My company's website embeds videos, currently hosted on youtube. But due to the fact that as of recently, youtube inserts a channel icon into the embed, I will be moving the videos to either another platform, or will use HTML5 video.
I'm not crazy about one aspect or another of various platforms, except a very expensive one (Wistia).
So I'm looking into HTML5, and have a couple of questions. First, in almost 2019, would I still need multiple formats? The audience is non-technical, largely upscale, and would likely be using Chrome, IE, Firefox, Sarafi or Edge.
This has been asked before, but nowadays do you think I'm safe using only MP4? And if so, any thoughts about ongoing browser support for H.264?
Thanks! Steve
Use HTML5.
<video> tag is supported in all major browsers and it looks like MP4 is supported as well. (check it out here)
Related
I never thought, I'd have to ask THIS question:
Is there a cross-browser way to play background MIDI files in a website without the need for a plugin?
(Now, please don't answer with "don't do it! it's annoying as hell!". It's for a kids-page and they love this stuff... And I will give the option to turn it on or off...)
I've found several approaches, each with their own problems:
<bgsound ...>-tag: IE only; must be careful not to use with other tag that IE might interpret also
<embed ...>-tag: Doesn't work in Chrome. Firefox requires a plugin, which it can't even install automatically...
<object ...>-tag: Chrome and Firefox require a plugin. Both suggest QuickTime, but neither installs it correctly...
<audio ...>-tag: Requires HTML 5; also not sure if it supports MIDI across browsers...
use a Java applet: Not available everywhere, and seems like overkill
Is there some way to make this work across browsers (minimum: current Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE6+, Android, iOS) without requiring any plugins? Probably some clever mix of all the tags listed above?
I am really surprised that this seems to be so difficult. Is MIDI deprecated? Or background-audio in websites in general?
Why not HTML 5 Audio. After all it is supported in all latest browsers. ( Firefox/Opera can have problem with H.264 files ). And in case of Mobile browsers it should more better choice.
One option you may want to pursue is SoundManager2. An audio project based on JavaScript. I use it in many of my web projects and so far it seems goood. Requires a little bit of a learning curve, but the API is very rich and clear and how to install it and use it for various situations.
http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/
By building a JavaScript package for audio within your web site, you won't have to worry about additional plug-ins that front-end users may need to have for their machines. It works with old and new browsers, MIDI files, MP3's and more.
I've been using flash video for embedded videos on my site. My old 2.2.x android plays them fine but I'm noticing a lot of new android devices as well as apple devices will not play my videos because flashplayer is fading, so I'm investigating the solution - and HTML5 video seems to be the new thing.
I've just spent 2 hours searching google and read a lot of stuff but most of it is from 1, 2, or 3 years ago -- and judging from what I've read it looks like using the html5 video tag still requires each video to be converted to multiple formats, and full screen is some sort of vendor specific extension -- different on each browser which happens to support it.
So my question is whether HTML5 video tag is a full replacement for the flash player now, or is it still a kludgiferous scheme requiring browser specific hacks for half a dozen most popular browsers -- in 2013?
Does it work on PC's, Macs, Androids, and iPhones?
caniuse.com is a great resource for pretty good data to answer this question.
As of now...
~92% of web users' browsers support the HTML video tag. The main one that doesn't is Opera Mini (about 4.5%). For those users, you can use a Flash fallback, which is actually not too much work. There are a handful of very simple solutions that will handle this for you, like videoJS, jPlayer and JWPlayer.
For now, you do need to encode in two, possibly three formats. About 92% of users support MPEG-4/h.264. Opera Mini and IE8 do not support it.
Only about 71% of users can support full-screen HTML video, so for Android and iOS (mainly), all versions, the best you can do is set the video to fill 100% of the browser window. If full-screen is that important, then you'll want to use Flash.
So, in short, yes, HTML5 video does require a little extra work, but at this point, it's not that hard to get right, and it's a standard that's moving in the direction of better stability and uniformity. YouTube, for example, uses it (with fallbacks), if that's any indication that it's ready for prime time.
I have a HTML5 video, working fine, and i'm happily smiling whenever i start my browser... However!
I know the Video tag isnt supported by some browsers, but i noticed there is a difference in support for video attributes/methods/whatever too. Is there a summary of this somewhere?
For example:
The poster attribute doesnt work in every browser, even if the vide DOES work!
I think its pretty worthless to just use an entire javascript library to take care of one attribute like poster, so how to take care of this?
Or am i completely wrong, and is IF video is supported, also every attribute supported the same way?
Please help me! :)
Thanks for all your advice,
WK
ps: I am using the video for everybody variant of the video. So thats working fine.
Is this the kind of thing your after?? click me.
Basically there is the following support for the HTML5 video tag:
Every modern browser that has support for HTML 5 supports <video>
meaning: IE9+, FF3.6+, Chrome, Opera, Safari
Internet Explorer 9 does not support the poster attribute. I believe
there is even a bug about this on Microsoft connect.
Firefox does not support the loop attribute. (replaying a video after it has finished)
Different browsers support different video formats, IE9 supports
H.264, Firefox supports ogg (Theora) and WebM etc, which means that you would need to provide all formats in order to be compatible with all browsers.
