What To Expect From HTML5

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes a deeper look at HTML5, outlining what developers should expect from this overhaul of HTML — one that some believe could put an end to proprietary Web technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. Among the most eagerly anticipated additions to HTML5 are new elements and APIs that allow content authors to create rich media using nothing more than standards-based HTML. The standard also introduces browser-based application caches, which enable Web apps to store information on the client device. 'But for all of HTML5's new features, users shouldn't expect plug-ins to disappear overnight. The Web has a long history of many competing technologies and media formats, and the inertia of that legacy will be difficult to overcome. It may yet be many years before a pure-HTML5 browser will be able to match the capabilities of today's patchwork clients,' McAllister writes. 'In the end, browser market share may be the most significant hurdle for developers interested in making the most of HTML5. Until these legacy browsers are replaced with modern updates, Web developers may be stuck maintaining two versions of their sites: a rich version for HTML5-enabled users, and a version for legacy browsers that falls back on outdated rendering tricks.'"

Comments

Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Big thanks to Apple for standing up to the Flash juggernaut and showing the world we could live without it, thereby paving the way for HTML 5.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Muahahahaha!

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

As a not very big Apple fan, I concur.

Re:Thank you Apple

[LWATCDR]

Well I think it has less to do with Apple standing up than it does with the fact that Flash didn't scale to mobile devices well.
Before the iPhone mobile friendly sites where few and far between. Once the iPhone started selling great guns more and more people moved to have their sites be mobile friendly.

Of course Apple isn't going to support Thedora so with that desision they are pushing HTML5 to be more proprietary than it could have been.
Of course Apple's choice is probably motivated by the fact that they already have hardware support for h.264 in their devices.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want HTML5. I want XHTML2. Get to work on this now.

Re:Thank you Apple

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Big thanks to Apple for standing up to the Flash juggernaut and showing the world we could live without it, thereby paving the way for HTML 5.

And big thanks to Google for creating a non-Flash dependent version of YouTube to help Apple do it, and starting to move YouTube away from Flash in general.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Randle_Revar]

You're the only one who does. You'll have to make do with XHTML5

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hope that Apple wouldn't support "Thedora" and they would instead choose to support "Theora" ...just a Spelling Nazi entertaining himself:

Re:Thank you Apple

[cool_story_bro]

I don't want HTML5. I want XHTML2. Get to work on this now.

from Wikipedia:

HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML.

Always do your research, kids!

Re:Thank you Apple

[Lunix Nutcase]

Why would they choose to support a codec that is a rival (theora) to one in which they hold patents (H.264)?

Re:Thank you Apple

[daveisfera]

Except for the fact that Apple has also stood in the way of the adoption of Ogg Theora as a standard for the video tag, so they're doing just as much to prevent the dismissal of flash as they are usher it in (or you could be even more tinfoil hatish and say that they're just trying to replace one proprietary standard with another).

Re:Thank you Apple

[Tim C]

You mean, big thanks to Apple for preventing anything capable of interpreting arbitrary scripts to be installed or run on the iPhone so they can ensure that any apps (and especially games) used on the device came from their app store.

Don't get me wrong I don't condemn them for it, but they are most certainly not doing it to be altruistic, or for the good of the Internet as a whole.

Re:Thank you Apple

[LWATCDR]

Does Apple hold any patents on H.264? So many people seem to hold patent on parts of H.264 that I am not sure who does and does not.
There are a lot of other good reasons for Apple to support H.264 over Theora.
1. H.264 does produce better video. The best that you can say about Theora is that it is close to H.264 when dealing with YouTube quality video.
2. Huge amount of hardware support. A large number of mobile devices support H.264 decoding in hardware. That isn't the case with Theora.
3. Material is already available in that format. YouTube...

So H.264 is probably free for Apple to support, already has wide spread hardware support, offers better quality, and already has a good amount of support on the web.
For apple to support H.264 really is a no brainer. The only benfit is that Theora is "free" but H.264 is probably free to Apple.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Draek]

You forgot:

4. h.264 is free to Apple and a few select companies but not to anybody else thereby raising the barrier of entry to the market.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Lars T.]

Why would they choose to support a codec that is a rival (theora) to one in which they hold patents (H.264)?

Patent, not patents. One patent out of over a thousand.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Nadaka]

Unless html 5 has made a radical departure from its goals in the last six months since I dropped out out the standards war, XHTML 2 is still vastly superior in its design than html 5.

Re:Thank you Apple

[LWATCDR]

I don't know if Apple wants it to raise the barrier of entry to the market as much as they want their cost to be low.

Honestly they already have hardware H.264 support in their devices. For them I would say it all about not having to spend money to support a format the doesn't perform as well as the format they are already using.
Google already has H.264 support in Android and Microsoft already has H.264 support in Windows and WinMo7. Apple doesn't care about FOSS video players or browsers.
I wouldn't attribute this to malice as much as supporting what they already have invested in.
I would love to see a fully free video solution for HTML 5 but I don't expect to see it since it will not benefit Apple, Google, or Microsoft and in fact hurts them so it is illogical for them put any support into Theora as the only supported format.
To expect any company to act any other way is just silly.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Lunix Nutcase]

Does Apple hold any patents on H.264? So many people seem to hold patent on parts of H.264 that I am not sure who does and does not.

Yes. They also hold patents to MP4 as well.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Lunix Nutcase]

And? Even at one patent that are still heavily invested in H.264, MP4 (which they also hold patents on) and AAC. I see no good reason for them financially to drop all those years of investments in this formats to go to Ogg and Theora.

Re:Thank you Apple

[LWATCDR]

After seeing the list of patent holders I have to ask if each line of code is covered by a different patent?
Good grief we need to stop software patents.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Draek]

Firefox holds about 1/4 of the web browser market, and Opera is IIRC still the #1 mobile browser and Apple has shown great interest in capturing both markets in the past, so yes, they do have much to gain from increasing the barrier of entry to the market generally, and hurting Mozilla and Opera specifically.

Re:Thank you Apple

[LWATCDR]

Opera is the #1 mobile browser because the standard browser on WinMo and Blackberry suck.
Firefox holds almost none of the mobile market right now.
Opera will buy a license to H.264 and Firefox will get a plug in that uses what ever codecs that are installed.
That will put the barrier of entry at zero for Firefox and low enough for Opera to deal with unless they just start using the included frameworks.
It is still just convenience and not wanting to reinvest in a solution that they already have working.
Totally self serving but not intentionally evil. I doubt that Apple cares a whole lot about Firefox or Opera except that they don't want Opera or Firefox on the iPhone.

Re:Thank you Apple

[joebok]

My understanding was that Apple didn't implement flash on the iPhone/iTouch because it essentially allows applications to be run on the device that didn't go through their store. If that is true then I doubt Apple will implement an HTML 5 browser on their iDevices that will allow much functionality.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they choose to support a codec that is a rival (theora) to one in which they hold patents (H.264)?

Because they say they believe in open standards and open formats:

http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/

Some of Apple gets it, even if the rest of Apple doesn't. It's unfortunate that their "immutable commitment" wavers when it comes to open video.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming that you're referring to iphone, but that is a small fraction of smartphones. I don't credit Apple much for driving the desire for HTML5, but rather to the shift to low power non-x86 platforms in general, as iphone is only a fraction of smartphones and non of them cope well with flash, and probably 64-bit x86 as well which Adobe has been slow to support. Even most non-geek users have probably realized how taxing flash is even on multi-core desktops. The push is multifaceted.

Re:Thank you Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's rejection of Flash has absolutely nothing to do with HTML 5 or the current Flash implementation. Supporting Flash would allow app developers to bypass the AppStore, and Apple will not let that happen. Apple wants all apps to go through the AppStore so that they can control content, and get a cut of all revenue. That's why they refuse to allow Flash.

Re:Thank you Apple

[MobyDisk]

1) Flash works fine on mobile devices. There are 3rd-party Flash players that are optimized for those kinds of processors. Lots of embedded devices use Flash internally, as do some games.

2) Is there any reason that HTML5 would be any better or worse on mobile devices than Flash?

What to except

[Anonymous Coward]

You can expect inconsistent implementations; same as it ever was.

Re:What to except

[Nadaka]

right.

HTML 5 is a half-ass hacked attempt to fix the web without breaking backwards compatibility. XHTML 2 was a better specification going forwards, one of the big reasons for that was the specification requires a consistent DOM model.

Re:What to except

[BZ]

I think you underestimate the "without breaking backwards compatibility" part of this.

XHTML2 was pretty much designed to not work with any existing web infrastructure (either existing content or existing browsers). If you think a parallel web built from the ground up is the way to go, feel free to work on it, but the network effects involved make it a pretty risky prospect.

Re:What to except

[game kid]

fix the web without breaking backwards compatibility

Using video when object with just a mime type and filename doesn't break backwards compatibility?

Given that intentional spite of IE (video is otherwise redundant and has not brought about a standard format), along with canvas and the codification of bad SGML parsing, I'm not convinced we should celebrate HTML5's failure (or FAIL, as people who can't type lowercase seven-letter words say now). I won't touch it.

I'll keep using XHTML 1.0 and pretend HTML5 and XHTML 1.1 (with its invalid DTDs and such) never existed, tyvm.

Re:What to except

[Draek]

Well, I think backwards compatibility is best dealt in the browser itself (as Microsoft did with IE8's compatiblity mode) rather than on the standard, specially if it can result in the simplification of the latter both to people implementing it and those creating content for it, as seemed the case with XHTML2.

Re:What to except

[BZ]

The XHTML2 standard was designed in such a way that there was no good way to tell whether content was supposed to be XHTML2 or XHTML1, but required quite different treatment of the same content.

So the only way to handle this in the browser would be on a page-by-page whitelist or blacklist basis. IE8 did in fact do this, but most other browser authors don't quite have unlimited resources to audit the entire web like that. Nor can you argue that this is in any way a "simplification" for the browser.

In general, it's hard to argue that XHTML2 was in any way a simplification for browsers given that not a single browser implemented it. Had they thought it would be worth it, I'm fairly certain they would have.

Re:What to except

[Nadaka]

I actually was working on it for a while. I was putting together an XHTML2 Content Management System and code generation toolset until it was announced that the XHTML2 group charter wasn't to be renewed. It was pointless to continue since there will never be a compatible browser to use it with.

HTML5

[DarkKnightRadick]

I won't touch it until Ian Hickson either gets his head out from his orifice or he steps down as the lead dev. I know some of what's going on (from list archives and discussions with at least one of the main devs on the HTML5 WG list) and he's doing his best to kill HTML 5 and standards based design completely.

Re:HTML5

[Dracos]

I agree that Hickson is more of a bane than a boon, but he's not trying to kill all of standards based design, he's just trying to kill the best parts of it. Developers do want XML compliance. If they would just drop the HTML5 tag soup and enforce XHTML5, I would have much less against this mess.

That, and I still believe Chris Wilson is Microsoft's trojan horse.

Re:HTML5

[Ant P.]

If they would just drop the HTML5 tag soup and enforce XHTML5, I would have much less against this mess.

There's already a language designed to do what you want - it's called XHTML2.

Have fun convincing browsers to implement an XML-only syntax incompatible with the other 99.999999% of the web and let us know how it goes.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you be more specific? This seems very interesting, but provides zero useful information for somebody else to even begin to learn what to read to help develop an informed opinion, something more than 'Some guy on slashdot said this sucks'.

Re:HTML5

[Dracos]

Except XHTML2 is dead, which is a sad thing. It was the better spec, IMO.

Re:HTML5

[Korin43]

The only problem XHTML had is that certain browsers won't accept it unless it's served as XML (and other browsers will only accept it if it's served as HTML).

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you provide some additional details? I'm not aware of any of this.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess I'd assuming he's referring to the fact that HTML5 encourages sloppy markup over XML based markup. The problem is that this makes the web less parasable, the general argument is that this is false, because a reference parser exists for HTML5 and parsing of it is fully documented, but that argument is useless because HTML5 parsers do not exist as commonly and widely as XML parsers, and it's also absolutely pointless having to have an HTML5 and possibly an XML parser as well. Other advantages of XML include the ability to use the plethora of XML tools to manipulate it, transform it and so forth- none of this exists for HTML5. It makes life a hell of a lot more of a headache for applications that wish to make use of page data. Some of the arguments that go against XML markup are that XML doesn't handle errors gracefully, but this is really a poor argument- it'd have been better to solve that problem than it would use a incompatible spec which relies on new parsers being provided.

Further, there is a big issue with the new "semantic" tags, things like , and so forth rather than the use of say,

. Whilst the former are certainly tidier, they're also not generic, the tags were decided based on a study that is now a fair few years old at Google into the most commonly used classes and ids, the problem is, as we know, the web doesn't remain static for long- in fact, the tag selection for HTML5 is already arguably obsolete, it doesn't have things like for comments sections that have become so common and prominent in a web 2 world, further, specifications DO remain static, and the previous HTML/XHTML specs are around a decade old now- can we be sure those tags wont just be obsolete messes in another 5 - 10 years? Do we release a new version of the spec just to produce new semantic tags each time the web evolves? No, the reality is we're stuck with divs anyway because they're generic, a better solution for the semantic web would've been to have a semantic definition language that allows you to attach semantics to sections just like you attach content and allow for semantics to be handled by a different member of a dev team, or even handled by 3rd parties for sites that are no longer maintained.

