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."

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

[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

[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:

[V!NCENT]

PS: make it GPLv3 with the "all you patents are belong to the world" clause and Micorost can either not become compatible with OGG, or surrender their patents. Both would be awesome! =D

Re:

[LordVader717]

Open-source doesn't mean what you think it means.
Specifically, it doesn't really apply to a video compression standard. If nobody could read the H.264 documentation, well then it wouldn't even be a standard.
H.264 is a standard.
It would be "open" if others were allowed to use and expand upon it without having to pay fees.

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

[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?

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:

[shutdown -p now]

It makes sense, but there's one other elephant in the room.

IE market share has been slowly but steadily declining. This comes both from it being deficient to other browsers from users' perspective (UI, and especially performance), but it also comes from it lagging behind on standards support.

Consequently, it's not currently in a position where it can be used to push "de-facto standards" (like ActiveX). And, while it definitely can block adoption of new, standardized tech, such a block would only last for li

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:

[AHuxley]

Apple and MS both recall the Adobe font lock in.
They escaped lock in mess that and want out of flash too.
Apple wants free html5 to lock you in at other levels.
MS wants to replace flash developers needs with in expensive back end lock in.
IE is just the media player and html5 the push, if you want to create, MS has a sliding scale of costly closed solutions for you.
Want to sell online, I am sure MS can bait you with quick low cost start up flash like code and then milk you dry.
The web page is the new de

Not challenging, just asking..

[PopeRatzo]

MS wants to replace flash developers needs with in expensive back end lock in.

Please explain. I'm curious about this. I've heard other people mention it, but I'm not sure to what they are referring.

Thank you.

Re:

[Raffaello]

Makes sense for their bottom line you mean. Hasn't it occurred to anyone that you now have both dominant OS vendors supporting HTML5? Do they both want their proprietary platforms replaced by HTML5 and the net? Are they really that stupid?

Or maybe, just maybe, they know something that naive Web platform advocates don't:

HTML5 will always lag behind native applications in performance and features, and MS and Apple will be sure this is the case in their implementations, so the web platform will be no real thre

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:

[jedidiah]

> 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?

The potential for Apple or Microsoft to abuse the market becomes greatly diminished.

This is why Apple is trying to hide from Flash. Microsoft simply would like to do the same.

An open hardware-neutral standard would be preferable for sure. However, this is not one of the immediately available options.

Of course Microsoft wants to go back to

Re:

[Raffaello]

Because the real power behind a web platform is Google, not Adobe. If necessary, Google will provide an open source implementation of the Flash spec, and everyone will write to that, not to any Adobe-only version.

Apple is betting on its hardware/software integration platforms. It is paid for by consumer dollars - i.e., your money, and wants hardware and software vendor lock in.

Microsoft is betting on its software paltforms. It is paid for by your money. It wants software vendor lock in.

Adobe is betting on a

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:

[mario_grgic]

Except performance problem can be worked around as easily as installing a better browser. Firefox for example. Google who has vested interest in anything web has their own browser as well based on same technology as Apple's Safari. So, this argument doesn't stand to scrutiny too well.

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.

It's a Trap!

[amiga3D]

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

Re:

[6031769]

Past performance would suggest so. However, it's enlightening to note that yet again Microsoft (and Apple for that matter) really hate other people's proprietary monopolies. I'm only really worried about how they're going to ruin HTML5 as a result of this (whether deliberately or accidentally).

Re:

[denis-The-menace]

re:I'm only really worried about how they're going to ruin HTML5 as a result of this (whether deliberately or accidentally).

Just like MS and Netscape did with HTML-extension in the old days. It's the EEE method.

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.

Remember

[Dunbal]

Step 1 is embrace. Look for extend real soon.

Re:

[lwsimon]

I don't think that strategy will work real well these days - it depends on people being willing to adopt your proprietary extensions, and with all the focus on standards compliance in today's world, there will be few who do.

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:

[CondeZer0]

I honestly fear that the only hope for some sanity is if the Supreme Court of the US abolishes the insanity that are software patents [cat-v.org].

What does this have to do with Flash?

[bbqsrc]

Google only allows H.264 video to be played in its browser. It also supports Flash. I understand that supporting <video> is killing Flash, but seriously, they're not mandating the use of HTML5 only like Apple. "Comparing apples and oranges" as they say.

Re:

[Aladrin]

Google only allows it in its own browser because it's the only one that supports it so far. When others support it, they'll open it up for them, too.

