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."

Comments

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

for once microsoft do something that makes sense. Though it would be nice to have support for an open video standard...

Re:wow

[delinear]

for once microsoft do something that makes sense. Though it would be nice to have support for an open video standard...

Or, to look at it another way, Microsoft stay true to form and support proprietary standards which put open source competition at a disadvantage...

Re:wow

[cowscows]

Performance aside, why would anyone want there to be a dominate web platform that's controlled by a single company, unless you happen to work for that single company?

Flash has basically been, for the past 5+ years at least, the Windows of interactive/animated/etc. web content. It's a platform that was in the right place at the right time, and was just barely good enough to become a major standard. All this despite the fact that everyone is constantly complaining about how much it sucks, and nobody likes it. And there's not much anybody can do to truly fix it, except for Adobe, and it's taken them years to get it to work decently on any mobile device.

Seriously, does anybody besides Adobe want Flash to become the dominate platform for anything other than little browser games? Sure, Apple and MS are fighting against it for self-interested reasons, but those reasons seem to align rather nicely with what is good for the internet as a whole, which is to have as much be open standards as is possible.

Re:wow

[slimjim8094]

H.264 is perfectly open-source, but patent encumbered. There's a tremendous difference. You do yourself a disservice to confuse the two.

What you're describing would be true if they supported only WMV, but absolutely false for h264.

Re:wow

[ink]

All this despite the fact that everyone is constantly complaining about how much it sucks, and nobody likes it.

That's not entirely true. Graphic designers generally LOVE Flash because of the Flash builder, Illustrator, Photoshop and the rest of Adobe's creative suite. There aren't any tools that I know of that put that kind of artistic power in hands of non-techies. CS5 does target HTML5, but it does so by using the canvas tag and a lot of JavaScript -- not by outputting "native" HTML5.

This is also what puzzled me about Jobs' claims yesterday that the iAds were all done only in HTML5. I know many advertising content creators; not many could pound out raw HTML5 that would be as impressive as the demos for iPhone OS4's ads.

In order to kill Flash, someone will need to come out with a vector-timeline-tweening GUI builder that doesn't require the developer to touch JavaScript. Perhaps Adobe will do this with Dreamweaver, or maybe Apple will release an "XCode for artists" at some point. Until then, however, don't expect Flash to disappear.

Re:wow

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect a different motivation: Silverlight.

Using Flash as a video player is, by a fair margin, the most trivially replaced function that isn't addressed by pre-HTML5 web standards(stupid shit like Flash based menus and random site chrome is, of course, even easier to replace; because it could have been done in standard HTML+javascript ages ago; but that is largely a lost cause). However, that (quite simple) function is also a huge driver of Flash installation. Basically, if you want to watch video on the web, you need to install Flash. Once you have flash, you bolster Adobe's install base stats, serve as a target for much more sophisticated Flash-based applications, and bolster Adobe's efforts(through AIR) and similar to have a quasi-unified webapp/desktop-app runtime based on Flash and their various content creation tools.

Microsoft has its own, competing quasi-unifed webapp/desktop-app runtime, based on .net, winforms, and the like. Unlike AIR, it much more closely ties the user to Microsoft, and Microsoft platforms and technologies. Therefore, they want to destroy AIR and Flash.

By indicating support for HTML5, which will support the relatively trivial video use cases(youtube style stuff, without Serious DRM mandated by paranoid content providers), they substantially reduce the motivation of users to download Flash and corporate IT departments to install and support it. Since Silverlight comes by default in newer MS OSes, they get increased marketshare vs. Flash/AIR.

Since HTML5 makes possible advanced web applications, but still lags in easy tools vs. Flash or Silverlight(which won't stop Google and their ilk; but will stop Joe Flash Monkey, or Bob corporate intranet developer), HTML5 can be safely supported without destroying Silverlight.

That is my theory. Yeah, h.246 as the html5 video codec of choice puts mozilla in a tough spot; but it isn't as though there won't be some workaround(patent violating 3rd party builds, plugin that exposes system codecs, whatever.) in short order. It isn't good; but it isn't a huge threat. I'd say that this is about kicking Adobe while Apple is already holding them down...

Re:wow

[Raffaello]

1. This places an additional burden on open source browsers to keep pace with the underlying platform WRT performance. History shows they will likely lag significantly.

2. This doesn't address features at all. Both Apple and MS will make sure that the HTML5 spec is always significantly less featureful than the native application platforms.

The result will be that the highest quality applications will need to be written to native platforms, not an OS neutral web platform. This means hardware and/or software vendor lock in, which is just what Apple and MS want.

This is Java all over again. MS embraced and extended it. They paid a billion in damages for doing so, but it was money well spent to cripple a potentially game changing, OS neutral platform.

Apple claimed to be the best Java platform bar none. You could even write native cocoa apps in java. Then, when Apple had leveraged their "open standards" act to attract enough developer mind share, they began systematically treating Java as a second class citizen. Launch a java app and get a frightening warning:

  "! The application SuchAndSuch is requesting access to your computer"

You don't get this kind of warning running a native app of course.