There are a fair few other issues, it's done a poor job of improving accessibility for example, but these stand out particularly.

HTML5 has some nice new features like canvas certainly, but it's certainly a poorly designed spec- it has a hell of a lot of clutter, it regularly flies in the face of good practice, and it has failed at one of it's primary goals- standardised, open video. It's really a spec that's absolutely not been designed with professional developers of large scale web apps in mind, nor with the future of the web in mind. It's really focussed on amateur publishers, but that seems a poor goal seeing as most amateur publishers nowadays use applications built by professionals to publish content - i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Wordpress, Blogger and stuff. The days of your average Joe writing markup are gone, so I'm not sure why HTML5 takes so much effort to focus on the preferences of amateurs rather than the requirements professionals in this respect.

Good developers can continue to simply ignore the tools they don't want- they can ignore tags like etc. and just use classic tags, they can ignore the sloppy SGML based markup and just use XML so it's not that it hinders them directly in this respect. It just means that when they inevitably have to deal with markup written by amateurs, or even a previous code base written by bad developers then HTML5 only increases the headache.

You may be wondering why things have ended up this way, well it effectively seems to come down to pressure from the likes of Apple, and Mozilla- it seems rather than actually give their browsers and rendering ages the overhauls they need to modernise them and take the web forward, they'd rather hack what they've got to continue on the old mess, hence this is also going to do nothing to solve the problem of

Re:HTML5

[Stu22]

What practical purpose for your everyday web developer does enforcing XML have?

I used to demand that every single thing I wrote be proper XML, then I realized I was wasting my time. A br or hr doesn't need to be closed. Closing an input tag is just plain silly, or a link to a stylesheet? Why should that need to be closed?

What makes the web great is that so many people are making content for it, and there's no reason to bother most of those people with XML's unnecessary demands.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly wrong. Everyone accepts HTML-tag-soup as text/html and everyone except IE accepts XHTML as application/xhtml+xml (or some other xml mime-type). If you send XHTML as text/html the browser will just handle it like HTML-tag-soup.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious case is that things like SVG, MATHML, etc. only work in XHTML.
But proper, validated XHTML also saves me time versus proper validated HTML. Think of a website template that is the container for content from a rich-text-editor. Lets assume the content is not only valid, but also correct and there is an error in the template surrounding it. This error is valid HTML, but it's result is that the site looks fine with certain simple content but not with other content. This can happen because something like <div><p>content</div> is valid, but where the <p> is closed depends on what comes after it.
I think having to add a / to every <br> and any other tag that has no content is not really much work.

Re:HTML5

[Dracos]

Exactly, and one malicious vendor's inferior product is not a valid reason to abandon XHTML.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

E.g. libxml already implements a mode for parsing HTML, so that you can then work on it with your XML tools, I guess other parsers also have this.

It would be impractical to abandon HTML as most websites are written in it, so a browser needs to support parsing HTML. Most websites that have XHTML in the doctype are actually sent as text/html so every browser parses and handles them like it were HTML. Also most of those "thinks it's XHTML but really HTML" websites wouldn't even work if they were send as xml (because of parsing errors or tiny differences in how CSS and JS behaves in XHTML documents).

HTML5 seems to get some things right that XHTML1.0 and HTML4 failed at.
Nobody parses HTML4 like the HTML4 spec says (HTML-tag-soup parser vs. SGML). As said above many people think they output XHTML but instead output invalid HTML. Also as already mentioned XHTML1.0 introduced tiny variations compared to HTML4, some of those are spec bugs that never were fixed and others were deliberate. (There are actually some more really fucked up current practices in HTML-and-related-techs handling that every browser implements in some way with possible slight variations, that the HTML5 spec is the first to actually write down.)

HTML5 actually fixes some of that mess by specifying what current browsers implement (HTML-tag-soup parsing) and an XHTML5 that actually encodes the same thing as HTML5 which results in the same DOM.

IMHO everyone should stop writing new content in HTML and use valid XML that is actually sent as XML, but I can not and would not want to force this on everybody and a specification is also not the tool to do that. A good spec actually has actually complying implementations in the wild (unlike HTML4). A strong spec is one that is implemented by everyone. A good spec needs to be based in reality, not in what someone would like but nobody implements for the next few years (like CSS2 was?). XHTML5 allows one to move forward from the XHTML1.0 mess.

HTML5 certainly still has some problems (it's not finished after all and woun't be for some time) but you can participate in making it better if you are interested.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

XHTML5 actually fixes some of the problems with XHTML1.0 (unless those various other XHTML versions that came in between) so isn't this a way forward? I at least think so.

Re:HTML5

[mmj638]

Can you elaborate on this, so that we may be informed of the issues rather than write this off as a baseless jab from someone with something against Ian Hickson?

Re:HTML5

[DarkKnightRadick]

If I could find the link, I actually have a quote of him saying exactly that, though (that he believes standards based design is on the way out) and his actions are helping that along.

Re:HTML5

[DarkKnightRadick]

Yeah, I'll have to dig through my twitter stream for the links though.

Re:HTML5

[DarkKnightRadick]

I'm digging for the links now.

Also, I don't even know who the man is and never heard of him before I met (virtually) my source on the HTML5 WG list. I have nothing against him personally, though I do have a bone to pick with him if he's purposefully trying to kill standards based design, and specifically HTML5 (though I'm sticking with XHTML anyway).

Re:HTML5

[DarkKnightRadick]

Alright, while not directly supporting the above statement, Ian is moving toward a "standard" that is determined by the whims of the browser vendors instead of an independent third-party (W3C, WHATWG, what-have-you).

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jul/0313.html

While not providing direct validation of my complete original statement, which I retract and amend to what I'm stating in this post, it does show an effort on Ian's part to not implement a true standard but a mish-mash of what browser vendors will "allow". Instead of web developers and consumers (no, I don't mean customers) leading the demand for features, the browser vendors (who are supposed to be catering to web developers and consumers) will be. In the end it has the same effect of killing any sort of real standards based development.

The above link provides a plethora of related links which I see no need to reproduce.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

The W3C in the end is not really an independent party because quite a few members in the relevant working groups are paid by the browser vendors.

I think Ian Hickson is right in that the browser vendors ultimately always have a veto, because if one of them doesn't implement what is written in the spec nobody can do anything about it. The spec writers can't force the browser vendors to implement something.

Because standards like HTML4 and CSS were written without trying hard to be based in reality, it took really much time for widespread implementation and some parts are still not fully implemented by any of the browser vendors and some will never be.

Example CSS2: This version is the last working draft http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-css2-19980128/ so it might be comparable with where HTML5 is currently in the W3 process. IE8 is the first IE version that has a partially acceptable CSS2 implementation. It was released in 1998 and IE8 was released in 2009, which means 11 years until you could use the CSS2 spec for standards based design. (And there are probably still some parts in CSS2 that won't work in any of the major browsers.)

I understand standards based design like this: you can implement your design according to the standard and then it already works in real life, rendered and behaving like the standards says. AFAIK Ian Hickson actually tries really hard to achieve this.

Btw. HTML5 also differentiates between what a browser needs to handle (and how) and what is allowed by a standard conforming document, which supports good standard based design.

This all doesn't mean that you can't think of a cool feature and spec it out without implementations in the browsers (HTML5 actually has parts of it that were written that way), it just means that you can't declare it officially accepted/stable/finished before it's implemented by the major browsers. It also doesn't mean that the WHATWG/W3 doesn't try to coax e.g. Microsoft into supporting SVG or any of the other things.

Re:HTML5

[Korin43]

And there's the problem. Some browsers (IE) only accept XHTML one way and other browsers only accept it another way. Why don't other browsers just pay attention to the doctype?

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

No IE doesn't accept XHTML in any way, if it gets delivered as text/html it thinks it's getting HTML4 and behaves exactly like that. That is correct and every other browser does it like that. It's just that IE doesn't accept XHTML unlike every other browser.

Portion safe to use?

[gmuslera]

If well the article touches a bit some support of it on current browsers (i.e. in webkit enabled ones) would be interesting to know what portion of it is more globally supported right now in current desktop/mobile browsers, and of course, which ones. If Youtube decided to kill IE6, the move of sites to HTML5 could help to kill some other outdated and potentially dangerous other browsers, at least is the latest version of the main ones share a common ground on HTML5.

flash will never die...

[bmecoli]

As long as there's newgrounds and /f/...

Silverlight's greatest achievement

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting mentioned next to Flash in all of these "End of..." articles.

Re:Silverlight's greatest achievement

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest "upgrade" to the miserable Windows-only software my business uses will consist of a new web-enabled client based on Silverlight and Java.

Anything to get netflix off SilverDimPhotons

[mrflash818]

I am all for it, if it means it will get Netflix off of SilverDimPhotons, and onto something that is supported in Linux.

Re:Anything to get netflix off SilverDimPhotons

[Locke2005]

It's not Linux, but rather portable devices that may or may not be running Linux (e.g. iPhone and Android) that will drive the adoption of HTML5. Personally I despise Flash even more than Silverlight. The main reason I despise both of them is that most videos on the web simply won't play on my Android Phone.

Re:Anything to get netflix off SilverDimPhotons

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Try bittorrent.

Re:Anything to get netflix off SilverDimPhotons

[toastar]

most videos on the web simply won't play on my Android Phone.

I feel your pain

Vector animation?

[tepples]

In order that HTML 5 may replace Flash on Newgrounds.com, what tool for creating vector animations for HTML 5 is comparable to Adobe Flash CS series?

Re:Vector animation?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

In order that HTML 5 may replace Flash on Newgrounds.com, what tool for creating vector animations for HTML 5 is comparable to Adobe Flash CS series?

You might try Adobe Illustrator paired with Ikivo Animator, that's what Adobe recommends anyway.

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, no, no, you're getting this all wrong - this isn't about what people want or what actually happens in the real world!

it's about a type of consumer so brainwashed they actually believe that apple are a real force for good, and that anything that stands in the way of their favorite company's marketing machine is sheer anathema.

oh and not forgetting the stunted ideologue who will sing the praises of html5, knowing full well it won't amount to squat. who could forget them around here!

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't. A solid IDE for replacing the Flash IDE for svg does not exist. Illu is okay to make an svg but to animate it, use it in a simulation or interaction you need a solid IDE. The lack of one is the reason svg has been out in the wilderness for years. The depth of controls that the FLash IDE, Flash Builder IDE, and Flash Catalyst IDE are missing in the html5/svg/javascript world when your doing that kind of work

The best thing for html5/svg/javascript coding is to have the Flash IDE add a cross compiler where it would output that from the .fla file. None of the designers/animators/user experience artists will open a pure code view to do all their work. That won't happen until the standards get closer to finalized.

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use anything with SVG support.

And CSS3 has native support for animation control, quite powerful control at that.

The only thing that it doesn't have great support for yet is some of the things that people are used to with Flash development.
Preloaders are one thing, file portability is another, permissions and some other things.

File portability can be done just Base64ing the files and storing them in a variable somewhere at the bottom, but this will add an extra X% of bytes on to the end of the file (forgot the exact value)
Of course, considering how most of the imagery is usually vectors in Flash games, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Office?

Re:Vector animation?

[tepples]

Just use anything with SVG support.

And CSS3 has native support for animation control, quite powerful control at that.

Please point me to CSS3's support for interpolation between SVG keyframes. Then please point me to the graphical timeline editor for CSS3 animation. Flash has had both since before it had ActionScript.

The only thing that it doesn't have great support for yet is some of the things that people are used to with Flash development. Preloaders are one thing

HTML5 has onload. Just set the animation to start once all your assets' onload events have fired.

Of course, considering how most of the imagery is usually vectors in Flash games, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

SVG is bloated unless you gzip it.

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thaaank you. This is the first time I see someone else mention what I believe is Flash's big key (and I believe, what it was created for before becoming a huge bloated "platform"). There is no other "simple" method of vector animation besides Flash right now. I've heard SVG has some support, but I haven't seen any apps to make "animated SVG's"

Re:Vector animation?

[svtdragon]

oh and not forgetting the stunted ideologue who will sing the praises of html5, knowing full well it won't amount to squat. who could forget them around here!

This is not so much about singing the praises of Apple or HTML5 as it is about how few people I hear singing the praises of Flash.

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you see, this alpha quality command line based library for Linux is far superior to any "dumbed down IDE" you may have used in the past because,

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Adobe is more excited about HTML5 than Apple? It seems to me that Adobe has much more to be excited about it. Even though their Flash business unit might see some functionality duplicated in HTML 5, overall the new version will be a huge driver for Dreamweaver and related sales. Apple is really not being nice either. Why would HTML5 support the quicktime format and not FLV? both are the same degree of proprietary.

Re:Vector animation?

[tepples]

From this page:

Thank you for your interest in the Ikivo Animator. Please contact Ikivo sales [mailto] for assistance in purchasing the Ikivo Animator.

I've seen these before, and "please e-mail sales" in lieu of a base price usually turns out to be code-word for "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".

Re:Vector animation?

