you've got to look a little deeper than that and you've got to stay in touch with what's going on in a number of different parts of the online industry ... and then you've got to weigh up what's happening with what you know ... what you've always known ... about Flash and HTML.

There's no doubt that Flash is very entertaining and people love to see sites built with Flash ... if they want to be entertained. But when they're looking for information they want to get it fast ... they don't want to sit around twiddling their fingers and burning their download limits while a bulky Flash file trickles down from cyberspace.

And then there was the issue of search engines crawling Flash sites ... they just couldn't do it in the past.

At the same time there's never been anything terribly entertaining about HTML. Sure it can place elements on a web page and it can make things blink and scroll but it's never really been able to move things around in a way that would enthrall people. It might have been quick to download but in the past HTML has never been much of an entertainer.

Now though things are beginning to change. Search engines are crawling Flash ... heck there's even some indication that Google is crawling Ajax ... so one of the problems regarding Flash has been removed. And with HTML 5 and CSS we're beginning to see some entertainment value appear from what used to be nothing but rather stodgy and uninteresting code.

But for one of the contestants in the HTML v Flash battle the changes haven't been enough ... even though they haven't realized it yet ... and the other contestant has just gone on to cement their victory even more.

Now, with HTML 5 and CSS a web surfer can get their information fast and be entertained at the same time while poor old Flash is still trying to load. Yes the speed issue has been – and was always going to be - the downfall of Flash ... even though so many designers have yet to realize just what a problem the download speed really is.

Even if Google does not go ahead with its suggested plan to include loading speed as one of the criteria that they use to rank websites ... and at the moment I would suggest there's only a slightly better than even chance that will happen ... there is still the issue of download speed for the web surfer.

They still don't want to sit around and wait while some Flash presentation that may or may not be interesting, downloads.

So I'm fairly sure that there will come a time when that 'Left Intentionally Blank' placeholder in my headline will be filled with the word 'Flash' and those webmasters and developers who have concentrated on learning how to build sites in HTML 5 and CSS will really have a real head-start on the competition.

I'm also fairly sure that there will still be some room for Flash ... after all it's working well for online movies ... but it won't be around as a design tool.

So if you haven't started to look at all you can find about HTML 5 you really should because in a year or two it will be what most webmasters who want to entertain and inform their surfers will be using.