with HTML5 or not?

With new mobile devices selling like hot cakes, I think web developers should really consider using HTML5 and apply good practices when designing their UI. I've always wanted to extend my webdev in mobile too, and with the latest iPhone browser, everything is displayed OK, things are placed exactly where it is on the layout (liquid layout), javascripts are working fine, css is OK, except for one thing, which is "sprite-ing".

I used sprite techniques to make a fast-loading UI. I just came up with the term when I remembered playing 8-bit games. Whenever the game would crash, a screen with multiple repeated image will be displayed.

Back to webdev.Since my UI images will be in a sprite image, I'll just have the browser load it once, and just use CSS to point to a file, instead of having the browser load different image, one by one. This really helps a lot, especially if we are aiming for the 5-10 seconds rule of websites. BTW, for those who aren't familiar with it, X seconds rule simply means, the page must deliver the idea to the viewer in X seconds, otherwise that viewer is lost.

Makes sense. Let's say you have a shopping website, and a potential customer tried to view your page, you must show customer friendly things and convince the viewer that you got what they are looking for. But instead, they waited for the page to load, got impatient and closed the page. One potential customer away. It can be a trivial thing, but shouldn't be taken lightly, just as considering cross browser compatibilities, etc.

Canvas might eliminate the need to make complex UI sprites, but might depend heavily on javascripts, which is not common to all browsers. (For example, making AJAX request for IE vs other browsers).