[julesh]

I've seen these before, and "please e-mail sales" in lieu of a base price usually turns out to be code-word for "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".

According to a review in MacUser, it's £199+VAT (=~ $350 US), or at least that was the price for v1.1 (I think there may have been a few updates since then).

Re:Vector animation?

[elrous0]

I feel old now, remembering back to when VRML was the new standard that was going to sweep the web--but didn't amount to squat.

Re:Vector animation?

[Pieroxy]

Precisely!

Nobody cares to know if Apple makes it for the greater good or the greater evil. I'm very happy with no flash on my Phone. I barely installed flash on my Linux, and even then, just to watch Youtube videos. On the iPhone, it is built in, so I don't need flash.

If Apple could push by 0.01% Adobe off the cliff, I'd be eternally grateful to Steve the Almighty ;-)

And HTML5+CSS3 is clearly showing great promises, judging by all the sites that now use it, at least in their mobile version. Less images, less crap for the same result, only lighter and faster. The only hurdle to a broad adoption if Internet Explorer, as usual. No doubt they'll support it when they realize that it is catching up on HTML4, and no doubt they'll realize that very late. Again, as usual.

Re:Vector animation?

[MobyDisk]

Right now, probably nothing since HTML 5 is completely new. There is no reason that Adobe Flash could not save to HTML 5.

Re:Vector animation?

[tepples]

When Flash[1] was completely new, Macromedia still made a graphical editor available.

Re:Vector animation?

[Hurricane78]

You’re supposed to use JavaScript libraries for interpolation support.

In fact I wrote my first animation library with interpolation in 2003. It allowed you to fade between any two CSS classes. And your time line was a list of such CSS classes with time codes. Worked beautifully and fast, even back then. I wrote it in one and a half days.

Oh, and about SVG and gzip: I don’t think there’s still a professional site out there that doesn’t use Apache’s compression functionality. It’s a simple matter of cutting your bandwidth costs in half.

Re:Vector animation?

[tepples]

You’re supposed to use JavaScript libraries for interpolation support.

Then what graphical SVG editor has a button to make and preview JavaScript interpolations of SVG keyframes inside the editor in much the same manner that Flash allows to make and preview interpolations?

In fact I wrote my first animation library with interpolation in 2003. It allowed you to fade between any two CSS classes.

I understand "fade" to mean changing one object's opacity over time to show or hide what is behind it. Did you mean something different?

Re:Vector animation?

[MobyDisk]

Irrelevant.

Flash was not a W3C standard. Flash was a commercial creation - so of course they made an editor available. That was the whole reason they made Flash in the first place - to sell the editor.

Re:Vector animation?

[Rifter13]

Yea... I have a book on developing VRML apps at home, somewhere. :-) WAP, too. :-)

Re:Vector animation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, anyone who first of all claims that HTML5 is the product of Apple work, is crazy. Apple does not own HTML5.

Secondly, I've seen great Frameworks come and go, Microsoft's Foundation Classes, Apple's Horrible XCode IDE and its associated APIs for APPLEs OS (such as WebKit which is design to draw all developers to SAFARI), and other OOP classframeworks.

Adobe's ActionScript 3.0 Framework and its new SPARK Component Architecture for FlashBuilder, is the product of many years of momentum.

So while people who don't have the skills to learn Flash complain about it, most Flash Developers have move don to ActionScript 3.0 and its associated Frameworks, and paradigms like Model View Controller (which have been around since Objective-C first was released in commercial versions of Frameworks in 1990 !!!

So Apple neither owns HTML5, nor do they do a good job of an IDE to use their Objective-C frameworks (which their iPhone Applications are based on, the "Thank you Apple" post above calling Flash a juggernaut is posted by someone who knows nothing of the methods behind iPhone or iPad Programming. Their are just responding to the comment of Video -- My guess, is that Apple is working the Trench-lines to attempt to Influence companies like Template Monster and others.

For the well observant, its just more food for the FTC to look at Apples Desperate Attempt to fight off 3 fronts of Apples Anti-Competitive Problems: (1) INTEL relationship and locking out AMD, (2) Afraid of Flash Experiences on Mobile Devices which will be well into the mainstream by the time HTML5 can crap its pants, (3) Afraid of Googles Android OS because of its lightweight architecture while iPhone and iPad are Proprietary Devices now with good market share, but with an entropy associated with it that Steve Jobs turned Non-Anonymous Coward, is fearful of losing.

What money and strongholds on markets do to people in fear of losing them is amazing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

End of Proprietary Formats?

[StormReaver]

I don't understand why anyone thinks this will put an end to Flash, Silverlight, etc., since HTML5 doesn't specify allowed CODECs. All this means is that those proprietary codecs will be specified with an HTML5 tag. Everything else will remain the same.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why anyone thinks this will put an end to Flash, Silverlight, etc., since HTML5 doesn't specify allowed CODECs. All this means is that those proprietary codecs will be specified with an HTML5 tag. Everything else will remain the same.

I agree. I don't understand all the high-fiving going on. So HTML5 can play video. And? The rest of Flash's functionality?

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While the situation RE: Software patents isn't really where Free software enthusiasts would like it(among others, it isn't hard to find people who think that software patents are a serious clusterfuck); there is big difference:

If something is done in flash, it is almost definitely done using a proprietary codec(either one of Adobe's weirdo legacy proprietary codecs, or h264), wrapped in Flash, a proprietary runtime for which no good-enough-to-be-particularly-useful implementations exist. If something is done with an HTML 5 video tag, it will(outside of nests of Free software idealists) almost certainly be h264. However, while the patent situation is a mess, good Free implementations of h264 exist, and Free browsers will be on the leading edge of HTML5 development.

With flash based stuff, it is essentially impossible to function on a Free stack, no matter where you live, what patent licences you either posses or are willing to ignore, or whatever. It just isn't possible. Gnash is Not There Yet, and even if you are willing to go proprietary, Flash pretty much sucks on anything that isn't 32-bit windows, and it's a pit of resource consumption and security flaws even there. Silverlight is incrementally better, with Moonlight covering a greater subset of Silverlight than Gnash does Flash, and it not sucking architecturally as much; but it still doesn't cover enough(and pretty much any Silverlight based media application will be using a patent encumbered codec and/or DRM in any event).

h264/HTML5 still suffers patent encumbrance; but anybody not subject to, or willing to ignore, those patents can have a very functional Free implementation more or less now. That counts for something.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't understand why anyone thinks this will put an end to Flash, Silverlight, etc., since HTML5 doesn't specify allowed CODECs. All this means is that those proprietary codecs will be specified with an HTML5 tag. Everything else will remain the same.

Picture this, in 5 years you're developing new Web site and you want a Web application on that site. Say it's a little Web based game. Will you:

• Create a version in Flash and not support the iPhone, iPad, and several other phones.
• Create a version in Flash and a version in HTML5 to support both regular Web browsers and the iPhone, iPad, and Mobile devices that don't do Flash?
• Just create an HTML5 version without Flash, and still support both all major browsers and the iPhone, iPad, and other mobile browsers, excluding some very old versions of browsers that have not installed the Google Frame plug-in?

Basically, for applications, Flash becomes redundant since you need to use HTM for other devices anyway and HTML 5 supports everything important Flash does. For video, Flash becomes useless overhead, since you can just specify a codec already used in Flash which will save the user's processor and using Flash limits your audience to a subset of what just specifying a standard codec or two does.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[jellomizer]

Also there is no real guarantee that HTML5 will be better then Flash, Silverlight either. Yes complain how much Flash Sucks. However we open a door for a lot of bad implementations of HTML5

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[tomhudson]

good Free implementations of h264 exist

If you're referring to ffmpeg, it's infringing on several patents held by MPEG-LA

whether you are safe or not depends on where you live and how judges interpret the law in your jurisdiction.

Theora? Don't hold your breath. Apple, (one of the members of the MPEG-LA patent pool) won't use it no matter what.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[tepples]

And? The rest of Flash's functionality?

The rest of SWF's functionality is supposed to be in JavaScript and the HTML5 DOM, including the canvas and audio elements.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[nine-times]

If something is done in flash, it is almost definitely done using a proprietary codec(either one of Adobe's weirdo legacy proprietary codecs, or h264)

For the record, Adobe's "weirdo legacy proprietary codec" was basically h263.

Not that I disagree with your post in general. Just letting you know.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[NightLamp]

However we open a door for a lot of bad implementations of HTML5

The door is already open, an HTML5 canvas renderer and implementation in Flash is definitely possible, much like Chrome Frame for IE it could help spur adoption for legacy browsers. Silverlight could accomplish the same thing - possibly in a more complete way since custom video decoders can be written for it.

Think about this issue inside-out, what happens when full web browser functionality is replicated in Flash(AIR) or Silverlight(OOB)?

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[nine-times]

Well "put an end to Flash" for what? AFAIK HTML5 still can't replicated Flash games very well, so there will probably still be a use for Flash.

However, most of what people use Flash and Silverlight for these days is watching movies. More and more, the videos are MPEG4 videos using H264 and AAC. People tend to use Flash and Silverlight as players, but really that's all they are-- media players. Flash is taking the place of VLC or Quicktime or WMP, decoding H264.

The reason people have used Flash for this purpose is largely because it could be embedded in the website. Up until recently, embedding a video into a webpage wasn't supported very well by most browsers. The normal methods for embedding video didn't provide much control, and it was hard to tell how the client browser would respond. Using Flash, you could tell it, "Don't load the video right away, but just show a thumbnail with video playback controls. Make the controls look like this. When the video is done playing, automatically play the next video in this playlist..." along with a lot of other controls. If you didn't use Flash, then the video might get loaded by Quicktime, WMP, Real Player, VLC, or god-knows-what video player and you had no idea what the player would present the user with.

So now HTML5 comes along and provides better controls for those sorts of things. It may not be perfect, but if the functionality is sufficient it's preferable to decode the video in your system's media player. Flash isn't very efficient or stable on anything other than Windows, and often isn't installed by standard on Linux systems. Plus, it's one less arbitrary piece of software that you need to install on every system, and one fewer instance of vendor lock-in.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Runaway1956]

Including the ability to store super cookies on your computer, so that corporate America can watch over your shoulder?

http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/blog/new-breed-super-cookie-defies-removal-almost

(I like the pic on that page - looks like a girl from high school!)

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Udigs]

Basically, for applications, Flash becomes redundant since you need to use HTM for other devices anyway and HTML 5 supports everything important Flash does. For video, Flash becomes useless overhead, since you can just specify a codec already used in Flash which will save the user's processor and using Flash limits your audience to a subset of what just specifying a standard codec or two does.

Yes, except we are glossing over the part where you use a tool to "create" the application. Flash is a format AND an authoring tool. Unless Flash starts somehow exporting HTML 5, I don't really see this happening.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, HTML5 will not stop the use of flash. Sites like Hulu use flash's RTMP, which make ripping their content difficult. The HTML5 version of youtube places div layer over the video making it so the user cannot simply right click and do a save as. However using the 'inspect element' option of Chrome one can simply change the class of this div from 'video-blocker' to an empty string, make the div blocking technique very moot, even for the non techie. Even youtube hasn't made some the more 'commercial' content available in an HTML5 version. Flash as seen as a way of protecting content, and as such, commercial content will remain using flash.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you. I'm a flash developer. I've never used it for games, video, RIA, etc. I use it for interactive educational content. I've been following html5 pretty closely and I just can't see how it will replace the ability to create interactive multimedia like we can do in flash.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[TheSync]

Theora? Don't hold your breath

In truth, I don't think anyone has truly ensured that Theora is "patent troll proof". Any codec efficient enough to come close to H.264 is probably using patented "tools" whether the programmer recognizes it or not.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yes, except we are glossing over the part where you use a tool to "create" the application. Flash is a format AND an authoring tool. Unless Flash starts somehow exporting HTML 5, I don't really see this happening.

That is a very important point, but it does not undercut the point I made at all. Just because Flash has a nice toolset does not make it able to target platforms that don't and won't support Flash for either strategic or performance reasons. People will be targeting those platforms with HTML 5 so there is a lot of motivation for new and better tools to be created. Certainly some people will not want to learn new tools and will satisfy themselves with smaller potential market share, but that's a losing proposition unless Adobe has a lot more leverage than I know about. And there are already some compliant tools as I mentioned, including toolchains that incorporate Adobe's own products already. Adobe does not do animated vector graphics, but Ikivo will easily animate Illustrator graphics. More and more HTML 5 is finding its way into standard javascript libraries and we all know the plethora of javascriping tools available. Basically, all the HTML+Javascript toolchains are going to be incorporating HTML 5, leaving Flash only for non-programmers and people unwilling to learn new tools. Flash will be around for a long time, but frankly it is a proprietary tool/format with increasingly limited reach because of that proprietary nature. It's an added cost many Web developers pay now, but as more and more eyeballs move to platforms Flash can't reach, it will become increasingly useless.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Draek]

If something is done with an HTML 5 video tag, it will(outside of nests of Free software idealists) almost certainly be h264.

