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Questioning Mozilla's Plans For HTML5 Video
AberBeta writes with this excerpt from OSNews:
"We're on the verge of a serious evolution on the web. Right now, the common way to include video on the web is by use of Flash, a closed-source technology. The answer to this is the HTML5 video tag, which allows you to embed video into HTML pages without the use of Flash or any other non-HTML technology; combined with open video codecs, this could provide the perfect opportunity to further open up and standardize the web. Sadly, not even Mozilla itself really seems to understand what it is supposed to do with the video tag, and actually advocates the use of JavaScript to implement it. Kroc Camen, OSNews editor, is very involved in making/keeping the web open, and has written an open letter to Mozilla in which he urges them not to use JavaScript for HTML video."
Javascript is a cool language. I've written more than a couple of browser extensions and intranet apps with it in my time and I'm one of those people that disables javascript for browsing the public internet. I consider running random 3rd party code to be an outright security hole, some people are willing to sacrifice security for the bells and whistles but only a complete moron disagrees with the premise.
You can probably guess that I personally am going to disable the HTML5 A/V elements and continue downloading video manually. That aside, browser based audio/video should provide basic playback functionality for the user without javascript enabled. The functionality should also be easily disabled or switched into "prompt to download" mode and finally, I don't want to use GStreamer for anything... ever...
A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive. I wonder how they'd react if a major online video provider were to provide its content through a less restrictive method such as the video tag.
I think that's rather simple. The video tag would only be popular with free and amateur content. Flash (or Silverlight) solutions will continue to dominate the more popular commercial comment that needs to be protected. If videos were trapped behind theora playlists with commercials in-between, advocates would make solutions to circumvent the commercials and demonetize the model of the very companies who took the risk to support it.
Basically, any major media company that buys into HTML 5 video tag will be strangled by the advocates who pushed it on them in the first place, monetarily. When the production studios offering the content find out that a free video application that plays their content without commercials (hypothetically) exists, they will pull out and said video site will collapse. Colloquially, it's a trap. Commercial content needs protection because those watching it on the web do not own it.
Furthermore, there will be a minor codec war. Firefox will probably only support theora, Safari will only use h.264 (Apple will flatly refuse to use theora), same for google chrome, perhaps. Then, Microsoft will support the tag in IE, but provide support for WMV in the video tag (and possibly h.264 if we're lucky, since it's now licensed in Windows 7). So, the video tag will slowly become just as crazy as the plugin-based video players of Web 1.0... except they will be written in slow javascript instead of the fast native code of the past. Primarily, because no one has agreed on how to do it so it isn't a standard.
My understanding is that the reason that people use flash and silverlight for video is so that people cannot save, reuse, and redistribute the content.
I've run across very few streamed videos that can't be downloaded. In the olden days I'd use something like WireShark or Network Monitor to get the URL of the content. Nowadays it's much easier with various Firefox extensions.
As far as I know, the reason most sites use Flash or whatnot is because they want the video to be streamable and start more or less instantly. In modern Western society, if you can't start watching the video immediately, how likely are you going to be to remember to watch it after it's downloaded 15-30 minutes (or more) later? The whole (business) idea is to keep peoples' attention, like with television. If they "switch channels", you've lost your advertising opportunity.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
and actually advocates the use of JavaScript to implement it.
The writer of that linked piece makes it pretty obvious his goal is for the video to work for everyone - and the javascript code is therefore used to basically find a method the current user's browser can support without it being obvious to the user (e.g. not forcing the end user to download the video and view it in a separate player, which the OSNews letter seems to want to push on the user).
In other words, he's thinking about the user's experience first.
The author of the submitted story, on the other hand - as with the one from a few days ago that lamented Chrome's lack of purity regarding HTML5 video support - is more interested in Ogg zealotry. That's fine, if it floats your boat - but let's not dance around and obfuscate this. Make it very clear you want the Ogg format used - and ONLY the Ogg format used. Then the rest of the world (outside of Slashdot) can choose to continue ignoring you, just like it's been doing for the past few years.
#DeleteChrome
What you're saying is HTML is going to add the ability to do what people have been doing for 5 yrs with Flash.
No, what we're saying is that video is going to become a first-class Web citizen that can interact with the rest of Web content in ways that Web developers want. Flash's video is locked inside the plug-in prison and cannot be well integrated with non-flash (real Web) content. Bringing video (and audio) to HTML means that real Web content like other HTML, JavaScript, SVG, CSS, etc. can interact with video and improve on what people have been doing for 5 years with Flash.