Re:

[DrgnDancer]

Neither is Apple, on the Mac. I'd be curious to see what position Microsoft will take for IE on the latest version of WinMo. Jobs made some valid points. It's still arguable that he and Apple should step back and let people hang themselves with mobile Flash if they want to, but he made good points.

Re:

[0racle]

Sites like YouTube use Flash for one reason - to display video. The surge in the last couple of years of video on sites streaming only flv has massively increased the amount of flash on the internet. The HTML5 video tag is a direct competitor to this use of flash - if everyone can agree on a single codec.

Flash for creating highly interactive sites and online games isn't really threatened here, but if there is a cross web platform way to distribute video, especially since it works better, then Adobe can say

Wait, also

[bbqsrc]

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

Re:

[characterZer0]

Check the author.

Re:

[je ne sais quoi]

I think it's kdawson's subtle dig at all those people who bitched and moaned about how hypocritical Apple is for embracing an open standard (HTML5) over a closed one (flash) when their platforms are sometimes closed as well as the software they themselves produce. Somehow I guess we won't see much outrage about MS endorsing html5. They were a little more tactful than Apple was though: they hedged their bets by saying that flash is still useful. But then again, MS actually has a good working relationship

so happy

[roman_mir]

I just had a tear I think, well somewhere on the inside of my mind... :)

finally, finally, man I hate Flash, I want everyone who used flash on their sites to suffer from this decision :) Sorry, just can't control my feelings of happiness right now :)

HTML5, here we go.

Re:

[delinear]

I might share your enthusiasm about the iminent explosion of HTML5 development if I wasn't still supporting MS' decade old IE6. Flash isn't going anywhere until the vast, vast majority of users are using HTML5 capable browsers (and even then it'll still have a place for other uses - a lot of which could be done via HTML5, but when a company already has a bunch of Flash developers and HTML5 still supports the object element, why would they switch at great expense).

Re:

[Nadaka]

Why do you need flash developers to stream bog standard video? It really isn't like you need to rewrite the player for every new stream.

Re:

[Aqualung812]

I wasn't still supporting MS' decade old IE6

The good news is that there is sure to be some worms that will exploit IE6 and maybe after that the corporations will finally move off it it.

So does that mean...

[DrXym]

... Microsoft are ditching Silverlight?

Of course not. I expect it suits them to promote HTML 5 with one hand while still trying to snare people with Silverlight on the other.

I just hope that when they talk HTML5 they actually mean it this time rather than supplying some half arsed implementation which deviates from the spec in significant ways.

Re:

[dingen]

I don't get what they want to achieve with Silverlight. If they truly make IE9 compatible with HTML5 and offer a decent Javascript engine, what will the benefits of Silverlight be? Isn't Microsoft shooting itself in the foot with this?

Re:

[geekoid]

Developers.
MS makes a shit ton of cash from developers, and they would rather get the money over Adobe.

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:

[Bragador]

If you have adblock plus, all you'll have to do is "ban" that video and voila!

Re:

[delinear]

There are plenty of plugins/addons for browsers that do dynamic DOM manipulation - I can't imagine it would be difficult to write a plugin that disabled the video element until/unless required.

Re:

[EzInKy]

In Firefox preferences you can disable loading images, why wouldn't there be an option to do the same with video?

Re:

[Explodicle]

Greasemonkey.

Re:

[markdavis]

I am sure there will be controls in about:config or whatnot to turn off the video tag (at least, I certain HOPE there will be). The bigger problem comes when the site designers start denying OTHER content when you refuse to allow video/animation/sound/etc. This already happens with Flash.... no Flash? No content! Either the site is written being dependent on Flash and they have no non-Flash site, or they autodetect you don't have Flash and pop-up an oh-so-helpful screen telling you were you must downloa

Re:

[Stooshie]

what about autoplay="true". try overriding that in HTML5

Re:Can you turn it off?

[ukyoCE]

about:config ...we can only hope.

Re:

[Nadaka]

again, browser options should be able to control that behavior.

The bright side

[bcmm]

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

Webcam support?

[AHuxley]

With all this html5 love, where is the webcam broadcasting support?
What will all the live streaming sites do allow you to send your HD or almost HD UVC webcam out to the world?
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/ [w3.org]

Apple?