You think? just like people only posted MPEG2 videos back in the days before Flash? no, what will happen is that everything will almost certainly be h.264, until there's a better codec out there (let's call it h.265) at which point half the content will be in h.264 and half in h.265, then large companies will smell the blood and jump in with their own, improved formats (let's call them WMV2) and lobby large content providers to use it, until browser makers start seeing h.264 as 'legacy' by being so incredibly inefficient compared to h.265 and WMV2 and drop support for it (it's not specified in the standard, remember?) and before you know it, we're in the exact same situation we had before Flash and all you've gained is that the propietary crap is wrapped in a 'video' tag rather than an 'object' one, for all the good that does to you.

No, the only solution is to specify *one* baseline codec that must be supported to comply with the standard, but leave web devs able to specify their own alternative if they so desire. That was what was going to happen with Theora as the baseline but devs able to specify h.264 or whatever shiny toy came later, until Apple began to pout and cry and refuse to implement Theora no matter what, leading us to the current situation.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Kool Moe]

I don't accept your premises.

"Create a version in Flash and not support the iPhone, iPad, and several other phones."

When the Flash 10 Player is officially released, mobile phone support shouldn't be an issue, except for Apple devices. So do you re-do everything, or start new with a new HTML 5 spec, to add support for Apple Hardware? Or do you use Flash which covers pretty much all devices and let Apple users miss the experience? So 15% of the phone market misses out...is that really that big a deal? Maybe...

"Create a version in Flash and a version in HTML5 to support both regular Web browsers and the iPhone, iPad, and Mobile devices that don't do Flash?"

Surely not ideal, agreed.

"Just create an HTML5 version without Flash, and still support both all major browsers and the iPhone, iPad, and other mobile browsers, excluding some very old versions of browsers that have not installed the Google Frame plug-in?"

It's not a finalized spec, and won't be for a few more YEARS. There's no consistent browser support. A killer to much online video, there's no DRM (as 'evil' as it may be). There are no IDE tools to support the animation components (though Adobe will be the first to release one).

Finally, the Flash Player needs work, no doubt. Flash itself has been poorly used and written by many, no doubt (not Adobe/Flash's fault). So browsers which will now render all this stuff natively...won't be bloated, won't eat lots of RAM, won't be slow...
Right?
Javascript is no doubt a better language and more efficient that Actionscript...right?
Hmmm.
KM

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[terjeber]

Cool, so we get to write LOB applications in BASIC 1985 again. Also known as JavaScript. Whoever thought that was a good idea should be executed by having every single print of Knuth dumped on him from a very tall building.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[koiransuklaa]

Flash is a good format for you, that's great. Just don't assume it'll be available or installed on all clients in the future... Video is by far the largest reason for Flash to be so widespread. If that reason disappears, the Flash install base will start declining fast -- many people will still install it, no doubt, but you won't be able to assume it'll be there.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

When the Flash 10 Player is officially released, mobile phone support shouldn't be an issue, except for Apple devices.

Except reviews of the beta show that it still sucks down CPU and battery when playing even H.264, the supported video it can supposedly offload to a coprocessor because the Flash application itself still requires so much. So realistically that means as a developer you can't target Apple mobile devices (a large and growing market chunk) and your application will suck down battery and CPU (compared to HTML 5 competitors) on other mobile devices.

It's not a finalized spec, and won't be for a few more YEARS.

It's up and running on multiple browsers today, for the relevant parts.

There are no IDE tools to support the animation components (though Adobe will be the first to release one).

Yes there are, since it uses SVG for vector graphics and there are existing solutions, including Adobe Illustrator support for creating the models/stills.

Finally, the Flash Player needs work, no doubt. Flash itself has been poorly used and written by many, no doubt (not Adobe/Flash's fault). So browsers which will now render all this stuff natively...won't be bloated, won't eat lots of RAM, won't be slow... Right?

Nope because it's already being used and because all the major browser makers sans MS have a vested interesting making javascript fast and secure for the latest generation of Web apps and they've been doing a very good job of it. You haven's seen how fast javascript is on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all using competing very fast new engines? The main difference is, they're competing for both speed and security with one another. The lack of single vendor lock-in makes all the difference.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[mmj638]

The parent's point was that good free implementations of ordinary h264 exist, even though they have patent issues, whereas they don't even exist for Flash.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Yvanhoe]

Exactly. The only reason why flash and youtube had any success at all is Microsoft being unable to provide a good, streaming-able, movie player with Windows. History will probably repeat itself : Apple, Microsoft (Google ?) will all want to impose one format over the other, making the whole IT lose millions of man-hour writting compatibility layers instead of focusing on important developments.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Alistair Hutton]

I have seen HTML 5 demos, there's one with coloured balls moving around the screen on a black background reacting to the mouse. That takes up 90% of one core of my machine. I knocked up a similar program in Actionscript, it took up 5% of one core.

Re:End of Proprietary Formats?

[Vellmont]

No, the only solution is to specify *one* baseline codec that must be supported to comply with the standard, but leave web devs able to specify their own alternative if they so desire.

I think that's a good solution, I just don't think it's the _only_ solution. Video codecs are fighting the same war image codes fought 20 years ago. Ever heard of an AIFF, or a HAM image type? No? How often have you seen TIFF before? Never? That's because those formats lost the format wars, and people settled on GIF, jpeg, and the 14 year old "newcomer" png. Unless you're a crazy person, you post images on the web in one of those three formats. There's no "image format of the week" requiring some new dumb plugin. Hell, even PNG was an uphill battle.

I predict that something similar will happen with video codecs, and the constant "new format of the week" wars will end with a handful of codecs will be supported in major browsers. The compression gravy train simply has to run out at some point. It's an information theory certainty.

I actually DO remember when browsers didn't even support some image formats without a plugin (Mosaic comes to mind). The big selling point of Netscape was it supported displaying either gifs or jpgs (I forget which) "inline" (wow! Inline graphics!)

Neat

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of web developers were already maintaining (at least) 2 versions of their sites- one for modern browsers with correct CSS and one for IE.

Animated and dynamic web pages have become so standard now, I'm glad we can finally see standards support for creating them without resource-hogging proprietary plug-ins.

Inertia be damned

[Anonymous Coward]

Uninstalling Flash is the important part. Remaining issues can be tackled as they come.

Re:Inertia be damned

[NoSleepDemon]

You do realise that video wasn't the only thing Flash did, right? What exactly in HTML5 is going to replace the ease with which you can create animations and games with a unique look and feel in Flash?

Re:Inertia be damned

[Locke2005]

Isn't most of that functionality already available in DHTML?

Re:Inertia be damned

[chentiangemalc]

...and the ease of SilverLight development....

Re:Inertia be damned

[piquadratCH]

A combination of canvas, SVG, WebGL and Javascript should be enough to do most of what Flash can do.

Re:Inertia be damned

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're proposing to use a combination of four standards to replace one. ...You know that's never going to happen, right?

Re:Inertia be damned

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean no disregard, but how do you know? WebGL is vaporware at best, SVG has been going nowhere for the last few years and canvas is present only as a proof of concept on few websites.
Show me a website that uses two of the 3 tehnologies you mentioned on the same page.

Re:Inertia be damned

[Anonymous Coward]

Video is just one of the things where Flash is being attacked. SVG/SMIL/CSS3 etc. have been steadily undermining Flash' USPs for a while now.

Have a look at Anigma (http://icefox.net/anigma) It is a web game that doesn't even need JavaScript, all done with CSS3 and animations.

Re:Inertia be damned

[Anonymous Coward]

Try detecting multiple simultaneous keypresses in ActionScript... Easy enough, right?
Now try detecting multiple simultaneous keypresses in JavaScript... How's that working for ya?

If you're trying to make a two player game or something that uses WASD style keyboard control, you'll notice some things aren't up to par outside of Flash.

(Now unless the new spec fixes things like that, there's still some reasons to keep Flash around.)

Re:Inertia be damned

[NoSleepDemon]

There's also the graphics card acceleration features offered by Flash which are pretty neat

my bitter ways

[bigmaddog]

I'm at the point in my web developing days where I don't really care what's in the standard, so long as it is unambiguous and everyone adheres to it. I am doomed to be eternally disappointed.

Re:my bitter ways

[Locke2005]

In all my years of programming, I have yet to see a completely clear, unambiguous standard. They don't exist, since English does a poor job at concise specification of behavior. That is why smart people participate in interoperability tests for new protocols to reconcile the different interpretations of different developers. Example: many years ago, ACC LAN center developed an XNS implementation that worked perfectly talking to other copies of itself, but failed miserably with other vendors' implementations. Why? Because the C standard at the time didn't specify the order of allocation of bitfields, and the developer had assumed LSB first allocation when instead it was doing MSB first.

Re:my bitter ways

[obarthelemy]

With the importance of the web, I don't really understand why the W3C does not have a disambiguation committee that chooses and confirms which of the diverging implementations should be used. Sounds like a very wise investment of 2-3 people's wages.

Re:my bitter ways

[Anonymous Coward]

perl5. The implementation IS the standard!

InfoWorld SUCKS

[e2d2]

And here is what to expect from an InfoWorld article - very little substance littered over at least 5 pages soaked with advertisements.

Re:InfoWorld SUCKS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, whenever I load Infoworld's website my Windows 7 PC reports a "low memory" error!

Re:InfoWorld SUCKS

[Minwee]

And here is what to expect from an InfoWorld article - very little substance littered over at least 5 pages soaked with advertisements.

You expect that there will be some substance to it? I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

What are the security risk?

[koan]

Any one have an idea if the security risk are any higher using HTML5? Or will it be the same risk just different types of vulnerabilities?

Re:What are the security risk?

[BZ]

Different types of vulnerabilities are likely, yes. Some security risks will become smaller (e.g. no more disagreement between browser and plug-in as to what the security context of a given piece of script is, due to there being only one piece of code enforcing security policy).

But more importantly, there won't be a monoculture of vulnerabilities (modulo vulnerabilities required by the spec and not caught in review), and vulnerability patching would happen when browsers patch their stuff and push the security fixes (how successful that is varies by browser) and not when users install updated versions of the Flash plug-in (which is never, to a first approximation).

Re:What are the security risk?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Any one have an idea if the security risk are any higher using HTML5? Or will it be the same risk just different types of vulnerabilities?

It's something of a trade off, but long term an improvement. You see, either way you can disable the plugin or disable javascript for a site to prevent exploits. With Javascript and HTML5 though, you can pick any browser to use and there is ongoing competition for making the best one. For Flash and Silverlight, you're stuck with a single vendor providing it, so any vulnerability and you're stuck waiting for Adobe and MS respectively. You can compare it to e-mail, perhaps. What is more secure Outlook, or standards compliant POP and IMAP clients collectively? Would you feel more secure using Outlook for your e-mail or taking your pick of any e-mail client that supports POP and IMAP?

Re:What are the security risk?

[religious freak]

This is a perfectly valid question and a point I don't see raised very often, and something I immediately think of when I hear the word 'overhaul'. Why is this marked troll?

Re:What are the security risk?

[silanea]

On the one hand a lot of functionality is moved rather hastily from dedicated, years old plugins into the browser itself, which opens the door for bugs, incorrect implementations and general fuck-ups. So in the first few browser iterations there certainly is a risk that someone, somewhere, has missed something critical. Though, as with all other bugs, this should be ironed out over time. The foundation for most of the vulnerable parts, JavaScript, has been around for quite some time now; the worst attack vectors should already be mitigated.

On the other hand we might see the day where Flash is banished from all computers, which would translate into an enormous decrease in security issues, resource consumption and general annoyance. So whatever the risk of all the new code in our browsers may be, I for one think it is worthwhile.

Re:What are the security risk?

[mmj638]

The security risk is bound to depend on the openness of the standards.

HTML5 is absolutely open; anybody can read the specification, and anybody can inspect the source code of any of the free HTML5 implementations (as for proprietary implementations, you'd have to put your faith in the vendor).

Flash is not open like HTML5; while free implementations of clients exist their market usage is not even a blip on the radar and their functionality is lacking. Everybody* uses Adobe's client for which source code is not available. So, security here will depend on your faith in the vendor to a much greater extent.

I personally have more faith in the security-through-transparency model and favor open standards and technologies.

Web Forms 2.0

[WebManWalking]

By far the most useful feature for web developers. Data validation with JavaScript off via new input types, available now in Opera. So sad they didn't mention that in the article.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Steauengeglase]

I wouldn't say learning is the problem, not wanting to buy or pirate Adobe products is the issue.

Legacy browsers

[olau]

...and a version for legacy browsers that falls back on outdated rendering tricks

It doesn't have to be that grim. I've written a charting library for Javascript using the HTML canvas, and thank God some people have written an emulation library for IE so (most) things just work as expected when you include the library (and do a little secret dance). So I don't have to maintain two code bases. This can probably happen again. Never underestimate the momentum of thousands of angry developers.

I don't think the browsers are quite ready to replace Flash and similar for little arcade/action games, yet though, the real-time properties aren't good enough yet.

Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[mozumder]

It would go great with a compressed standard for transport stream, such as what Opera does with its mobile for Turbo speeds.

Standard encryption would also be appreciated.

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[molo]

What, never heard of deflate encoding? mod_gzip.

-molo

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[Ant P.]

He's probably referring to the fact HTTP headers are around half a KB per request and never compressed.

