HTML5 and Apple Try to Create the New Flash
The Internet is a vast landscape which is quickly changing. Change is the one constant you can count on when it comes to the World Wide Web. This is because there are always new forms of media coming online as well as new ways to present them. Flash from Adobe has been one of the giants in the industry for the longest time. Currently Apple is trying to unseat the champion for their chance to bask in the glory (with the help of HTML5 of course). The problem is, Adobe is fighting back with an even better looking version of their Flash with the ability to do more and run faster. So, which one will be better?
Breakdown on HTML5
HTML5 is the newest form of HTML code which allows developers to embed videos without the use of Flash. There are many different kinds of players which are coming online which are rivaling. They all want to be the video which people will use in order to present their videos on their web pages. The video formats which are currently available for the HTML5 code are Sublime, Kaltura, Projekktor, YUI, OIPlayer, Ogg and more.
Here is an example of the use of Kaltura:
The code used:
<video style="width:480px;height:270px" poster="media/bbb480.jpg" durationHint="4:44">
<source src="media/bbb.flv">
<source src="media/bbb.ogv"/>
</video>
The major problem many of these video types are running into is that they are specific to certain web browsers. FireFox, webkit browsers and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) are the only ones which have the ability to support these inclusions. For many to be able to see the videos, they will still need to download and install a plug-in like Google Chrome Frame which completely defies the purpose of using the new technology.
Even without the video inclusion, HTML5 is set to take the place of HTML4. Those who do use the new HTML technology will be able to include custom buttons to control the video playback by using such script as this:
<video width="320" height="240" preload="none" poster="videoframe.jpg">
<source src="demo-video.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
<source src="demo-video.ogv" type="video/ogg" />
</video>
<script>
var video = document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0];
function toggleMute() {
video.muted = !video.muted;
}
</script>
<p>
<a href="JavaScript:video.play();">Play</a> |
<a href="JavaScript:video.pause();">Pause</a> |
<a href="JavaScript:toggleMute();">Sound On/Off</a>
</p>
Source: w3avenue.com
The new Version of Flash
In a response to the fact that Apple and HTML5 are trying to edge out Flash, Adobe is reminding everyone of the new version which is being released soon. The new version of Flash promises to be able to handle everything including 3-D graphical rendering. This makes it possible for Adobe to show content which is similar in nature to all of the video game platforms which are out there.
The biggest problem for Adobe is that they do not have a clear cut view as to when the release of the new Flash will come. This brings back to the whole reason why so many people are fed up with Flash. It seems like the technology is always dragging a bit behind, and even when there is a good development, it takes a while to be released.
The other major problem Adobe is running into is with Mac platforms and smartphones. They are dragging behind waiting for an upgrade which will be powerful enough for their handheld device to work as intended. This is not a problem the HTML5 video coding will run into, because the coding will make it possible for anyone who can run the HTML5 language to watch the videos.
Advantages of HTML5 Video
The biggest advantages HTML5 offers is its seamless buffer and play system. You do not have to wait for the video to fully buffer before you can even watch the first frame. Even better, you will not have to wait until the section of the video you want to watch is buffered. You can simply jump ahead to the portion you would like to watch, and the video will begin to buffer right at the screen it is on. This provides the user with more control over what they are watching.
Another advantage HTML5 video player has is that you don’t have to wait while the system reconfigures the video to a larger screen size. If you change from small screen to full screen, you will be able to do it by pressing control or the Mac button and clicking on enlarge. Before you know it, the video is playing in full screen mode. Changing back to the small screen is just as easy.
Having the ability to control such things as the control buttons, skins, rotation and more for the videos allows the developer to be in much more control. No longer will you have to live with the normal settings which you have grown accustomed to seeing on the screen whenever you see the Flash screen come up. This is a boon to all developers looking to have a completely unique look.
Industrial Applications
Being able to use the functions to customize the look and the availability of the video have huge benefits to those looking to promote their companies. For instance, telemarketing companies will have the ability to show advertising videos to their clients right on their websites, and not have to worry about whether their clients will be able to watch the videos.
Many of the video players which are available that rival Flash will allow people to watch the videos by using different video players as fallbacks. Meaning if the user is looking to watch a video about B2B telemarketing does not have the ability to watch a video using the Sublime video player, they will still be able to watch it. The solution is that the video player will simply revert the video through a different plug-in. In the case of the Sublime video player, if you cannot watch it, you will be able to watch it through the use of an older version of Flash.
While the war rages on for the future of video players, it is certain that the true winners are those who are watching the videos in the first place. It may be a bit more confusing for the web developer to choose the one which will be the best platform to show their videos on. As long as you know your clientele and the systems they use, you will be fine.
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thank you for the great info on the html 5
You make it sound as if the current state of Flash videos has been this way since the very first version of Flash with Video support came out. Over the years people have standardized the Flash video experience so as to have consistency in user experience across sites. A good percentage of developers who use Flash video on their sites download pre-compiled video playback flash apps and just include them on their site.
