HTML5, the new version of HTML, is gaining a lot of traction. It’s being pushed by the most powerful internet companies in the world, namely Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. One aspect that leaves me saying “It’s about time!” is the video tag.
HTML5 Video is aiming to do away with 3rd party plugins like Adobe’s Flash and make online videos an actual page element that can be read by the browser itself, just like images. I recently gave a presentation at BarCamp Nashville about the basics of online video and wanted to share some key points with you here:
- HTML5 Video can be controlled and skinned easily by using JavaScript and CSS.
- There are currently 3 major codecs that you have to use to be cross-browser compatible: OGG, MP4, and WebM.
- To make it compatible with IE 8 and below, you need a fallback method that uses Flash.
- If Apple will stop being childish and do what’s best for the growth of online development by supporting the WebM codec, the adoption of HTML5 video will be huge.
If you want to learn more about HTML5′s video tag, take a look at the slides from my presentation here.