And now you can't write cocoa apps using java anymore either. What a surprise.

MS Does embrace and extend. Apple does embrace and marginalize. Same end result.

Apple and MS are not your friend - they want your money. Google is not your friend either, but at least they don't want your money - they want advertisers' money. The lesser of two evils.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think "you can look at the source but you need to pay us to use it" is any kind of open-source license since it restricts end-use even though it doesn't hinder distribution. OSI licenses typically include "you grant a worldwide royalty-free non-exclusive license" clause for that reason.

If you meant an open standard with open documentation, and open working group, you shouldn't do us a disservice and confuse the two. They can openly write as many patents, licence fees and international trade restrictions as they want, they do that to avoid members backstabbing each other through selective communication, and to stand together to strengthen the patent position.

Re:wow

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually SWF is open as well since 2008. So there are 3 open standards being discussed here. The key question is how many organizations are in charge and what patent royalties do they leverage, not how open it is. Arguably h.264 is far less proprietary than Theora, as it's a collaborative work of many different companies working as part of well recognized international standards committees, as opposed to Ogg which is controlled entirely by Xiph.

Re:wow

[somersault]

I kinda see this as an advantage - Google could simply serve up Youtube videos in OGG Theora format only, and if you try to visit it in IE9 it could say "we're sorry, your browser doesn't seem to properly support web standards, try one of these instead.."

Re:wow

[amn108]

Little use having "open" SWF, when there is one ubiquitous player called Adobe Flash Player which defines the format, as in "an SWF is valid if it plays in Flash Player" as opposed to "an SWF is valid if it conforms to specification". Which is further supported by Adobe specifying that one can indeed develop SWF players, as long as these are "compatible" with whatever behavior the Flash Player exhibits towards these same SWF files.

But since Flash Player itself is not open source, there is a great amount of frustration in getting to know exactly what behavior constitutes the right one for a playing SWF.

Do you get it?

It's a Trap!

[amiga3D]

I can't help myself. I had to do it.

Re:It's a Trap!

[camperdave]

It's a Trap!

Yes! It's step one in Microsoft's basic business plan:

1. Embrace
2. Extend
3. Extinguish
4. Profit!

So, the key is to anticipate how Microsoft might extend the protocol, and "head them off at the pass" by releasing Open Source variations as soon as possible.

Although, I suppose it's possible that Microsoft has learned the danger of becoming the defacto standard with shoddy products through its attempts to kill off XP and IE6... but I doubt it.

Re:Goodbye Flash

[arogier]

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

Unsurprising

[whisking]

It is quite unsurprising they will support only h.264. They are a licensor in the h.264 patent pool (just like Apple) so it does not cost them anything and they actually get money when somebody licenses it, so it makes sense to endorse its use. If something else (theora, vp8,...) will actually win the html5 video format war, they can always add the support later. Obviously I am joking about this part :)

Re:Youtube

[self assembled struc]

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.

Wait, also

[bbqsrc]

Why the fuck is this categorised as Apple? It can't have less to do with Apple. Seriously.

Can you turn it off?

[lfp98]

The major advantage of Flash is that you can choose NOT to install it. With HTML5 decoding built into the browsers, are we all doomed to watch whirlygigs everywhere, all day long?

Re:Can you turn it off?

[bemymonkey]

Javascript is built into the browser, yet we have no problems turning that off, do we? :)

Re:Can you turn it off?

[ukyoCE]

about:config ...we can only hope.

The bright side

[bcmm]

The bright side is that this codec idiocy might actually get people interested in fixing software patents.

Re:Goodbye Flash

[Animaether]

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.

Re:Youtube

[YA_Python_dev]

You're almost completely correct, but:

safari only supports h.264 in the html5 video tag

Safari supports whatever codec happens to be installed. By default Apple installs H.264 and not Theora (which is still available separately).

And, yes, I know defaults are powerful things.

Re:Only H.264?

[dzfoo]

Dude, you do know that JPEG, GIF, and MP3 are all patent-owned standards too, right? Funny that they are all supported by browsers and are rather de facto standards in the "proprietary web".

      -dZ.

Follow the money before you rejoice

[c0d3g33k]

This move is as self-serving as ever, so be careful what you wish for as the Flash hate clouds your mind.

1. Microsoft doesn't control Adobe and I'm sure that bothers them. It sure as hell bothers Steve Jobs. So why not take them out while they are vulnerable?
2. Microsoft is part of the H.264 patent pool, so they will make money when the licensing bombs go off. Killing off a competitor (flash) so users and content providers have few alternatives and must pay up puts them right where Microsoft wants them.
3. Once flash is gone (or has greatly diminished influence/relevance), Microsoft is free to tweak things in a way that suits them better. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
4. HTML5 video has no established standard DRM solution which content owners crave. Flash does, so it's hard to get content owners on board with Microsoft's agenda at present. I suspect that Microsoft has something in the works to offer them, which will conveniently be exclusive to Microsoft controlled platforms, or licensable to those who play nice (Apple). Sorry Android (and Linux).

This makes me very nervous.

Huh?

[mister_playboy]

Given the amount of time it has taken for the Gimp to become a strong competitor to Photoshop...

