Safari (version 5.1.7) on Windows 10 does not support html video and audio, but works well with same version on Windows 7, so you have to use flash to play html media in this case. This seems like quite a drawback or I am missing something. Is there a way around it?
http://jsfiddle.net/jxajbo6f/2/
var testEl = document.createElement( "video" ),
if ( testEl.canPlayType )
The number of users using safari on Windows 10 is going to be fairly small - Safari version less than 6 have less than 0.5% of total market share across all OS's according to this market share site for example:
https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0&qpct=3&qpcustomb=
It could still be important for you, however, if you have a target audience or organisation that do need to use it for some reason.
The problem is that the HTML5 video standards and extensions keep evolving so a browser not being developed, as Alexander points out above, simply cannot maintain compatibility.
In addition to this the OS itself has been updated and may provide new or different mechanisms to playback videos, for example leveraging HW acceleration and allowing for DRM, and only limited support may be offered for older interfaces. Falling back to Flash looks like your best alternative if you really have to support this use case.
Related
All:
I wonder if there is any plugin or something work as a virtual container can turn IE into Chrome environment? Just like running applet across browsers?
If no way to do this, can any one suggest some light weight solution to build an VM image?
Thanks
The Chrome team used to support a utility called Chrome Frame, but this was during a time when nearly all major IE versions had poor support for HTML5 and "CSS3".
The utility is no longer supported:
[In 2009] many people were using browsers that lagged behind the leading edge...
Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority
of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy
browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date
automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream.
Given these factors we’ve decided to retire Chrome Frame, and will cease support and updates for the product in January 2014.
I'm not sure what you mean by the second part of your question though, regarding the building of a virtual machine. Virtual machines of Internet Explorer are available for free though http://modern.ie.
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'm currently consider implement an application using actionscript 3. Minimum browser requirement is important to me because I can't assume most of my user will equipped with modern browser. I tried to google around the browser requirement for running actionscript, but didn't found something quite useful. Any hints?
ActionScript is not executed by the browser, it is executed by the Flash Player, notably player version 9 or higher for ActionScript 3.
As far as browser compatibility for the Flash Player, here are the Adobe specs for minimum Flash Player requirements: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/tech-specs.html. Note that those are the specs for version 11, and they require IE7 or higher - but if you are targeting Flash Player 9 (minimum for AS3), then you can easily run on IE6 and all other major browsers.
Overall, it's not something I'd be concerned with. Flash Player has been supported by all major browsers for quite a long time. Other than mobile browsers (phones and tablets), you'd be hard-pressed to find a desktop browser that doesn't support it (as long as the end user chooses to install the player, that is).
Which is the browser with minimum hardware requirements with full support to HTML5?
The application should be able to play videos and perform some javascript transformations.
Windows or Linux it doesn't matter (but I bet my two cents on Linux as the winner).
Thanks in advance.
You may be putting the cart before the horse here.
There are a lot of "post pc" devices out there that have very low hardware specifications (iPod/iPad/iPhone, various Android devices, Blackberries, Windows Mobile Devices) that can run lightweight, full featured HTML5 browsers based on projects like WebKit (webkit.org).
Following browsers supports HTML5 for better client rendering especially when having flash, video streaming and mobile version of site. browsers: IE 10, Google chrome, Opera, netscape navigator.
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.