Archive for the ‘browsers’ tag
Is H.264 the right choice for online video?
I wanted to add some thoughts to Chris’s post about Flash and HTML5. However I should preface this post by saying that HTML5 supporting video is really cool, both technically and because HTML5 is an open standard that anyone can implement for free. As we all know, for the last several years, Flash has been the de facto choice for online video delivery. Flash support on different platforms has been pretty good, but end users still don’t have total flexibility depending on their OS. Until recently, Flash on Linux has been about a version behind the release for Windows or OS X. Even now, Adobe only releases a player for x86, and the x86_64 version is unsupported beta software.
Everyone seems to be touting HTML5 video as the “open” alternative to the proprietary Flash plugin required for .flv playback in the browser. But how open is H.264, the codec that powers HTML5 video, and the current pick for encoding video for online delivery? Using H.264 as the codec behind HTML5 video sours things a bit for me. H.264 is encumbered by software patents; to develop or distribute a player or encoder for H.264 you might have to pay a licensing fee to MPEG-LA. Even though MPEG LA announced last week (PDF) that H.264 will remain fee-less for free internet video through 2016, this is not the same as being free or open. MPEG-LA can still go after people that produce the software to encode or decode H.264. And MPEG-LA is not just one organization, it’s a collection of patent holders that have their own agendas.
All this is a bit of a slap in the face to the open standards that power the web. Imagine if you had to pay a half million dollars to create or display JPEGs, GIFs, or HTML… The only people that would be able to afford to make software for the web would be huge companies. But what are our alternatives? Beyond Ogg Theora and Matroska, the pickings are slim. These codecs are open and free, but not necessarily better than H.264. Plus it would be next to impossible to compete with the marketing machine of Apple behind H.264.
Open and free standards have been what has made the Internet successful since its inception. I think it’s important that users understand this so that the Internet of the future cannot be controlled by corporations with enough cash to cover licensing fees.
Love 'em or hate 'em, plugins are here to stay
There’s been much discussion and debate recently surrounding the iPad’s lack of Flash, which in turn has fueled discussion about the future of online video delivery. This week’s preview release of the HTML5-powered SublimeVideo player is seen by some as the beginning of the end for online video delivery in Flash player. As Senior Multimedia Development Consultant at Control Group, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the topic.
To me, this isn’t so much a debate about Flash/ActionScript 3 versus HTML5, but rather another win for HTML + Flash/AS3! It’s all about creativity as a developer. Bad coding leads to poor applications, proper coding leads to a proper experience. 
It is a common pitfall that most people think “HTML or Flash”. I see this as more power for the mixing of technologies, raising the cap on what can and can’t be done in a web browser.
Adobe’s technologies provide clear benefits to the end user, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the developer. As a developer, I can utilize the unique capabilities of the .flv format to protect content in some fashion or for metadata injection, all of which can be done on the fly and server-side, if implemented using Flash Media Server (FMS). I’m also really excited about Flash Player 10.1 – it brings the ability to scale all the way from mobile to HD flavors, and will be available on smartphones and other Internet-connected mobile devices.
This is about more than just video delivery, it is the platform combined with the tools, and Adobe has been making tremendous strides in going open-source with them. Adobe is providing a cohesive environment that is deeply integrated with some of the best tools out there for content creation. HTML5 is just starting out, and the gap between the tools and technology is too immense to make it the competition. Flash has fantastic penetration and Adobe can rapidly evolve the technology. Remember, HTML5 still is not a standard – in fact we are looking at sometime in 2012 before we’ll see a final recommendation. These are cohesive technologies and they are here to stay for a very long time, which means plugins will be around for a long time too. Simply put, plugin implementations have the potential to penetrate faster, and as history has shown they often do. Plugins forge the path, and the Web comes right behind them to standardize those paths.
If you want to better understand what the big picture is regarding Adobe and its technologies, I recommend reading a little bit about:
OpenScreenProject
Catalyst
SVG and FXG
Flex Data Services
RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol)
Binary Sockets
In The Beginning, There Was Just One Web Browser…
In the beginning, there was just one web browser… and it was good. Mainly because there wasn’t another web browser to be “the bad one”.
Written for NeXTStep by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, WorldWideWeb was the first of many browsers to offer up their view of how web pages should be rendered for the end user. Although the world wide web is based on open standards that are interoperable by anyone, the browser community became a near monoculture during the mid to late 90s thanks to Microsoft’s inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows. Even Mac OS X users were ensnared by Internet Explorer as it was not only the first browser for the then-new OS, but one of the very first 3rd-party applications as well.
Then, in 2003, Firefox (then called Phoenix) showed up on the scene. Although other web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Opera Software’s Opera had established user bases, it was Firefox that captured the hearts of the alpha geeks by way of its altruistic goal to create a good open source web browser. No longer was browser functionality beholden to the whims of its parent corporation. Now the end user was king.
Initially this freedom brought a flurry of innovation in browser design. Things like tabbed windows, download managers, and an interface add-on architecture were created or borrowed to make Firefox a more useful browser. Companies such as Apple saw value in the open source browser effort and joined or started open source projects of their own. Soon the idea of a modern browser became so powerful that even Microsoft updated Internet Explorer to include these improvements.
As the browser grew up, the Internet continued to diversify in use, and discovered along the way that one browser layout does not fit all. Although interface hacks gave Firefox specialized capabilities, people started to wonder whether or not it would make more sense to design a browser for a specific purpose from the interface up. Now came the rise of the specialized browser.
Google Chrome
Flock is probably the most well known of the specialized browser breed, which is to say that you’ve probably never heard of it unless you’re a geek or one of their unwitting testbed friends. Available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, Flock is built around interacting with social networking sites, webmail, blogs, and more. Friend lists for sites like Facebook are readily available in a browser sidebar. Posting a link on your blog is as easy as bringing up special text edit panel without leaving the site you’re on. Overall the goal is to abstract services from their respective websites to make them more tool-like.
Some specialized browsers are reductions rather than additions. Google turned a lot of heads when they released Chrome, a web browser with a uniquely minimal interface. While the “get the browser out of the way” interface was warmly embraced by alpha geeks, the hoovering of personal web activity by Google through Chrome was not.
Enter Iron. Since Chrome is run by Google as an open source project, enterprising programmers took the Chrome source code and removed all the components that transmitted personal data to the Google mothership. The browser retains the look and functionality of Chrome while respecting the user’s privacy.
The Ghostzilla Browser
Other specialized browsers serve more subversive purposes. Based on the Gecko rendering engine, the now discontinued Ghostzilla allowed sneaky office users a chance to peek at the Internet without raising the suspicions of their over-the-shoulder glancing managers. Rather than display content in a traditional browser window, Ghostzilla masked its purpose by running inside the window space of a traditional Office app such as Microsoft Word. Web pages were rendered in black and white and images were not loaded unless moused over. The entire browser space itself disappeared when the mouse was moved away, making covering your tracks as simple as a gesture.
The specialization of web browsers shows that the world wide web is evolving in a way that is healthy and intended. Although he could have used closed, secretive code to instruct web browsers on how to display web pages, Sir Tim Berners-Lee chose to employ an open human-readable language called HTML. This even playing field has fostered a level of communication that is unprecedented in human history. Let the good times download.