What Is HTML5, and What's the Big Deal?
 

Hi all,
I was wondering what's the big deal with HTML5. What's new, and why did they have to upgrade it? I've heard of "built-in animation" somewhere (http://qgf.in/zY9DaV, a Dashboard widget) but what else, security? Built-in styles?

html5 WRT video is all hype and no substance. Adding a <video> tag does literally nothing. All the pundits are saying (this includes Apple and Adobe and Microsoft) that html5 solves the video problem. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The video tag is just another <embed> tag and one still needs to have the decoder. Unfortunately, H.264 is a patented format which can never be universally supported. Flash is a proprietary format with no hardware support. Other allegedly supported formats are so obscure that no one has any real support for them. Hence, the whole html5 discussion is filled, like politics, with half truths and innuendo... and half truth is an exaggeration, it is probably closer to 10% truth... the technophiles are learning from the politicians.

As I understand it H.264 is supported in HTML5 by ALL the major browser makers, except for Firefox, who could if they wanted. So I'm not sure why you are saying it can never be universally supported?

Mozilla insists that it is not allowed to use H.264 due to patents in various countries. Maybe the others, like Micro$oft and Google have deep enough pockets to just ignore the patents.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/562286
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/...port--Wild-Fox

among others.


But, if I listen to myself, this also is innuendo and half truths. :-(

Looks like they are, rightfully, frightened of another GIF fiasco.

The Wikipedia page for HTML5 that SirDice linked to gives a good intro to what is new, so I won't discuss that stuff in this post.

Any mention of HTML5 often leads very quickly into a discussion (or argument!) about the suitability of its video tag as a replacement for Flash-delivered video (which inevitably leads to posts like "Flash sucks!", and the quality of the discussion rapidly disintegrates from there).

Many features which have traditionally required Flash (e.g. offline storage, document editing, audio and video delivery) are included in the HTML5 spec. This is where the "HTML5 is a replacement for Flash" angle comes from. However, as far as I am aware, there are things that Flash can do which HTML5 cannot (who said "crash Safari"? :D).

The big deal with HTML5 then is that a number of features which have traditionally required a proprietary plugin are now part of a freely-implementable spec whose implementation is not dependent upon a single company (and the questionable quality of said implementation on OS X is why Flash is typically despised by many Mac users).

But wait! I said "freely-implementable". Cue the H.264 vs Theora argument.

Currently, no video codec is specified for the new video tag. Open Web advocates like Mozilla and Opera are going with Theora since there is no possibility of royalty payments (only submarine patents). The OS manufacturers (Apple and Microsoft) are going with H.264 for a number of reasons: clear patent landscape; (arguably) better quality encoder; widespread hardware acceleration (crucial for mobile / low power devices). Google is going with both, and it may even open up its recently acquired VP8 codec which would further muddy the situation (although I firmly believe that H.264 will win out due to the widespread availability of hardware acceleration and the eventual support in IE9).

Even if we ignore the audio and video tag issue, the fact that HTML5 includes many features which are used heavily by web apps makes it a big deal. It sets the scene for a big jump in the number, quality, speed and usability of web apps.

As a final point, be aware of the fact that many people and many web sites will use "HTML5" to mean the set of standard web technologies (i.e. HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc) - especially in the "HTML5 vs Flash" arguments.

Gruber has some excellent essays on the topic of H.264, Theora and patents here here, and here. Very illuminating and sober as usual. It seems that maybe Theora is not immune to patent royalties after all.

While I admit I started it, I do not see how the argument over H.264 vs other formats has anything at all to do with HTML5. You do not need HTML5 to display any of the formats herein discussed. So, unfortunately, I think no one has actually answered renaultssoftware's original question... namely: what is the big deal about HTML5?

Didn't my penultimate paragraph do that? Paragraph 4 also tries to answer the question.

The rest of my post was trying to put into context the many issues, arguments and discussions that have cropped up with regards to HTML5.

Thank-you.... you are right. However, I do not see it as a big deal. I think you are saying that the big deal about HTML5 is that it requires features which now require plug-ins. I guess I do not see that as a big deal.

One thing that is CLOSER to a big deal is that, allegedly, HTML5 specifies specifically how the browser should respond to syntax errors so that errors show up the same for everyone. It will be interesting to see if that is effective.