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[Abcd1234]

OH NO! Not 512 whole *bytes*! Dear god, what will we do?!? Think of the fraction of a percentage of bandwidth being wasted!

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[Pieroxy]

To be absolutely fair, most "heavy" pages such as slashdot involves several dozens of http queries leading the total weight of the http headers being transmitted to well over 10KB. On an edge connection, it *is* painful.

For sure, it is nothing compared to the rest of the crap being downloaded, but still!

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[Philip_the_physicist]

You can already use gzip to compress the transport stream.

SSL is a pretty good standard, although a better technique for certification of keys would be nice. TBH, though, most content does not need to be encrypted because you are serving up the same content to whoever asks for it.

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[Abcd1234]

For sure, it is nothing compared to the rest of the crap being downloaded, but still!

But that's the whole point. As percentage of content, those headers are tiny. The *real* problem is that a gazillion HTTP requests are being made in order to pull a whole bunch of superfluous content.

Re:Could use an update to HTTP protocol as well

[JesseMcDonald]

TBH, though, most content does not need to be encrypted because you are serving up the same content to whoever asks for it.

True, but it does need to be signed so that you know you're getting the content you asked for.

Good luck on that.

[Frosty Piss]

Neil McAllister takes a deeper look at HTML5, outlining what developers should expect from this overhaul of HTML -- one that some believe could put an end to proprietary Web technologies such as Flash and Silverlight.

Good luck on getting Microsoft to sign off on that for IE. They are unlikly to incorporate a standard that eliminates one or more of their "technologies".

Re:Good luck on that.

[BitwiseX]

I don't believe they have that privilege. It's a standard. They'll make a browser that's compliant (sorta...) and keep all their extra IE "goodies" in there as well. (iframe tag comes to mind...later standarized in HTML4... only your favorite deity know why..).

Re:Good luck on that.

[chentiangemalc]

how does HTML5 eliminate Silverlight? Microsoft have already starting implmeneting components of the HTML5, co-chaired the HTML5 working group in W3C since the beginnging and continues to participate in it. both technologies can co-exist, and they are different. Silverlight applications can be used for web, desktop or mobile applications. More importantly development is based around .NET framework, and includes powerful development tools, both from an artist and developer perspective. In addition some things are lacking in HTML 1) if you want to create a rich DVR-like experience with live video, you need a technology like Silverlight. Silverlight's HD smooth streaming allows for picture in picture, pausing live video, rewinding, slow motion and downstreaming when bandwith slows down. With smooth streaming, the buffering is minimized and you can jump to different spots of the video almost in real-time. 2) Content protection/DRM does not exist in the video tag in HTML. This will prevent some companies from posting videos in HTML5 3) Limited by JavaScript. Javascript does not provide a true parallelism, Javascript is a cross between a functional and object-oriented language, limits code sharing, slower than .NET. Finally one HTML5 may not prove better than plugins is different implementations of the standard and JavaScript (i.e incomplete) which we already see across all browsers...and this problem is not just Microsoft...Chrome,Safari, Firefox as well don't render certain pages the same. Using a framework can ensure standard viewing experience across any browser.

Flash/SL are still the only way to share a/v

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm glad to see movement towards non-prop web video playback, how else (besides Flash/Silverlight) can you do online interactive seminars/meetings with shared audio/video between multiple users (let alone screen/application sharing)? While the HTML5 spec seems to cover video playback pretty well, I don't see an standard-based specification for sharing in streamed audio/video between multiple users (but maybe I'm overlooking something?).

And no this isn't about "chat roulette", it's about remote meeting/collaboration functionalities that are increasingly important for businesses and online/remote learning, where the _least_ proprietary solutions are currently Flash-based on the client end.

Re:Flash/SL are still the only way to share a/v

[Myopic]

One step at a time, brother.

Thirty years ago when operating systems proliferated, the POSIX effort attempted to apply standards to operating systems. That effort failed, insofar as a non-POSIX operating system rose to the top spot and has stayed there ever since.

Today, we are replacing operating systems with web browsers. The effort looks different, but we are slowly putting in place advanced standards for how they should work. This is an incredibly important effort. If we screw this up, something analogous to Windows could ruin the internet for literally generations.

We want standards because we verily believe they are better than proprietary solutions, in an overall sense. As web browsers advance, we need to continue the effort to make those advancements as standard as possible.

What's the problem?

[Locke2005]

Web developers may be stuck maintaining two versions of their sites How is that any worse than what we have now, where developers are stuck maintaining a version of their site for IE, another for Netscape/Mozilla, and ignoring the fact that their site doesn't work on most other (e.g. mobile) browsers? At least a viable HTML 5 standard holds out the hope of eventually needing only a single version of each website. Google "browser detection" if you don't think supporting multiple browsers is already a problem today.

Re:What's the problem?

[ericlondaits]

I've never heard of anyone mantaining a version of their site for IE and another for Mozilla Firefox. At most we have IE-specific CSS or Javascript code to work around certain bugs of IE6 and IE7... but that's hardly worth of being called "another version" of the site... more like a patch.

For a site of more than minimum complexity you need a solid code base... and having two different versions of the site goes completely against that purpose. That's why, for any development worth its salt, I don't expect we'll have a Flash and an HTML5 version... more likely there'll be a Flash version, which works almost everywhere (except for iPhones and iPads... but that's not for the sake of supporting HTML5 as a new vibrant standard). Use of HTML5 will probably grow as slowly as any other technology which is not widely supported, as easy and fun to use as it may be.

What may actually happen is that some flash players and libraries might include code that transparently uses HTML5 when available. Like this:

http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody ... Still this approach is only useful for very particular applications and libraries, and it still might make testing and developing a little harder.

I understand the substance of your complaint

[circletimessquare]

however I would assert that

(please click the next comment below the parent to see more insight)

Re:I understand the substance of your complaint

[Arthur Grumbine]

I'm pretty sure this is a record for consecutive, uninterrupted, in-reply-to-the-same-parent, Score:5, Funny comments from the same user (ACs don't count - they never did). There should be a /. Achievement for this, something like "Comedian DoS Attack Award".

Re:I understand the substance of your complaint

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant, now you've got plenty of mod points for your anti-freedom, anti-choice trolling campaign.

Re:I understand the substance of your complaint

[e2d2]

+ Funny mod doesn't give Karma:

From the karma FAQ:
"Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass."

They're skipping 2, 3, and 4

[tepples]

I don't want HTML5. I want XHTML2. Get to work on this now.

HTML5 has two syntaxes: SGML-style "HTML Syntax" (Content-type: text/html) and XML (Content-type: application/xhtml+xml). The latter is called XHTML5, and 5 is greater than 2.

...Now help standardize on non-proprietary codecs.

[KingSkippus]

Let's not kid ourselves. Apple isn't trying to pull people away from Flash because they're big-hearted. They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content, via the sweet deal with MPEG LA (who owns the H.264 patent) that will keep other players--especially open source software--out of the market.

If Apple really had our best interests at heart, they would be either 1) pushing Ogg Theora as a baseline video standard, or 2) working to release H.264 into the public domain so that everyone can use the arguably "better" codec.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora? I mean, I can understand them implementing H.264, if they think it's a better codec. Google does too, and they've said on record that they think that H.264 is superior. Nevertheless, Chrome does also support Ogg Theora. Opera supports Ogg Theora. Firefox, of course supports Ogg Theora, and due to its open source nature, can't support H.264 unless it's released to the public domain. Microsoft is blissfully quiet on the matter and doesn't support either yet. But Safari? The odd man out, the only browser that could support both and has chosen not to.

So yeah, no thanks, Apple. At least, not yet.

I'm probably the minority, but

[McBeer]

Honestly I'm not rooting for html 5 to replace flash/Silverlight for RIA. I don't like having to have 5 times as many tests in my matrix (one for each browser). I don't like having to write ajax shims whenever I want to use the db from the client. I don't like how hard it is to make reusable html controls that can't break other parts of the site. I don't like how javascript scales up for larger projects... the list goes on. I'm welcome some improvements to html+javascript and for using it to display documents. That said, It simply isn't designed for RIA. Flash/Silverlight are.

Re:I'm probably the minority, but

[Aphoxema]

Well, if you just design if for IE you'll take care of about half your customers, demographics depending. Half is better than nothing!

Re:I'm probably the minority, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely agree with you. I can't see how HTML5/Javascript will offer developers the same ease-of-use, robustness and base-framework-capabilities that Flash or especially Silverlight offer. Certainly not-to-complex applications won't be a problem. But I am certain I won't be developing a complex game or something like that with HTML5/Javascript.

I see all the problems that these formats have but it really feels like going back to the stone-age.

I understand the substance of your complaint

[circletimessquare]

its not really that much of a problem to read

(please click the next comment in this series for our exciting conclusion)

PlayReady digital restrictions management

[tepples]

MoonDimPhotons works on Linux and can generally play web applications designed for the previous version of SilverDimPhotons, as long as they don't use DRM. But Netflix intentionally makes its service incompatible with MoonDimPhotons because a recompiled version of MoonDimPhotons could tee(1) the video into a file that can easily be redistributed to the public in violation of copyright. Linux on PCs and DRM are at fundamental odds with each other.

And nothing of value was changed.

[ArundelCastle]

Until these legacy browsers are replaced with modern updates, Web developers may be stuck maintaining two versions of their sites: a rich version for HTML5-enabled users, and a version for legacy browsers that falls back on outdated rendering tricks.

Is this any different from the last 10 years compensating for people and entire institutions clinging to NN 4, IE 5.5, IE Mac, IE 6, IE 7, shit CSS support vs. tables, or having JS turned off?

No? Fine then. Budget time and funds as normal. Glad to know BrowserShots and QuirksMode still have a bright future ahead.

The funny part

[kilodelta]

At the last meet of Providence Geeks I heard quite a bit about HTML5. But I have yet to find a decent how-to for it, nor a decent list of tags, etc. available. It's just a horrible mish-mash right now. And FTA, 21 years for full deployment. I said 5 years.

Re:The funny part

[Ant P.]

But I have yet to find a decent how-to for it, nor a decent list of tags, etc. available.

Every single tag is listed in the table of contents under section 4. TBH the only way you could miss that is if you'd made no attempt whatsoever to actually find a list.

As for a how-to: pick any "decent how-to" for HTML 4 and use that plus some common sense.

Re:The funny part

[kilodelta]

Thanks for the response. I know HTML4, I just needed something that sort of tells you the differences and the link you provided seems to do that.

Silverlight?

[kikito]

What has no beginning can have no end.

Re:Silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix.com

The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

Re:Silverlight?

[ascari]

You sir, are wrong: The common hot dog has two ends, and no beginning.

HTML5? Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no video codec will replace your flash player, no javascript can take the place of a well designed ActiveX plugin and no web standard will change the way the internet works.

I'm sorry, but Clifford Stoll made my day.

I understand the substance of your complaint

[circletimessquare]

an article in tandem sections if you are a search spider or ad generator!

(we hope you've enjoyed this exciting article, please click again, and please click a lot

because we don't think of you as a human reader we should attempt to satisfy, and therefore convince you to visit us again

we think of you as a monkey we have to somehow trick, annoy, and cajole into clicking a lot, for content counts, page hits, and ad revenue

internet content is a zero sum game!)

I love standards . . .

[NicknamesAreStupid]

. . . because there are so many to choose!

Re:I love standards . . .

[Aphoxema]

Now instead of relying on proprietary binaries we'll get to rely on proprietary codecs, whoopee!

If Adobe adds an 'Export to HTML 5' option

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't that make Flash a great HTML 5 editor?

The emigration workaround

[tepples]

If you're referring to ffmpeg, it's infringing on several patents held by MPEG-LA

There exists one workaround for MPEG-LA patents:

1. Emigrate from the United States and other countries where MPEG-LA controlled patents are enforceable.
2. Start a web site operated from and hosted in this country.
3. Use IP address geotargeting to make your web site available in markets other than the United States and other countries where MPEG-LA controlled patents are enforceable. For markets with patent restrictions, display "Coming Soon" with a JavaScript countdown showing the number of seconds until the essential patents expire.

For the record, why is this workaround unacceptable?

Re:The emigration workaround

[tomhudson]

The people stuck looking at the counter would probably say that's not a solution - at least not for them. Besides, I'm saying that the original poster was wrong when they claimed that there were good free solutions available.

It's not free in the FLOSS sense (can't be redistributed without restriction because of patent issues), and for much of the market it's not free in the $$$ sense either (need a license from MPEG-LA).

Re:The emigration workaround

[tepples]

I disagree with the emigration workaround and agree with your criticism of it. I'm just devil's advocating to look for more ammo against it.

The people stuck looking at the counter would probably say that's not a solution - at least not for them.

Emigration proponents claim that a solution doesn't have to be for everybody. It's still possible to turn a profit by serving everyone but "the people stuck looking at the counter". Case in point: Hulu and Netflix manage to not bleed cash even though they turn away 95 percent of the world's population.

Besides, I'm saying that the original poster was wrong when they claimed that there were good free solutions available.

They are available, just not where you and I live.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple really had our best interests at heart, they would be either 1) pushing Ogg Theora as a baseline video standard, or 2) working to release H.264 into the public domain so that everyone can use the arguably "better" codec.

