Slashdot Mirror


Microsoft Tips the Scale In Favor of HTML 5

aabelro writes "Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, has announced that IE9 will use only the H.264 standard to play HTML 5 video. Microsoft seems to have become very committed to HTML 5, while Flash loses even more ground. The announcement came the same day Steve Jobs detailed why Apple does not accept Flash on iPhone and iPad."

3 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Youtube by self+assembled+struc · · Score: 5, Informative

    using the youtube flash player?

    html5 != no flash

    html5 is just a version of html which supports a video tag just like an image tag. it also supports the object tag. which means flash works in html5.

    the only case where flash isn't going to work is where the operating system or browser does not have a flash plug in.

    safari only supports h.264 in the html5 video tag as well. yet, youtube works just fine in it.

    mozilla only supports ogg in the html5 video tag. yet, youtube works just fine in it.

  2. Re:Goodbye Flash by Animaether · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you just not read the post you replied to, or what?

    This says nothing about abandoning flash, just only allowing H.264 video with a video tag.

    You can still use Flash as long as there will be a Flash plugin for IE9. There's no reason to think there won't be - so go ahead, just use the object tag as you have been.

    The only scale this might tip is the Theora vs h.264 thing as MS announced that as far as the video tag goes, they will only accept h.264 datastreams . Unless this in itself can be extended using plugins, this means a great majority of people who browse the web will be limited to viewing those h.264 datastreams. The significance (closes vs open, etc.) is probably lost on those people, though... so why would Microsoft care to support a second non-industry-backed datastream if there's no push for them to do so.

  3. Re:Only H.264? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dude, you do know that JPEG, GIF, and MP3 are all patent-owned standards too, right?

    The patents on GIF have expired. Baseline JPEG (which is what browsers support) is royalty-free. Closed formats are the exception on the web, not the rule.