I expect that moving forward, many developers are going to make HTML5 video players which a good percentage of developers are just going to pick and dump on their sites. Hence, if it is poorly written, the experience would carry through to all the sites that use it, giving HTML5 a potential bad rap just like Flash.
I’m all for HTML5 video, but as I have come to understand through experience, the amount of effort required to build a fully functional application in HTML/JS is about the same amount of time taken to do it in Flash, and here I am taking into account Graphics development, coding and testing. IMO, none is better than the other, they are just different and depending on your preference (design/code) you just choose.
Rant Over.
HTML5 is not Flash. And HTML5 is just one tiny feature of HTML5. The big picture here is open HTML5+CSS3+SVG+WEBGL+… vs propietary Flash. Today we can do things in HTML5+ which can’t be done with Flash. And the oposite is true too. I recomend you view current demos about html5+css3+svg+webgl There are amazing. Many devs are doing things never seen before, even with Flash.
Problem with HTML5 video is so many video formats to consider. It’s just like the smartphone OS issue. Development teams usually only have capacity to support a couple – which means iOS and Android.
For HTML5, what video format should one go with that is truly universal? The dust is far from settling on this basic question.
From the video hosting side of the equation of the folks provisioning servers to serve up the video, its the vital question.
So far the feature set of HTML5 has been exciting for developers, and browsers like Chrome have been quick to provide some early exposure. But we’re miles and miles away from much of this feature set being in the hands of 95% of the Internet audience (the kind of penetration figure that Flash Player will enjoy – at least in the desktop segment).
At least for Flash Player that means a consistent user experience across those installs – despite browser and OS platform. That won’t be the case with so-called HTML5 compliant browsers. There will be far more variance that web developers will have to work around and QA for to get production quality software out the door.
I use Chrome browser daily on two flavors of Windows OS, Mac OS X, and Linux. All our Flex software runs fine – even though we don’t spend any QA effort on the Mac and Linux platforms. It’s very nice to develop business software and have such a more modest QA problem to address than typical “web standards” style of development. Plus our solutions in Flex are much higher quality than any HTML5 show case software that folks point to. With Flex, business software developers get a lot of bang for the buck – a lot of development and QA leverage.
Not sure with the universal video format for HTML5 because it will take a lot of time to go to the final just like flv file format. I’m personally not interesting with HTML5 yet except some amazing examples of HTML5 video out there. Hum… Time will make a call.
It’s not just Apple, Microsoft and Google too. Apple’s just the most out front because of iPhone and iPad.
This is just another “me-too” article with NO real substance, examples, discussion or argument on html5 vs. flash. Stop jumping on a bandwagon because it’s being driven by a large company like apple and do your homework instead of regurgitating the current trend that everyone is blindly following and missing the big picture.
Please correct me if I’m wrong! Isn’t HTML5 open source? Then how come Apple, which is known as not giving anything for free want to be involved in the developing of sustained media over HTML5?
Don’t get me wrong, I use Apple products all the time as their are very good, but I think the direction the Apple is taking, is just due to recent ping-pong that they had with Adobe in regard to Flash support. I think you are familiar with the Steve Job’s attack over Adobe Flash product.
I think the involvement in the HTML5 project is just a pride thing to do from Apple. On the other hand, it can bring HTML5 into another light.
There are so many things wrong with this article. Even the misinformation you’re writing about isn’t accurate.
Let’s take a few examples:
“The biggest problem for Adobe is that they do not have a clear cut view as to when the release of the new Flash will come.”
Adobe is usually pretty clear about it’s release intentions for Flash Player updates. The recent release of Flash Player 10.1 was announced months ago and in between announcements and release time they spent a great amount of effort on discussing the feature set of the new player. No they don’t give exact dates and details of the next player update are vague right now (because they just made a major release), but they are still an awful lot better than the “when it’s done” timelines of HTML5. And with HTML5, when it’s finalized we still have to wait for the browsers to fully implement it and for users to upgrade.
On video codecs:
As someone mentioned above, lack of consistent codec support across the browsers is a big issue. Firefox will never support H.264, which although is free for now, will likely get a giant license fee tacked on when the time comes for the license to be re-negotiated. Google bought On2 and has open sourced WebML, which is fantastic. Firefox is on board with this, Chrome obviously will support it. But Safari as of now will not. Not even bringing Microsoft into the equation and their obvious preference for Silverlight video, clearly there is a massive problem here. As of now if I want to published video for HTML5, I need to publish it in two different formats to get it working across all browsers. This doesn’t account for varied bitrate versions for mobile devices either.
Beyond codecs, support for DRM, streaming and other features at which Flash excels is currently non-existent. This is the reason Hulu has said they are sticking with Flash for now.
And some more:
“The video formats which are currently available for the HTML5 code are Sublime, Kaltura, Projekktor, YUI, OIPlayer, Ogg and more.”
None of the above, except Ogg are video formats. They are players built around the tag.
“The other major problem Adobe is running into is with Mac platforms and smartphones. They are dragging behind waiting for an upgrade which will be powerful enough for their handheld device to work as intended. This is not a problem the HTML5 video coding will run into, because the coding will make it possible for anyone who can run the HTML5 language to watch the videos.”
