Converging to HTML5

I haven't had, in so far, much exposure to HTML5. There are some explanations to that: one is that my jobs in most the past few years have had me work on thick clients or back ends, the kind of heavy lifting done against proprietary systems / architecture, targeted to internal customer only; another is that the specs on HTML5 are still evolving, and in the corporate world, most of the existing body of work rely on established solutions (or at least perceived so). Still, the web has become ubiquitous, and I had my fair share of ASP .NET, peppered with javascript / JQuery and CSS, just not the bleeding edge kind of project.

Increasingly, though, the HTML5 specs are taking shape, and javascript and CSS have matured in amazing ways since the days where I did full time web development (2004!). And while I'm getting seriously curious, there are 2 other converging factors that are also getting me there:

• If you are a bit familiar with the .Net scene, it's unlikely you've missed the ongoing community drama that surged with (to put a timeline) the advent of Windows 8, and signs pointing at a shift of focus towards HTML5...  more than raising a few eyebrows, Microsoft's mighty fumble on the future of the .Net platform lead to posts like these. If you bought into the technology for a living, that's quite some incentive to diversify.
• While I still revere my almighty desktop PC, there's no denying mobile devices have become dominant in the computing market place. It's now more likely for a non IT person to own a laptop than a desktop, and fairly common to own both a phone and a tablet. But it is, for IT people, such a Babel tower, where making an hybrid app running everywhere (or at least on iPad/iPhone, Android, and winRT) has become a Holy Grail; interacting with the device requires platform specific layers so far, but a number of solutions have otherwise emerged to try to keep code bases unified, to name a few:
• Xamarin: a .Net C# based development tool that lets you code your app in Visual Studio (or not) to have the compiler do the cross-platform heavy lifting; UIs still need to be coded separately though.
• DevExtreme: a proprietary solution from a company (DevExpress) historically committed to Microsoft products. It leverages Visual Studio as well, but relies on a combination of HTML / javascript / CSS for development, resorting to a 3rd party library (PhoneGap) for interactions with the device. Interestingly, it provides conditional stylesheets to emulate a native look and feel, and packages the entire application so that it installs just like a native app.
• Appcelerator: an open source XML / Javascript based solution, which compiles to native target code; its company has become the largest third-party app publisher on the Apple store and Android store
• Adobe Air: With the fall of Flash on Mobile devices back in 2011, with HTML5 as the obvious successor, Adobe side-stepped the problem of having a browser hosted plugin and came up with it own solution, using a side install on one hand, and relying on ActionScript (its legacy proprietary language), HTML, CSS, JavaScript on the other.
• Rho Mobile: Ruby / HTML / javascript / CSS based solution
• ...

See a pattern there? While this conveys a feel a bit reminiscent of the browsers' war of the late 90s, there seem to be a fairly clear trend towards the HTML / javascript / CSS trifecta for mobile cross-platform development.