Every piece of Apple hardware that can play video supports H.264 which is also what they provide in their iTunes store. They can't change that overnight. Furthermore they'd need to support H.264 anyway since Youtube uses it. Apple can't release H.264 into the public domain, because they don't own it.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

Safari, at least on the Mac, supports everything the Quicktime framework supports. While they have been shipping H.264 support with Qicktime for years they are not preventing you from installing a plugin if you want to watch Theora videos in HTML5.

Firefox, of course supports Ogg Theora, and due to its open source nature, can't support H.264 unless it's released to the public domain.

Firefox could easily support H.264 if they used the codec framework the operating systems provide. There are free (as in beer/licensed and as in freedom) H.264 decoders that you can download for DirectShow and Qicktime. The situation with GStreamer isn't that good, but since Fluendo provides a free and legal MP3 decoder for linux I'm sure it wouldn't be so hard for someone with the resources (for instance Mozilla and Opera) to get together and provide the same thing for H.264. Realistically it wouldn't be a problem though since most people have the GStreamer Bad and Ugly plugins installed anyway.
Another thing Firefox could do is to use FFMpeg for Vorbis and Theora decoding. That way it would be trivial for the user to replace a stripped FFMpeg with a full featured one and play basically every video on the web.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[truthsearch]

My guess as to why Apple doesn't support Ogg Theora in Safari is because their mobile devices already have hardware support for H.264. So on Apple's mobile hardware, H.264 video would drastically outperform Ogg.

Old

[Anonymous Coward]

This is OLD news. I've been using "<!DOCTYPE html>" on all new sites at least the last year now, and any web developers who aren't investigating and/or anticipating HTML5 now that it is being implemented in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, (IE9? not sure) are really just paving the way for their successors. With Gears, Google has shown off a bunch of these new features (most interestingly IMO the script-accessible local data store) and now that they're taking Gears off the market (not that it had a sizable market to speak of), I think it's a sign we should all begin to make use of the new stuff (still with graceful fallback, of course).

I'm not expecting anything from HTML5, because it has already lived up to my expectations.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Lunix Nutcase]

They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content, via the sweet deal with MPEG LA (who owns the H.264 patent) that will keep other players--especially open source software--out of the market.

This is so wrong it's not even funny. MPEG LA doesn't own the H.264 patents. MPEG LA is a firm that licenses the patent pool to H.264 and numerous other technologies.

If Apple really had our best interests at heart, they would be either 1) pushing Ogg Theora as a baseline video standard, or 2) working to release H.264 into the public domain so that everyone can use the arguably "better" codec.

Since Apple owns patents to H.264 I doubt you are going to see them doing either.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

Why are you surprised by this? Apple is a patent holder to H.264. Why would they want to support a video codec that is a rival to a technology in which they hold patents?

Chrome Frame, Group Policy, and Newgrounds

[tepples]

Just create an HTML5 version without Flash, and still support both all major browsers and the iPhone, iPad, and other mobile browsers, excluding some very old versions of browsers that have not installed the Google Frame plug-in?

IE tends to be more popular at work or other locked-down environments, where Group Policy bans the installation of Chrome Frame. In a lot of cases, even the PC in the break room has only IE without Chrome Frame.

for applications, Flash becomes redundant [...] For video, Flash becomes useless overhead

I know of two ways to represent video: pixel block transforms and vector animations. Both H.264 and Theora are based on pixel block transforms. But a lot of the video on, say, Newgrounds is vector animations. So what do you recommend to replace SWF for that?

Re:Chrome Frame, Group Policy, and Newgrounds

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

IE tends to be more popular at work or other locked-down environments, where Group Policy bans the installation of Chrome Frame. In a lot of cases, even the PC in the break room has only IE without Chrome Frame.

There are always going to be backward environments running old versions of IE or Netscape or something equally dated. New versions of IE (IE 9) should theoretically run the HTML 5 spec and if it doesn't MS will probably be back in court in the EU. Regardless ,any place that bans Chrome Frame in 5 years is probably also going to ban the Flash plugin as well, so there is still no incentive to use Flash over HTML 5.

I know of two ways to represent video: pixel block transforms and vector animations. Both H.264 and Theora are based on pixel block transforms. But a lot of the video on, say, Newgrounds is vector animations. So what do you recommend to replace SWF for that?

HTML 5 incorporates SVG as part of the standard, as mentioned in the article. You already asked about tools earlier and I answered with the most popular solution I know, Adobe Illustrator paired with Ikivo Animator. As per your sig, you can absolutely replace Badger Badger Badger with just an embedded video, but for more interesting vector graphics animations, i.e. vector graphics games, you can use SVG and javascript.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Lunix Nutcase]

That and Apple is a holder of H.264 and MP4 patents.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Sancho]

No one said that Apple was big-hearted. But let's face it. Flash is a steaming pile. Very recently, it's been implicated as the cause of most OS X crashes, as well as as the best vector of attack for web malware. It's installed on almost every computer that surfs the web. It's a huge resource hog, and incidentally, most flash video players are just streaming down h.264.

Now last I'd heard, Microsoft had no intention of supporting video tags in IE. Firefox can't support h.264 (though a plugin could.) But Safari does. So it is certainly clear that Apple is the big winner here, and any fighting that they are doing is certainly in their own interests. But it may still help out people interested in using other browsers eventually.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

Safari, by deliberate choice, also does not support Vi keystrokes. Nor do they support, by deliberate choice, reading the contents of your flash drive directly from the browser.

Microsoft is blissfully quiet on the matter and doesn't support either yet. But Safari? The odd man out, the only browser that could support both and has chosen not to.

Doublethink alert. Microsoft could support both, and has chosen not to. Windows 7 ships with h.264. Apple/Safari is not the odd man out. What's happened is that the fringe players added support for a codec that no one uses, and the big guns realize how pointless that is and have decided not to.

What authoring tool?

[tepples]

A combination of canvas, SVG, WebGL and Javascript should be enough to do most of what Flash can do.

Say I wanted to make something like "Badgers" using HTML5 technologies. What authoring tool do you recommend? Inkscape supports only still SVG, not SVG animation.

Petition for a Moratorium on Snydeq Submissions

[RobotRunAmok]

InfoWorld pays him to astroturf their editors' ramblings here on slashdot, and drive traffic back to their mish-mash of a site. But who knows, Infoworld could be paying slashdot as well and all the snydeq submissions could be slashvertisements.

Accept-Encoding: gzip

[tepples]

It would go great with a compressed standard for transport stream

It already has one for at least document bodies (Accept-Encoding: gzip), even if not for the HTTP headers.

Reality stopped by. He said 'hi'.

[Tumbleweed]

Until these legacy browsers are replaced with modern updates, Web developers may be stuck maintaining two versions of their sites: a rich version for HTML5-enabled users, and a version for legacy browsers that falls back on outdated rendering tricks.

I've never worked for a company that gave me the time to do two versions of a site. The upshot is you always wind up with the lowest common denominator. Thus, no HTML5-based sites. :(

Unless you're willing to trust some javascript-based solution that enables HTML5, that is.

Re:Reality stopped by. He said 'hi'.

[Myopic]

If you are using javascript, you certainly aren't settling for the least common denominator. Presumably you are doing what everyone else is doing, which is choosing how old of browsers you want to support, and coding from there. If that's true, then don't worry, you don't need to do HTML5 now, you can do it in five years or so.

The IE elephant in the room

[billtom]

It's hard to get too excited about new web stuff because as a web developer, the answer to "when can I start using the new stuff in my sites" is always "when 90%+ of my visitors have browsers that support it."

And given the excruciatingly slow rates of: IE losing market share, MS implementing new technologies in IE, and users upgrading to newer versions of IE; the answer to that 90%+ question for HTML5 will be measured in years from now.

Re:The IE elephant in the room

[Stregano]

All it takes is a little JS browser detection and this:

Please Upgrade to Firefox

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[PenguSven]

They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content

Apple aren't the only ones who would rather live without Flash. The sheer fact that browser plugins like ClickToFlash, FlashBlock, etc exist show that people are sick of the generally crummy things Flash is used for.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

It's not as though Google created WebKit and put support for Ogg into the codebase, and Apple remove it in their own builds. Google added Ogg support themselves. I'm guessing because if they didn't the Chromium crowd would get NO video codecs included. This makes your logic backwards. It would be a deliberate choice to add Ogg support, as it requires action.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[tijnbraun]

OT: safari does support some emacs key bindings:

see for example http://www.danrodney.com/mac/

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[nine-times]

They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content, via the sweet deal with MPEG LA (who owns the H.264 patent) that will keep other players--especially open source software--out of the market.

How is Apple going to be the gateway for all H264 content?

If Apple really had our best interests at heart, they would be either 1) pushing Ogg Theora as a baseline video standard, or 2) working to release H.264 into the public domain so that everyone can use the arguably "better" codec.

Well I don't think they have control of the H264 patents, so I'm not sure they can do much to force it into the public domain. As for Ogg Theora, it's necessary to ask the question, why didn't Apple use it as their format of choice? There may be various kinds of reasons.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

Well I'm not sure what you mean by "by deliberate choice". Apple doesn't include a codec for Ogg in Quicktime by default, but you can download the codec from Xiph and install it. Safari plays whatever formats Quicktime plays.

Microsoft is blissfully quiet on the matter and doesn't support either yet. But Safari? The odd man out, the only browser that could support both and has chosen not to.

No, Microsoft supports H264 in the default install of Windows 7, but they don't support Ogg. Also, many open source projects support H264 in some form, depending on how observant they are of US patent laws. Also, though Google has Ogg support in Chrome, they generally aren't supporting Ogg on their sites. Safari isn't really odd-man-out here.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Sancho]

That's pretty neat. My fingers aren't limber enough to use emacs, though :)

What some of us get compared to what we expected

[Stregano]

I am still learning Flash and Silverlight myself. I actually know very little about Flash, but one thing I keep learning about SilverLight, is that many times I will hop onto a message board and get into a discussion/find out a good way to do something/etc. and many times, I am suggested to use Javascript or something else external to help SilverLight to function the way I expect it to.

Now, I am unsure if Flash is the same way, but if Flash is also the same way, then I would say before we even begin to get all up in arms about which is better, which should be used, which could go away, we need to examine how we can improve what we currently have.

Now, my main background is PHP, but I also have some background in .Net as well (ASP.Net,VB.Net,C#).

I guess I always assumed that making web applications meant that we would create an application and would be able to deploy it as a single entity onto the web without the need for things such as Javascript to "tag along". In my eyes, a web application should be just that.

It sounds strange even to me (that would be like telling me to create a good php website using only php and nothing else). The stuff should mix and match and everything should play along with each other nicely, but to what point are we pushing this all together to get non browser specific applications?

I guess, for me, it is a matter of whether or not we should deal much with the standards when the people that implement the browsers themselves do not follow everything within the standards.

I do also think that we should not have to worry about whether something works on a specific browser. Yeah, I know, that will never happen, but it would be nice.

I have a bad habit of digressing, so sorry about that. Before we are even concerned about whether this will be a SL or Flash killer, maybe we should look at ways to improve what we currently have. If we just use what we are given and need to reach out to other things such as js to get all of our functionality, then we should really examine why we use js in that situation (and strange enough, for SL, it comes up alot for me) and find a way to improve SL in order to make it work better itself.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

Again someone assuming Ogg Theora is a better codec despite lots of intelligent arguments against it from a codec standpoint. YAY SLASHDOT!

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[nine-times]

Not Flash, but Adobe pushes a little sometimes. Sometimes they push directly on consumers, and sometimes they push on their partners (e.g. Apple, Microsoft). There was a story about Adobe trying to block certain features from HTML 5 because they would diminish the need for Flash.

I wouldn't say that Adobe is a bigger bully than Apple or Microsoft. But yes, Adobe is pushing against improving web standards that would make it unnecessary for web developers to buy Flash.

Document or application

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to say, using HTML for something other than displaying information still feels like... you're trying to make an application out of a word document. Think about it, we're desperately trying to move away from the desktop but the framework we're using is primarily a framework for designing text and then clobber on tons of scripting to get it to do something else. Sure, we can do fancy stuff with it, but there's no consistency and everyone reinvents the wheel every time there's a need for something you'd take for granted in a desktop app that simply doesn't exist in pure HTML. Some might say that's the beauty of it, I call it a god damn mess that I've been fighting with for the past 10 years. If something like unprivileged XUL would have caught on, we could have had some interesting apps (links work in Firefox only) today. Sadly, we're still trying to make desktop applications out of documents, and I don't see HTML5 changing that. Granted, that we can run our applications distributed, centralized with a backend database and zero install, still make it an ideal platform to work with - but it doesn't change the fact that the markup language we're using is a hack of a tool. And don't get me started on "AJAX"...

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Joe Tie.]

Man, let me tell you, as a linux user I really miss the pre flash video days. It's so annoying facing a somewhat heavy processor load while watching videos online, compared to not being able to see them at all. To getting codec errors, and redirects because the browser detection was windows-centric or because they actually booted people away that were using linux. Glad to see those wonderful days might be making a comeback!

