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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.'"
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.
You can expect inconsistent implementations; same as it ever was.
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.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Getting mentioned next to Flash in all of these "End of..." articles.
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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'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.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
And here is what to expect from an InfoWorld article - very little substance littered over at least 5 pages soaked with advertisements.
I wouldn't say learning is the problem, not wanting to buy or pirate Adobe products is the issue.
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.
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?
however I would assert that
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intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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.
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.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
its not really that much of a problem to read
(please click the next comment in this series for our exciting conclusion)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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!)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
doesn't that make Flash a great HTML 5 editor?
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?
That and Apple is a holder of H.264 and MP4 patents.
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!
Everything will be taken away from you.
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?
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?
Probably not much until IE supports it...
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
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"?
Uh $700 = free? http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/
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.
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.
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