Have you heard of Froyo/Android/Nexus One/Droid/etc? They all run Flash Player 10.1 as part of Android 2.2. Clearly the current generation of smartphones have the power to run Flash. Apple’s decision is a business one not one of capabilities. Flash on iOS would have a major impact on the money they make via app sales. End of story.
“Another advantage HTML5 video player has is that you don’t have to wait while the system reconfigures the video to a larger screen size. If you change from small screen to full screen, you will be able to do it by pressing control or the Mac button and clicking on enlarge. Before you know it, the video is playing in full screen mode. Changing back to the small screen is just as easy.”
Playing Flash video back full screen is as simple as clicking a button, it happens almost instantly and a click of the Esc key takes you back out. Not only that but Flash is highly optimized to leverage hardware acceleration for video playback, particularly in fullscreen mode and with 10.1 it’s even capable of playing HD, fullscreen on netbook class devices.
“The biggest advantages HTML5 offers is its seamless buffer and play system. You do not have to wait for the video to fully buffer before you can even watch the first frame.”
You don’t have to wait with Flash either. It’s called progressive download and has been part of Flash for years.
“Even better, you will not have to wait until the section of the video you want to watch is buffered. You can simply jump ahead to the portion you would like to watch, and the video will begin to buffer right at the screen it is on.”
This is called streaming and there are dozens of Flash streaming servers that can do this. It’s not a limitation of the technology, it’s a platform decision that varies from one video provider to the next. And have you tried Youtube’s HTML5 video player implementation? It doesn’t allow for skipping around the video either without first buffering the content. At least not in any tests I’ve done with it.
“Having the ability to control such things as the control buttons, skins, rotation and more for the videos allows the developer to be in much more control. No longer will you have to live with the normal settings which you have grown accustomed to seeing on the screen whenever you see the Flash screen come up. This is a boon to all developers looking to have a completely unique look.”
I don’t see how this is accurate in any way. It’s up to a Flash developer and designer to determine how the player looks and operates. Sure there are components that standardize the look and feel of many players, but you are completely capable of creating any kind of interface your mind can dream up. Plus, all the “video formats” you reference in the start of your article are nothing but standardize players. Don’t you think the same sort of oneness will occur if any of these catches on as the defacto player?
I’m not sure there is a single paragraph in this story that doesn’t contain inaccurate or completely false information.
Finally, don’t get me wrong, I think bringing video (and audio and canvas and all the other great things that make up HTML 5) into the common language f web development is a great thing. It should be super easy for anyone to publish this sort of rich content. This was the original motivation of the web to begin with and now that video and the like are common place they should brought into the fold. The problem is we are a long way off from having anything close to a usable method for delivering video via html. It’s literally going to be years before we can stop using Flash for video fallback. Internet Explorer 6 still has a massive share in the browser market. Flash will play video in it – and every other browser – for years to come, while html 5 video right now is really only good to get through Steve Job’s walled iOS garden.
Quite frankly I look forward to the main common tasks that Flash is used for becoming part of html, then Flash can continue to innovate and move forward and drive the bleeding edge of the web. Where do you think many of the ideas for HTML 5 came from to begin with? From Flash and it’s huge success of course.
Ricky,
Thanks for the clarification on the video formats. I should have written, ““The video players which are currently available for the HTML5 code are Sublime, Kaltura, Projekktor, YUI, OIPlayer, Ogg and more.”
While I think that HTML5 has the ability to be better than Flash in the future, I’m merely playing devil’s advocate in an effort to spark debate as to whether Flash will become obsolete. I appreciate your passionate input.
Playing devil’s advocate is fine. I’m not being critical of that. I think the competition is nothing but good for Flash and HTML5. It helps HTML5 become a standard tool for doing the things we do with Flash right now and it allows Flash to drive forward and define what the next generation of the rich web experience will be.
What I am being critical of is the incredible amount of inaccurate or false information in this story. It’s doing a disservice to everyone who reads this. You couldn’t even get my name right, it’s Rick not Ricky.
Flash/Flex/AS3 does many things besides provide a standard cross-platform video experience. If this can be accomplished with HTML5, CSS3, various JavaScript flavors and many other piles of code, and you can get them all to play nicely in all browsers…I think that’s just swell. But good luck with building full-featured applications, kiosks, marketing platforms, rich media banners, and interactive games, using this mare’s nest of someday-to-be-implemented web standards!
The anti-Flash campaign is driven mostly by enthusiasm for the iPad and Apple apps, particularly those now being envisioned by magazine publishing (Time, Condé Nast, etc.). But these apps are severely limited by the iPad’s available memory. If you want a full tablet-size magazine-browsing experience, you can only do it by downloading the issue and viewing it offline, in an AIR application or PDF, or in some other e-reader environment.
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gr8 job That bit was pretty impressive, thanks for posting.
Really looking forward to the release of IE9, so that there will be more support for the HTML5 tags – but of course that still does not solve the problem for web developers having to support the horrid 10 year old browser IE6.
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