Are you from the future? I'm a GIMP myself, but come on...

Re:Huh?

[mister_playboy]

I'm a GIMP user myself

Damnit... :P

Re:Only H.264?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Goodbye Flash

[binarylarry]

Increasing Silverlight's market share is what this is about.

Basically, Microsoft is going to embrace HTML5 and use it to hurt Flash, it'll then start to phase HTML5 support out once Flash's market share starts to take a large enough hit and talk about how HTML5 doesn't have enough support or doesn't "have all the features our users demand," then it will start to pimp Silverlight, integrated it with the next Xbox and so forth and remove "upgrade" all the devs to their Expression platform for developing Silverlight apps.

#include standard /. HTML5 video corrections

[Paul Jakma]

• HTML5 != video codec

  That is to say, HTML5 is a way to embed video into web pages, along with controls. HTML5 doesn't say anything about the video codec that should be used, similar to how the IMG tag doesn't say what kinds of image formats are supported. Further, the videos that are loaded will almost certainly be in some container format, like Ogg, MP4, AVI, etc.. - not in raw codec data form.

  If the underlying system has a general media decoding system, and if the browser uses that, then the browser will support any kind of media supported by that underlying system.

• HTML5 is open

  It's an openly specified W3 standard. As a means to embed video into webpages, HTML5 video is much better than using the object tag to suck in a proprietary blob to then suck in the video.

• The H.264 codec is openly specified.

  H.264 is openly specified in standards drawn up by the MPEG and published by ISO. There are free software implementations of H.264. H.264 rather is encumbered by patents, the licensing for many of which is administered by the MPEG-LA. The patent situation is what things difficult for distributors/users, there is no lack of standards.

  Note that flash players often use H.263 and H.264 codec videos, and so have all the same patent issues for free software implementations (in addition to the problem of Flash not being fully documented, and not having any complete free implementations).

Re:Goodbye Flash

[javilon]

It is clear that the move is not against Flash, the Flash plugin will always be there.

It is a preemptive move against Google's VP8 in particular and open source in general. Basically they are creating a problem for Firefox (which has stated that they won't support H.264) and trying to stop Google's VP8 before it can be successful.

Re:Only H.264?

[tomhudson]

you do know that JPEG, GIF, and MP3 are all patent-owned standards too, right? Funny that they are all supported by browsers and are rather de facto standards in the "proprietary web".

You really need to do your research.

The GIF patent is long expired. Turn in your geek card - everyone who knows pretty much anything about the patent wars knows that. That alone shows you're talking trash.

Or you could try again. For example, show where the licensing authority says it's okay to make an open-source free version. Oh, you can't - because they refused!

Re:Goodbye Flash

[CondeZer0]

> It is a preemptive move against Google's VP8 in particular and open source in general. Basically they are creating a problem for Firefox (which has stated that they won't support H.264) and trying to stop Google's VP8 before it can be successful.

They are also creating a problem for Opera, Linux distributions, and other minor browser vendors that can't afford the hefty license fees or the risk of being sued.

And most importantly, it creates problems for content producers and distributors that are forced to use a format with a license that could change any moment the patent holders feel like it. People keeps saying that you are not charged for serving H.264 on the web, but that is now, and this could change any moment and anyone building a business knows that kind of uncertainty is a *big* problem.

Re:Only H.264?

[tomhudson]

Once Unisys found out that GIFs used their patented LZW algorithm, they DID require payments from companies producing software that generated GIFs:

The LZW compression algorithm on which GIF is based, was covered by a U.S. patent 4,558,302 owned by Unisys. When Compuserve first developed the GIF they did not know that LZW was covered by a patent.

Before 1994, Unisys was not aware that GIF used LZW. In December 1994, after Unisys discovered that GIF used the LZW, they announced that they would be seeking royalties on that patent; all commercial programs capable of producing GIF files would be required to pay a license fee to Unisys.

By this time, GIF was in such widespread use that most companies producing these programs had little choice but to pay. The desire for a format with fewer legal restrictions (as well as fewer technical restrictions such as the number of colours) led to the development of the PNG format, which has become the third common image format on the Web.

In late August 1999, Unisys terminated its royalty-free LZW technology licenses for free software and non-commercial proprietary software and even for individual users of unlicensed programs, prompting the League for Programming Freedom to launch the Burn All GIFs campaign to inform the public of the alternatives.

On June 20, 2003, the United States patent on the LZW algorithm expired, which means that Unisys and Compuserve can no longer collect royalties for use of the GIF format in that country. Those bothered with the patent enforcement dubbed this day GIF Liberation Day. The equivalent patents in Europe and Japan expired on June 18 and June 20 2004 respectively, with the Canada patent following on July 7.

So, "someone's gonna pay."

The owners of h.264 have already said they won't allow an open-source implementation that is freely downloadable without respect to the number of end users. Once you pass "n" users, you HAVE to pay the licensing fees. Also, since you can't pass along a copy of the software to other users, it's not compatible with either the GPL or the BSD licenses.

So your "point" actually backs up mine. Have a nice day.