The rest is pretty much supported everywhere.
well, HTML 5 is not yet standardized. Due to this, every browser that support html5 works differently. As far video tag is concerned then you have to provide with different formats so as to get support on various browser list. You can test browser support on this site. Here you can get all the details about the extent your browser support to HTML5
I find this page a good resource (although it is starting to get old as it was earlier this year): http://www.longtailvideo.com/html5
On a separate note, I find if you go to mobile devices such as Android the browser support varies greatly per device. Even though they are "supported" I always get strange behavior.
As for poster, there is no good solution if you want to have support across all browsers.
Features of HTML5 are no doubt very compelling but is it a good time to start development in HTML5 ?
I just have started development in HTML5 and realized at the time even not all HTML5 input types are supported by all browsers. It means it is not sure about basic stuff like input forms.
Please share how you are managing these things ? (Using HTML5 code with browsers currently supporting HTML5)
HTML 5 is still under development so you've got to be careful. Certain features, such as the more basic ones like <header> and <footer>, are less likely to change before the final release. The doctype decleration is unlikely to change. I wouldn't rely on the multimedia support as supported formats vary widely accross browsers.
The momentum behind HTML5 is strong and it is indeed a good time to get started if you have not already.
At the lowest level, you would need to write feature detection in your pages to see if the particular browser supports the HTML5 feature that you want to use.
I suggest the following:
Use sites like caniuse.com to determine the current support for a particular feature across browsers.
Use templates like HTML5 Boilerplate, which give you a structure for the HTML5 page that you can use , with support for various shims that bring in support for HTML5 features in older browsers.
If you prefer doing the detection yourself, use a library like Modernizr.
As with all cross-browser development, you can never rely on any support in the browser. If you target older browsers, then do not rely on HTML5 features. I haven't had problems with using the HTML5 doctype in older browsers, but specific features can be troublesome — e.g. you can use <header> elements, but IE won't let you style them in any way as it disregards header styles as invalid.
As long as you need to support old enough browsers, it will never be a good time to start using HTML5. The only thing that decides whether it's okay to use HTML5 is which browsers you want to support.
HTML5 is much easier then previous ones, It has developed allot in input fields, though its still under development and not complete yet.
You can check here http://html5test.com/ which browser supports HTML5 how much?
Currently, Chrome is the best that supports the HTML5 more than any other web browser.
-Thanks.
Take a look at the table in this wikipedia article. There is a lot of variability amongst browsers as to which parts of HTML5 are currently supported. This website tests your web browser to see which features it supports, so install a bunch of different browsers on your computer and test them for yourself.
If you had to choose a browser (just one) to be the primarily supported browser for a company jumping into HTML5 (CSS3).. Which one would be your safest bet on the middle-long term?
Chrome, FireFox, Safari, IE?
I'm looking for an objective recommendation based on standards driven/compliant, developer tools, fast & correct feature implementations, memory footprint, etc.
UserBase/MarketShare would not be an issue because it would be on a closed environment in which we control the clients (which are basically big machines with a Web interface).
Thanks!
I would say a webkit based browser. That would be the best balance of speed/stability and HTML5/CSS3 features.
However I believe that Opera has the most implemented features.
Opera has always been in the lead, but they've also always had weird bugs. Right now, Chrome is in an interesting position: Google just bought an internet video protocol company (On2), and so they have the power to end the H.264 vs. Ogg Theora battle by releasing this great new codec they've bought as open source.
HTML5 itself isn't anything new: it's just new elements that display differently. Think of it like this: if HTML5 was the first to introduce the <blink> tag, developers would be a little iffy about it because you can just use CSS to set text-decoration:blink or use some Javascript to make the blinking happen.
With HTML5, things aren't that different. Most of the new elements are just extensions of <div>. For the ones that aren't (<video>, <audio>, <canvas>, etc.), there are either already strong implementations (pretty much across the board) or the implementations as complete as the HTML5 spec is.
Will there be a best browser for HTML5? Probably not. It's all just a matter of how the browsers position themselves (like I mentioned with Chrome above).
If you control the environment I would say pick one based on that has features your app can exploit to make your job easier. Otherwise, lower-common-denominator is a widely used approach for a small team.
I would say Gecko (firefox and friends) or webkit (safari, chrome and friends). I wouldn't go with IE nor Opera. Here is a HTML5/CSS3 comparison table that pretty much supports my views.
Safari’s pushing CSS animations and transitions, if they’re a big draw for you.
If you want to make a HTML5 app/site that focuses on one browser, then you might as well use HTML 4 and JavaScript. For the next many many years most HTML5 sites will have to function in non-HTML5 mode.
See HTML5 features as glacing on the cake, to add benefits to the browsers that can take advantage of it.
All the modern versions of browser support HTML 5. But recently launched internet explorer 9 specifically designed by keeping in mind future web technology needs and incorporated latest features that give rich and interactive web experience. Latest browser Internet explorer 9 has more support for Cascading Style Sheet than previous versions of Microsoft browser. It supports CSS3 and more emerging SVG2 markup standards. IE 9 includes new java script engine that designed to take advantage of multi core processor and give maximum performance.