[whisper_jeff]

I understand the submitter added a tidbit about Apple to increase the likelihood of the story making it to the front page but why does a story about Microsoft have an "Apple:" tag? This is a story about Microsoft and HTML5 - take your pick but neither of those is Apple.

And here I thought I was an Apple fanboi...

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.

#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).

Cutting off nose to spite face

[Paul Jakma]

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.

Oh, my understanding is the Mozilla chose not to use any such system. They directly implement Ogg/Theora support (via libtheora) - and so they support nothing else. Chromium uses FFMpeg, which has a wide range of support for video formats.

The Mozilla move to me does not make sense. I gather they're doing it because they want to promot

I need some clarifications about HTML5

[zebslash]

Something I do not understand with HTML 5:

1) Why is the video codec type hardcoded in HTML5? Tight coupling has been known to be bad practice in many engineering problems, especially in programming. Avoiding such pitfalls is the base of object oriented programming, isn't it ? Wouldn't it be more logical to let HTML5 use media codecs availabl from the underlying OS?

2) Even if HTML5 has to define a video codec in their specifications, why Firefox cannot instead create a plugin that would take advantage of cod

Re:

[zebslash]

I'll answer to myself: regarding point 2, we have the opinon of a Mozilla dev against this idea:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_freedom_a.html [mozillazine.org]

Re:

[CelticWhisper]

As I understand it, the codec type isn't hardcoded in the HTML, but it's still up to the browser to implement decoding and playback. This is where the Firefox/h.264 problem comes in - Mozilla has said that they won't implement h.264 decoding in FF because of patent issues. HTML5's video tag acts pretty much like an img tag - it points to the source file for the video but doesn't say a whole lot about what kind of video it is. More information here: http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_video.asp [w3schools.com]

Re:

[Abcd1234]

Why is the video codec type hardcoded in HTML5

It's not. It's no different than the IMG tag. ie, it's just a generic video container element with a well-defined DOM API.

Even if HTML5 has to define a video codec in their specifications, why Firefox cannot instead create a plugin that would take advantage of codecs installed on the system?

Because they're being stubborn and sticking to their lofty ideals, instead of trying to do what's actually best for their userbase (they've attempted to claim technical dif

Teach them a lesson

[tak amalak]

Adobe should just teach them all a lesson and take their apps off Microsoft and Apple's platforms! That will teach em.

Wait...

P* on Apple

[bynick]

Don't you mean, "Why Apple does not allow you to install Flash on your device."? It's not like Apple has to pay to put Flash on the device.. they're prohibiting you from installing it from any provider. It's your device... you should be allowed to do whatever you want to with it. P* on Apple.

Re:Goodbye Flash

[arogier]

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

Re:

[nine-times]

Lots of Flash proponents claim that Flash needs to continue to be used for video on the web because otherwise the system will be fragmented between different different video codecs. If everyone is standardized behind one codec, it takes care of one of the big supposed objections to moving from Flash to HTML5.

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:

[arogier]

Alright, there was some degree of amphiboly in my wording. The meaning intended was that Microsoft is not abandoning flash, but with the HTML 5 video tag it is only allowing the H.264 codec to play.

Re:

[IBBoard]

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.

I wonder how many of those viewers and publishers will be correctly licensed? There have been blog posts from mainstream sites pointing out that some licenses (even for very expensive video editing software) don't actually cover people for everything they think it covers them for in h.264 production and distribution.

IIRC there was even some real stu

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: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:

[metamatic]

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.

Browser vendors should just call the OS-supplied multimedia frameworks.

On OS X you don't need h.264 patent licenses, just call QuickTime. I'm assuming Windows provides h.264 decoder frameworks as well, if not then use QuickTime on Windows. For Linux, there's gstreamer etc.

There is no reason for the browser itself to have h.264 codecs in. That's a

Tipping the balance

[Macka]

The only scale this might tip is the Theora vs h.264 thing

Well not quite just yet, at least not in terms of browser support. It will be 50-50 when IE9 ships. Focusing on the major browsers (they're the only ones that really count) in the Ogg Theora camp we have: Firefox, Chrome and Opera. And in the H.264 camp we (will) have: IE9, Safari and Chrome.

I suspect though that in reality, 1-2 years from now, when you factor in all the mobile devices that will only do hardware accelerated H.264 and the combine

Re:

[dave420]

That was only in the Windows 3.1 beta, and was removed from the final code.

Re:

[jedidiah]

Actually, the ipad/iphone is only about half of the smart phone market and shrinking.