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[dave562]

Not wanting to buy / pirate is a symptom of a larger issue with professional computer users in general. There are those who are willing to pay for tools that will get the job done, and there are those who won't. Those are willing to do so, do so. Those who aren't will constantly seek alternatives and seemingly never learn the adage that, "You get what you pay for."

Some people don't seem to understand that the largest incentive to introduce new technologies is to make money. There is money to be made in making people's lives easier, or allowing people to accomplish tasks. Adobe has Flash. Microsoft has Windows. Neither of them are necessarily the "best" way of doing things. None the less they get the job done to a certain extent.

In the context of HTML5, people are going to have to recreate Flash like functionality. The first few attempts will probably suck or be "feature incomplete". What is the financial incentive to reproduce Flash like functionality in HTML5? In the long term people can save money by not having to use Adobe Flash. In the near to short term, what is the benefit? Who is going to come up with the Flash killer out of the goodness and kindness of their heart?

HTML5 Web Storage API

[tepples]

Including the ability to store super cookies on your computer, so that corporate America can watch over your shoulder?

Yes. HTML5 has its own super cookies. They're supposed to work along with explicit caching to let a web application work offline.

brittle HTML5 implementation

[Dr Herbert West]

Mod parent up! I'm not looking forward to years of brittle HTML5 implementation on every damn "browser of the week" when building apps and games. At least Flash (don't get me wrong, I don't like a lot of its closed implementation either) works the same in all platforms that it runs on-- I develop for kiosks and museum exhibits as well. Why does everyone think implementing an HTML5 standard will result in all the crazy different browsers using it in a standard way?

Flash isn't going anywhere...

[Udigs]

Come on. It's bad enough that we can't get simple block elements to render consistently in all browsers, and how we're going to try to build RIAs in "pure HTML?" Sure, it'll work for video content. Anything more complicated? Let me know how that turns out.

Flash's biggest strength is that the Flash player is responsible for running it and therefore is consistent across all platforms. If you ask me, this is a huge clusterfuck waiting to happen.

I work for Adobe and....

[nickull]

you are right. The way Flash (the swf format only, not the whole platform) was written circa 2003, it wasn't optimized to go to mobile devices. There were some issues and technical hurdles to get around. Some of them were simple (like stopping FP instances that are not in the visible part of the screen) or simply reducing the frame rates of flash applications that are using battery power when they are not in focus). Some required much more thinking such as form fields receiving focus when the tab is hit from an HTML form element above a flash form element). To scale to mobile was a challenge which has been met with the Flash PLayer 10.1. The Google Nexus 1 phone (which I own) does a great job of running the full version of Flash (not Flash Lite). The FP 10.1 has *huge* technical improvements from previous versions Adobe is full on excited about HTML 5 too. There are some really cool possibilities about using HTML 5 features side by side with Flash. Serge Jespers did a great job of showing this on his blog late last week: http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/03/05/the-html5-flash-marriage-geolocation/ The fact is that HTML being updated is not something everyone asked for, but in it's execution, there are some obvious features that I am glad to see such as the Video element. I do share some concerns about how more advanced API's get implemented (such as the document.evaluate(); API) for complex XSLT processing but hope the industry will figure it out. DN " any technology can be used for good or for evil. The only question is how you decide to use your coding time in between " - Gandalf

What to Expect from HTML5?

[CodeBuster]

Probably not much until IE supports it...

Re:What to Expect from HTML5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft consider HTML 5 for next Internet Explorer

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3214535/microsoft-consider-html-5-for-next-internet-explorer/?olo=rss

Re:What to Expect from HTML5?

[stimpleton]

MS (& IE) do not carry the wieght anymore that they did a couple years back. When HTML5 is required for YouTube IE becomes second fiddle. Google decides when the Ax falls.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Draek]

Big guns? who, Chrome with its tiny marketshare and Safari with its even tinier one? the "big guns" of the browser market are either Microsoft and Mozilla, or just Microsoft depending on where do you draw the line, but only through massive levels of delusion could you arrive at the conclusion that Apple and Google are 'big guns' and Mozilla is merely a 'fringe' player.

It's funny and sad at the same time, when Microsoft's "we won't support anything" stance is actually likeable compared to what Apple is doing. They won't support what was originally meant to be the official standard, but at least they aren't trying to replace it with patented technology of their own. Though sadder still is when Adobe, bloated and corrupt Adobe, offers a more compelling alternative than either.

One proprietary format is no better than another

[rxan]

People are still complaining about the lack of Flash on iPhone and iPad. This shows that people can't live without it right now.

Telling people they can't have Flash on the iP* but that they can compile their Flash apps for the iP* doesn't make it any better. Apple could care less if HTML5 replaced Flash. What they really want is more iP*-exclusive apps.

You're mistaking the bully (Apple) for the savior. What was that syndrome called again?

Ay, there's the rub.

[Millennium]

Although HTML5 takes a lot of steps toward being able to provide Flash-like capabilities, it's all done at a very low level: the pieces are all there, but they're not tied together or organized well. Nor, necessarily, should they be: HTML isn't meant for that sort of thing by itself.

A JavaScript library, coupled with a nice builder, could probably fill in the remaining gaps. But both would have to be written, and that would take time (especially for the builder).

Re:Ay, there's the rub.

[NoSleepDemon]

Javascript is probably among the most horrible languages ever created. Trying to create something with the same level of complexity as your average actionscript 3 programmed flash or flex application would be a debugging nightmare.

Re:Ay, there's the rub.

[Millennium]

JavaScript is actually pretty awesome, when implemented correctly. One particularly good implementation out there is called ActionScript.

Re:Ay, there's the rub.

[NoSleepDemon]

that's like saying Assembler is pretty awesome when it's implemented correctly, one particularly good implementation out there is called C++

Re:Ay, there's the rub.

[Millennium]

Actually, no. The problem most people have with JavaScript isn't actually JavaScript itself: it's the DOM. This isn't to say that JavaScript doesn't have its ugly parts, but it's inconsistent DOM implementations that cause most of the problems with most JavaScript coding today.

The reason ActionScript, for example, can work so much more consistently is that it doesn't have to deal with browser DOM implementations: it rolls its own. With the compatibility problem out of the way, the rest of the language is allowed to do what it does best, and it does that pretty darn well.

Flash Player is a cost center

[tepples]

Is Adobe is more excited about HTML5 than Apple?

If Adobe embraces HTML5 technologies that could displace SWF, then I imagine that Adobe considers Flash Player a cost center and wants to shift the player work to browser makers.

Why would HTML5 support the quicktime format and not FLV? both are the same degree of proprietary.

There are different degrees of proprietary. A non-free format published by ISO with a uniform-royalty licensing offer is less proprietary than an unpublished format with no standard license offer.

Re:Flash Player is a cost center

[rident]

Adobe has always been good at dev environments. Good, consistent app interfaces on the design side and supportive IDEs on code side. I have little doubt that Adobe sees this situation and isn't doing what they do best. Creating a great development environment for designing, animating and programming HTML5/CSS3. Microsoft is headed that direction with Expression too. If the standards are going to be open, they'll need to provide the most appealing dev tools instead of the shiniest proprietary codec or plugin.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Nadaka]

It is not significantly worse either. h.264 has a deadline set for when free use ends. That deadline may or may not be pushed back and the royalties may or may not be extortionate. By using Theora, you don't have to worry about that.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/02/royalty-free-codec-still-needed-despite-no-cost-h264-license.ars

And we can expect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet Explorer to implement all the standards-based HTML5 flashy-things features around 2029.

HTML5 canvas tag graph library demo

[VitaminB52]

For a nice demo of what to expect from using then HTML5 CANVAS tag have a look at http://www.rgraph.net/
BTW: there's only limited HTML5 support in IE8, so use a better browser ...

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[broken_chaos]

Apple supports Theora in exactly the same way Firefox (in theory, I think) supports H.264. Plugins.

Download and install the XiphQT components, and HTML5 ogg/vorbis/theora video will play perfectly in Safari. If the installation doesn't seem user-friendly enough to you (involves dragging and dropping to a system folder), I imagine anyone could package up a neater, easier-to-use version if there was motivation.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Sancho]

What's happened is that the fringe players added support for a codec that no one uses, and the big guns realize how pointless that is and have decided not to.

Big guns? who,

Microsoft is obviously a big gun. No argument.

Apple is a big gun these days, too. They push a lot of development due to webkit, which covers almost all of the mobile market, and through their push for HTML5. They very obviously have a lot of clout, both on the standards boards and in browser development. Mobile browser developers follow their lead quite a bit.

Though I'll grant you that their marketshare is lower (Chrome recently pulled into third behind Mozilla and all versions of IE), Apple is most certainly a big player in this market. I'd argue that they have more power over the web that Mozilla does.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Korin43]

The benefit is that it allows the Internet to be used the way it was meant to be: by everyone. No more "you're too poor to make Flash games". Seems like a significant benefit to me.

Flash is a bridge between Design and Programming

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML 5 may well replace Flash for embedded video, drag-drop functionality, and other rich-interface elements. However, the reason for its success for over 13 years is not due to its strengths or weaknesses as a programming tool. It's strength is that it bridges the world of graphic and animation design with programming.

I challenge anyone to name a development tool that can be used by both the programming and design departments of a development team. Ever tried to make timed animation with DHTML?

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[dave562]

I agree that HTML5 provides a benefit for everyone. The question is who is going to develop it? It seems like Google is making a big push for HTML5 so that they can open up YouTube. Others have pointed out that Adobe has the tools to get the job done right now, where as HTML5 is in the slightly advanced vaporware stage.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

Now let's be fair here - Theora isn't that good. It's XviD-standard, so it's, well, it's okay, but in terms of a drop-in replacement for H.264 for Youtube it does not cut the mustard.

And Nokia has asserted it has submarine patents on it, and hasn't actually promised not to enforce them (we'd bitterly hate it if it did, given the involvement it's had in things like Maemo and QT, but still). Given that, and that Apple and Nokia are now competitors, Apple do not want to risk Theora. That's the reason why.

Meanwhile, Google have bought On2. This means they now have the rights to VP7 and, more importantly, VP8 (remember Theora is a slightly-tweaked VP3). VP8 is fast. Very fast. According to what On2 said, it's slightly better than the H.264 profiles, it's scalable at least as well as the SVC extension to H.264, but it's also fast enough to decode in realtime on mobile ARM processors like the A8, A9, and Apple's A4, at screen sizes that count for those devices. It does not need specialised hardware support like H.264 does, but can probably use the pixel shaders on those graphic chips to lighten the load a bit.

What I think we're waiting for is for Google to do a really, really, really exhaustive patent search - essentially, exhaustively listing all possible worldwide submarines and enumerating them, and carefully eliminating anything from any patent troll that may pose any reasonable litigation threat they aren't certain they have prior art for - to create a VP8-derivative or successor that they can unmask as a new open standard for video, that is H.264-class or better, suitable for devices from mobile scale up to 1080p HD and beyond, and patent-free from now until beyond 2015 (after which MPEG-LA will probably start seriously price-gouging H.264 - if YouTube are still using H.264 then, it will probably become uneconomical).

That is what we need. I'm afraid Theora isn't it. Tarkin wasn't either. Dirac's not too bad, but it's not quite there. And H.264, given its patent status, also isn't there; it's a holding position for some parties for now, but only until 2015 at the very latest. Besides, it's a blockfest - it's really not that good. It can be beaten. H.263 was.

As for container, if you're going to be serious, honestly Matroska (.mkv) is much more attractive than Ogg.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not significantly worse either.

Depends on what you call significant. In my personal experience Theora (1.1) needs between two and three times the bitrate (depending on content) of H.264 high profile (using a recent revision of x264) if you use the defaults in both encoders. If you limit the encoder to a single core the x264 encode will take ~30% longer. If you have a multicore CPU x264 will be faster since Theora isn't threaded. With H.264 baseline profile you'll only need between 50% and 100% more bitrate with Theora.

There is a recent comparison that's pretty good with pictures to back up my claims: http://keyj.s2000.ws/?p=356#more-356
You can find criticism in the comments section. It mainly concerns that the x264 settings used were insanely slow and that the Theora 1.2 alpha wasn't tested as well. I heard from people who tested it (doom9 forum) that currently Theora 1.2 often produces worse results than 1.1 since it is still in early stages of development.

h.264 has a deadline set for when free use ends. That deadline may or may not be pushed back and the royalties may or may not be extortionate.

No it doesn't. Every five or so years the MPEG-LA relicenses their whole patent pool, not just H.264. That's not the same as a deadline when free use ends.
It also doesn't really have an effect on private users since for most stuff fees only have to be payed if you do it for profit or distribute more than 100.000 units (encoders and decoders). For instance Youtube probably doesn't pay anything for an H.264 license since they don't meet any of the criteria. Google on the other hand pays licensing fees, probably the 5 million yearly cap, for the decoder the ship with Chrome since the exceed the 100k units. (Yes, I know that Google owns Youtube)

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[aztracker1]

I think a package/zipped format of a self contained unit of work/presentation should be added as well.. so you can do an object/canvas tag, and have a collection/package available with all the resource for the page/app/site in a single zip file... similar to xap and jar files for silverlight and java. Tooling is another huge issue, animators/designers will want something akin to the Flash software or Expression Blend. When these tools become available, we'll start to see more HTML5 actions with canvas, audio and video... The video formats supported will be another issue, I'd like to see chrome and safari add support for ogg+theora even if the quality is slightly better with h.264 -- lastly the understanding of JavaScript as a language needs to advance a bit.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

ahem

[game kid]

*Using video when object with just a mime type and filename _would probably work too_ doesn't break backwards compatibility?

