Adobe Releases Its Own HTML5 Video Player

An anonymous reader writes "Webmonkey has an interesting tidbit about Adobe's release of its own HTML5 video player: 'Adobe has released an embeddable video player that plays HTML5 native video in browsers that support it, and falls back to Flash in browsers that don't. It's cross-browser and cross-platform, so it works on iPhones, iPads and other devices that don't support Flash. Using Adobe's new player, these devices can show videos in web pages without the Flash plug-in.'"

Comments

Where is it?

[paul248]

So does anyone have an actual link to an example of the player? That seems like a rather blatant omission from the article.

Superb !!

[Ynot_82]

A browser plugin designed to play embedded HTML5 video
HTML5 video, whose selling point is to provide video without the need for a browser plugin

I think this just about tops MS and their opaque-binary embedded XML

Re:Superb !!

[Abcd1234]

Huh? The selling point is that you can break away from a proprietary format. HTML5 is about openness, not freedom from plugins.

Re:Superb !!

[omfgnosis]

You can do both without any library. The markup for HTML5 video with Flash as a fallback is, basically, a video tag wrapping source and object tags, and the object tag wrapping an embed tag. The markup for Flash with HTML5 video as a fallback is to simply move the object tag to the top of the hierarchy and the video tag within it. The relevant part of the HTML5 spec was designed *specifically* to make this possible, and it has been possible ever since the first browser with video-tag capability was released. No Adobe library (borrowed though it is) is necessary to achieve this.

With all of that said, I can't imagine why you'd want to use Flash at the top of the hierarchy unless you're a sadist. Flash has more wrong with it than the fact that it's not open and requires a plugin.

Re:So...

[blackraven14250]

I don't think they're gonna let you compile it yourself...

But why?

[mr100percent]

I don't understand how this makes tactical sense for Adobe. They've been leaning heavily on their talking points that "80% of online video is in Flash format" and that Apple is depriving their customers by sticking with HTML5 (and not flash). I think there was even a fear that Adobe would jump into the working group and delay HTML5 just to protect Flash. If Adobe is supposedly king of the hill, why would they cede turf by moving towards HTML5? It can't be just to be more buzzword-compliant.

Great. And Flash continues to be a plague

[rta]

This is good an all, but it doesn't address the biggest issues with Flash:

1) Adobe (and Macromedia before it) give virtually NO control to the end user over how flash objects run. You can't stop them, you can't pause them, you can't unload them, nothing. Technically you can control if they store local shared objects (LSOs) on your machine but the interface for that is terrible. Half the time the pop-up window it prompts with can't even be accessed because of various z-index issues on the page. That is you can't even click the button.

2) It is a CPU hog. Forget the fact that its inherent performance isn't great. The issue is that if you browse the web for any length of time and have multiple tabs open you'll find that your Flash plug-in is taking up all your cpu (or a whole core). Why? because there are all sorts of little flash movies playing in all the pages. Mostly Ads but also paused video players, random web bugs and such. Plus, some of these random are poorly written and have memory leaks. Thus BECAUSE Adobe gives the user no control, you have to just kill the plugin.

Instead of trying to horn in on HTML5 maybe they should fix the fact that Flash is the SPAM of the web. (And yes, Flash itself could be fine... but the business practices they've chose to pursue make it a scourge rather than a blessing).

Slashdot: so dense it causes singularities

[notsoclever]

Nearly everyone seems to be missing the point to this. It's not something the user installs, it's something that content providers use to provide their video on the server side. This is a GOOD THING - it makes it much easier for websites to transition to HTML5 without alienating users who don't have HTML5-capable browsers.

Re:Great. And Flash continues to be a plague

[NatasRevol]

I think his point is - fix the product you have, rather than create something new.

Lesson learned

[lavagolemking]

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I should have known Adobe wasn't really going to embed videos without requiring viewers to install proprietary plugins. After all, people wouldn't have any reason to use Flash anymore if they did.