That's based on browser numbers rather than sales numbers. Although if you herd all of the
relevant cats you might find that Android has bigger sales numbers too. It's hard to tell
with all of the media noise generated in favor of Apple.

The phone market has always been a diverse place where people change products nearly at
the drop of a hat. It's almost like a proper free market.

Re:

[NatasRevol]

Guess what? Flash doesn't run on Android right now either (beta only, released *maybe* this year). Or BlackberryOS. That makes up about 90% of the smartphone market.

Either way, it's byebye Flash.

Flash isn't going to disappear -_-

[MasaMuneCyrus]

I keep seeing this argument that the use of HTML 5 and the use of Flash is mutually exclusive. I understand that HTML 5 has video and some basic animation capabilities, but how, exactly, does this spell the end of Flash? Flash is a tremendously useful development platform, and it has many more capabilities than just online video.

Re:

[tepples]

What makes flash so attractive is the environment it uses to create animations.

Then perhaps Adobe should write a vector animation player in JavaScript that targets SVG or Canvas and then instead of exporting your .fla to .swf, export it to a .json file that the JavaScript vector animation player loads.

Re:

[jcupitt65]

Adobe have demoed outputting simple animations has html5 canvas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v69S22ZBBqA [youtube.com]

Re:

[TerranFury]

For this purpose -- vector animation -- Flash honestly is the best thing out there and I'm not sure I want to see it go (though open standard are always good). I think people are more up in arms about Flash video in particular, which is too widespread given that it's both proprietary and a resource hog.

You definitely raise an interesting point though, and I wonder if an OSS project to do what you describe exists. Googling turns up this [inkscape.org] note on the inkscape roadmap which indicates that this is in their lo

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:

[bazorg]

"fugiu-lhe a boca para a verdade", as we say in Portugal :D

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

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.

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 [xiph.org]).

And, yes, I know defaults are powerful things.

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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

As someone else noted, Safari on OS X supports anything installed in Quicktime as I think Firefox should. I already had a Theora codec installed so when Apple updated Safari to do HTML5, Theora "just worked".

I understand the mindset at Mozilla. They are focused on being the same on every different computer a user has, regardless of that computer's capabilities. This is an understandable goal, but also what drives me away from Firefox. They don't take advantage of cool and very useful features of an OS, bec

Re:

[westlake]

Microsoft won't allow third-party codecs and/or plugins to do the job for them?

There are 811 licensees of AVC/H.264 video. [mpegla.com]

The global giants in brand-name consumer hardware production and distribution are all there.

Canonical is there.

If Shuttleworth decides Ubuntu needs H.264 to remain competitive on the desktop, the barrier to installing the codec by default is purely ideological.

Re:

[jedidiah]

> If Shuttleworth decides Ubuntu needs H.264 to remain competitive on the desktop, the barrier to installing the codec by default is purely ideological.

Since Ubuntu has a proper package manager, the default "barrier" is highly artificial.

The first time you try to play a file with h264,the video player will sort everything out for you.

It could also install the video player itself for you too. It doesn't have to be there.

It's all automated quite nicely thanks to the Debian goodness that's under the covers.

Re:

[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.

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:

[Yvan256]

Can someone give this guy over 9000 insightful and informative points?

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:

[dzfoo]

The GIF patent expired within the last decade. It was in full force during the 1990s, and yet the WWW survived.

      -dZ.

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 [open-encyclopedia.com]:

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.

Re:

[mzs]

Do you understand that unisys charged for creating compressed gifs not viewing them? See how even when they started charging for open source compressors Navigator and IE could get away without paying? This is very different in the h.264 case. Right now there are all sorts of exceptions that allow people to create, serve, and view royalty free. It could potentially survive if only royalties needed to be paid for creating. It could also survive if source code were not permitted to be distributed, though what

Re:

[tomhudson]

unisys only went after the programs that produced gifs. mpeg-la wants/requires end-user equipment and software to be licensed.

Re:

[nine-times]

Yes, there's a difference between a "closed standard" and a "patent encumbered standard". H264 is an open standard brought to you by MPEG, the same group that gave you MPEG video and MP3 audio.

All of this stuff has patents on it. The question is, how are those patents being enforced?

Re:

[Stooshie]

Flash hasn't been like that for years. You think every browser is going to implement HTML5/JS in the same way? Are you going to have to write different code for each browser. Flash/Flex allows you to do that and create a desktop app with the same functionality for very little extra work.