(My brain ate four words, I guess.)

Re:ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. You can put an object into an video tag for fallback.
Example: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[tyrione]

That and Apple is a holder of H.264 and MP4 patents.

MP4 used QuickTime as the foundation for it's existence. Yes, they would obviously hold a patent on MP4. The same for H.264. It's why Apple's name is first on both lists. Anyone who begrudges them for that or implies no less is a fool into thinking they would drop billions of IP value for the Linux zealots. I'm not worried my Debian Sid box is going to feel the pain of not using Theora. Hell, all videos I watch on it are in MP4 via H.264/AAC.

html5-block add-on?

[Fractal Dice]

Given that a flash-blocking addon is pretty much a requirement to make the web readable these days, does this fancy html5 come with an expectation that browsers will give client-users more power to control what craziness sites are allowed to access with all these more intrusive "features"?

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Myopic]

Some people don't seem to understand that the largest incentive to introduce new technologies is to make money.

Call me starry-eyed, but I wish the largest incentive to introduce new technologies were to improve the world for the common benefit of humanity.

But yes, sadly, most of us realize that we live in a world where we choose to have money drive just about everything. Maybe someday we'll choose a different way. Eh, this way ain't so bad.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[rxan]

Apple aren't the only ones who would rather live without Flash. The sheer fact that browser plugins like ClickToFlash, FlashBlock, etc exist show that people are sick of the generally crummy things Flash is used for.

News flash! People hate being bombarded with ads. Flash is a popular method of advertising on the web and for the right reasons. The animation is second to none right now. If you think these problems are going to go away with HTML5, think again. No matter how advanced your technology is, you're still going to have to put up with the crap that people use it for. And with HTML5 the ads will probably be even more difficult to block.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[dave562]

The realization that I eventually came to is that health and happiness are easier to find away from the computer. Although computers do help make some tasks easier, and do improve communication, the reality is that the physical act of sitting in front of the computer (or the television, or the desk at work) are inherently unhealthy activities.

Most computer "technologies" do not directly provide a common benefit. The most benefits are derived from good food, clean water, physical activities and stress free environments. If anything people will reap the most benefit by getting back to the basics, not creating new technologies.

Like you, I'm pretty starry-eyed too. Given the choice between the comfortable allure of a virtual world and the warm glow of a monitor, or physical exertion and the learning curve (and associated aches and pains) of developing competencies with new activities, I understand why some choose the former and fore-go the latter.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[h4rr4r]

Is that plugin free or FREE?
I would rather have a FREE one than a free one.

Here is another one - javascript is like BASIC

[terjeber]

I don't know why this is, but going back to HTML and JavaScript (in its current incarnation) is like going back to text terminals with amber output and developing in BASIC. It is ridiculous.

Adobe at least tried to get JavaScript overhauled but was voted down. Sure they had their own agenda, but JavaScript needs a complete overhaul in a capital way. Capital as in capital offence. It needs to be shot in the head and replaced by something that isn't an offence to software development practices everywhere.

Honestly, any developer suggesting that one should build large LOB enterprise applications using Javascript for ANYTHING should have his position reviewed. Obviously it is the only solution in many cases, but anywhere there are alternative solutions they should ALWAYS be chosen.

Five years down the line when people come to me and ask me to maintain some LOB application written with any amount of JavaScript, generated like in SEAM/Richfaces or written from scratch I will demand higher hourly pay than two Oracle DBAs plus an SAP consultant. LOBs enterprise apps written today to run in Browsers are going to become maintenance nightmares over the next few years.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[terjeber]

Since when did it cost ANYTHING to make a Flash game? Really. Since when? As far as I can see all the tools you need to write anything you want in Flash are free. Have you missed something?

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia has asserted it has submarine patents on it

Link please? That sound like a gross misinterpretation of their letter to W3C...

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you are talking about the MP3 plugin it is free (as in beer) and the source code is available under the MIT license, which is GPL compatible. A similar approach could be used for H.264 and AAC decoders in Mozilla and Opera.

Open source implementations, for instance using the GPL, of H.264 and other codecs aren't illegal or disallowed as many people seem to think. In fact they are readily available and used by different companies who pay the licensing fees (if applicable). For instance Google distributes the FFMpeg H.264 decoder (GPL) with Chrome and has recently started using x264 (GPL) for their video encoding on Youtube. AFAIK they pay licensing fees for Chrome, but not for their Youtube use since the don't use more than 100.000 encoders.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Philip_the_physicist]

Couldn't you base-64 encode images in HTML documents for ages? It's not very efficient to do it that way, but since the documents would then be sent as [X]HTML+gzip, it wouldn't be that unreasonable to use that as the basis for a simple package format. A better way to do it would be to use a gzipped MIME multipart/related document for the entire application (which browsers would probably just unzip and extract into individual temp files and treat almost normally).

I suggest gzip simply because it is commonly used for compressed HTTP, so browsers can already handle it. After all, we want to make things as easy for browser writers to get right, because we all know that certain companies tend to be pretty bad at this sort of thing, and getting a single, easy to use, package format into use quickly is important.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Korin43]

Uh $700 = free? http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/

Lisp with C syntax

[tepples]

Cool, so we get to write LOB applications in BASIC 1985 again. Also known as JavaScript.

What makes you compare JS to BASIC 1985? Others seem to think it's more like Lisp with C syntax, or what Lisp might have been had the M-expressions ever got implemented properly.

The battle is lost, my friend.

[westlake]

Let's not kid ourselves. Apple isn't trying to pull people away from Flash because they're big-hearted. They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content, via the sweet deal with MPEG LA (who owns the H.264 patent) that will keep other players--especially open source software--out of the market.

"Following is a list of licensors of patents included in the AVC Patent Portfolio License:"

Apple.

Followed by - in alphabetical order - about twenty or so of the biggest names in tech.

Fujitsu. Hitachi. Microsoft. Mitsubishi. NTT. Panasonic. Philips. Samsung. Siemens. Sony. Toshiba. You get the idea. AVC/H.264 Licensors

There are 768 corporate licensees for H.264. Heavyweights, damn near all of them.

AVC/H.264 Licensees

Canonical is on board. Japan is on board. China is on board. 3M. HBO. Honeywell. Lockheed Martin. Nikon. Nintendo....

just a sec...

[Anonymous Coward]

inb4 MS screws this standard up!

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Philip_the_physicist]

Codec errors are pretty much a thing of the past, unless you are suffering from software patents. Browser detection is an utter nuisance, but one thing I would like to see in HTML5.1 is a novideo tag, which would act like noscript but is also used if the browser can't handle the codec as well, to allow formatting or a flash alternative, which a mere alt-text can't do.

Would it kill them to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Put conditionals and loops into HTML?? This would relieve us of a lot of javascript and json worries. You know [if value = "postVar = X"]Blah[else]Blah[/else][/if].... etc... And how about deprecating a lot of non standard tags so we can create better tags down the road? You know "checked = 'checked'" and all?

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[Anonymous Coward]

been implicated as the cause of most OS X crashes

A browser plugin crashes the operating system?

Youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

Use this FF add-on http://www.downloadhelper.net/ No flash needed then /happy user

Javascript might be better than most languages

[weston]

JavaScript needs a complete overhaul in a capital way. Capital as in capital offence. It needs to be shot in the head and replaced by something that isn't an offence to software development practices everywhere.

Pray tell, what are these offenses? What, exactly, would you overhaul?

Because after I learned a bit about functional techniques and the prototype model, I'm pretty much convinced that traditional "enterprise" application languages like Java and C++ are by comparison nightmares almost designed largely to multiply hierarchies, bloat code with boilerplate like no tomorrow.

There's a few JS language features I don't like much... having IEEE 754 Double Precision be the sole numeric type, for example, can be a real pain, not much fond of semicolon insertion, it'd be nice if there was a shorter expression for lambdas, and a language-specified construct for loading modules and importing packages. But if you know the language well enough, you can navigate around or manage away *all* those problems effectively and often smoothly. And I'd sure rather have ECMAScript 5 than 4 (heck, 3 would be better).

It's probably the most widely deployed language that's a step above Blub, that's for sure.

Now, if you've got a problem with the browser APIs, complain away. They've been sloppy and inefficient since day one, and they're not improving very rapidly. But that's not really a language issue.

Re:...Now help standardize on non-proprietary code

[ndogg]

They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content, via the sweet deal with MPEG LA (who owns the H.264 patent) that will keep other players--especially open source software--out of the market.

This is so wrong it's not even funny. MPEG LA doesn't own the H.264 patents. MPEG LA is a firm that licenses the patent pool to H.264 and numerous other technologies.

You're right about this.

If Apple really had our best interests at heart, they would be either 1) pushing Ogg Theora as a baseline video standard, or 2) working to release H.264 into the public domain so that everyone can use the arguably "better" codec.

Since Apple owns patents to H.264 I doubt you are going to see them doing either.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

Why are you surprised by this? Apple is a patent holder to H.264. Why would they want to support a video codec that is a rival to a technology in which they hold patents?

These things only prove the point that Apple does not have our best interests at heart.

Developers anywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one to see a slight difference between writing a site in a markup language and implementing a full business application in C# ? This is just ridiculous!!!!!!!

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[terjeber]

Flash is a lot of things. It is a player. It is an SDK. It is a set of tools from Adobe to easily develop ActionScript applications. One such tool is the Flash toolkit you point to above. Another such tool is the Flex tools also sold by Adobe. At the end of the day they are tools to build ActionScript applications though. The SDK is free. You can download it from Adobe. There are tons of tools out in the wild that will make your Flash development easier, some use the free SDK from Adobe, others use other techniques.

The cost of building Flash apps can be exactly what you want it to be. From $0 and up.

So, how exactly is it costly for you to produce Flash apps? Siting the cost of the Flash tool is like saying you can't build C apps for Windows since Visual Studio cost money. Ignoring any alternative doesn't make it correct.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[aztracker1]

I understand this, however my main point is having the content as a package, that can be easily extracted and worked from or updated. Also, expanding a file into a base-64 encoded string, then gzipping the stream won't compress as well as a hard archive of any original media. The main point is to have a single download, and have the benefits of having files in their original format as part of a package. I do think that embedding could work, but what of those resources that you don't need right away, or need multiple instances of rendered to a page (backgrounds on title tags etc). I don't see it as the right solution... a package format where the root file is a .hpk (hypertext package), and has its' own "index.html" which is a start point, you can do ...hpk/index.html or /resource.css or whatever at the end for localized browsing within the resources for the local package. where the package is still rooted to the server in question... it wouldn't take too much to do. Though this is pretty close to what AIR does now.

I'll be happy when Lynx supports HTML5

[pjwhite]

I'll be happy when lynx supports HTML5. Though I'm not sure how well it will work with badger, badger, badger...

Anti-enabler

[Anonymous Coward]

Why enable people using outdated browsers? I would rather see a site switch to HTML5 and give me and error screen with links to browsers that support it than see the developers waste time and money keeping an obsolete site up and running.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, last I checked, Eclipse is free and allows one to make swf files, which are what the user uses when loading Flash content... www.eclipse.org

move on

[raphael75]

Who gives a f--- about old browsers? Do people still make parts for Model T's? Do we still have butter churns? No, we move forward and those who don't upgrade get left in the dust.

Re:Er... standing up? Really?

[gaspar ilom]

The Flex SDK is free.

Re: NO Thank you Apple - Flash on Tegra & Andr

[Anonymous Coward]

PREGNANCY TEST RESULTS FOR ANYONE APPLE HAS SEEDED UN-FACTUAL DATA INTO

http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2010/03/test-results-published-show-flash-is-not-a-cpu-hog-like-apple-claims.html

THE FTC IS WATCHING.

Apple afraid of 3D Interactive Flash NOT VIDEO

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole debate is really about the reasons Apple will have to respond to the Federal Trade Commission complaints the FTC is receiving about Apple using Flash Video to support iPad and yet locking-out Flash.

The real reason Steve Jobs CEO of Apple is locking out Flash is Not Really about Streaming Video (which is already proven in TEST RESULTS to be False).

It's about Interactive 3D Gaming on the iPad and iPhone. And regarding NVIDIA, which Apples Ex-con-exclusive buddy INTEL who is trying the same tactics on NVIDIA that it has been for over a decade to kill the AMD Processor -Choice For Consumer-. This has prompted the US FTC, Japan, China, The State of New York and the EU to file suit against INTEL. EU has already fined them 1.4B for illegal "pay offs" to VARS to not sell AMD processors, this new suit supports NVIDIA for more Choice for Consumers.

Apple is doing what many companies are Tempted to do, but a True CEO of Character does not allow to happen, and that is DON'T ALLOW MONEY and POWER to CHANGE YOUR ETHICS.