Chapter 5. Video on the Web
Diving In
Anyone who has visited YouTube.com in the past four years knows that you can embed video in a web page. But prior to HTML5, there was no standards-based way to do this. Virtually all the video you’ve ever watched “on the Web” has been funneled through a third-party plug-in—maybe QuickTime, maybe RealPlayer, maybe Flash. (YouTube uses Flash.) These plug-ins integrate with your browser well enough that you may not even be aware that you’re using them—until you try to watch a video on a platform that doesn’t support that plug-in, that is.
HTML5 defines a standard way to embed video in a
web page, using a <video>
element. Support for the <video>
element is still evolving, which is a polite way of saying it doesn’t work
yet (at least, it doesn’t work everywhere). But don’t despair! There are
alternatives and fallbacks and options galore. Table 5-1 shows which browsers
support the <video> element at
the time of writing.
Table 5-1. <video> element support
IE9 | IE8 | IE7 | Firefox 3.5 | Firefox 3.0 | Safari 4 | Safari 3 | Chrome | Opera |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
✓ | · | · | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Support for the <video>
element itself is really only a small part of the story. Before we can
talk about HTML5 video, you first need to understand a
little about video itself. (If you know about video already, you can skip
ahead to What Works on the Web.)
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