What happens to ActiveX in HTML5? I would hope it goes away, but it seems unlikely.

You guys are kind of confusing me. Yes, I think Flash needs an upgrade before it's more appreciated. (Crashes, for example; or mouse-over for Touch) But what exactly are you saying?

Indeed - this certainly seems like a good thing (I hadn't noticed this until you pointed it out, so thanks).

ActiveX has never been part of any HTML spec - it is a Windows-only MS technology originally designed to provide functionality that was not possible with HTML. Since HTML5 extends what is possible with HTML, the relevance of proprietary technologies like ActiveX should be lessened. Of course, Microsoft are now pushing Silverlight which has COM+ automation for Windows - and ActiveX was essentially a packaged version of COM+ automation (the security/sandboxing elements of Silverlight are far superior to ActiveX though).

Saying that, I haven't come across a web site that requires ActiveX in a very long time (with the exception of sites offering free anti-virus scans which may or may not be malicious).


Personally, I am saying that HTML5 will reduce the need for proprietary plugins to provide the kind of functionality that modern web sites aim to provide. The point aubreyapple mentioned about well-defined error handling means that browsers should handle non-conforming web pages in a consistent manner, not just conforming pages (this is critical since I would think that there are a greater percentage of non-conforming pages out there).

A lot of "the big deal" comes down to the iPhone and the iPad. No flash, and with HTML5 they could potentially completely obviate the need for it.

Oh, now I get it. No Flash. On Steve Job's famous blog post (argh, where's the link!?) he says that Flash is out because it's not too easy to learn how to properly control the system. Stuff like memory alloc and all that. So the tech to create animation is built-in to HTML5, is that what's being said?

Introducing WebM, an open web media project

vs.

The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8

:rolleyes:

Another Follow-up on HTML5 Video in IE9

Patent Troll Larry Horn of MPEG-LA Assembling VP8 Patent Pool

:rolleyes:

Flash is unstable on Mac OS, always has been.
However, it works fine on Windows.
People keep talking about HTML5 like it's the second coming of Christ, that it's going to make Flash and the other multimedia extensions redundant, but I'm not holding my breath.
It's not going to make "big deal" status in my book until it's been approved and proven in use.

Don't put any credence in what Jobs says about Flash. The real reason it's banned from the iPhone and maxiPad is that allowing web-based Flash applets would bypass Apple's control over the application base. You can run Flash-based programs or games and not have to pay the AppStore tax, or be caught in the content filtering it uses.

Are you a Flash developer/ActionScript programmer perchance?

Hehehe, no. I am a developer, but I don't do web stuff. Actually, I take that back. I have created Silverlight applications, but those are still coded like any other .NET application. I don't do commercial/retail stuff either, everything I write is used internally in our company's manufacturing plants.
I really am platform agnostic. Just calling it how I see it. ;)

The other real reason they banned Flash from the iPhone is to do with controlling how the iPhone looks and handles to consumers. handling: all you have to do is see the "demo" Adobe did of Flash on an Android phone the other day - it crashed repeatedly and then was clunky as on things it did work with. It sucks battery power like there's no tomorrow on mobile devices. If they let that on the iPhone, who would get blamed by consumers? Apple would, it would make it look bad.
Looks: compiling apps in Flash or similar means you lose consistent behaviour across all apps (not that that is 100% true now anyway) and if Apple adds functionality in an OS update, but Adobe doesn't get onto that right away, all the flash apps will be locked out of the benefit until Adobe catches up.

If Safari on the iPhone/iPad fully supports html5, they will lose control of UI look and feel for any web-based apps anyway.
I'll be curious to see just how well it is supported once it's been ratified and sites really start taking advantage of it.
I'll bet there will be "technical" reasons for why many multimedia/interactive features of html5 won't work on the iPhone. Maybe I'll be proven wrong.

Of course, it would be hilarious if Adobe pulled a MicroSoft and submitted it as an open standard and licensed it really cheap. They would have to be prepared to be on the wrong end of a lot of jokes until it got fixed, though...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/...-LA?art_pos=18

Needs no amplification.

Flash just crashed my entire computer. Not happy at all. So if anyone says "Flash" they will get their virtual head bitten off.