Currently on the browser market there are 5 big players. Each of them has started implementing HTML 5 support. A standard that promise a new online revolution.
Firefox – 3.5 – good HTML 5 support – Company : Mozilla
Opera -9.6 – good HTML 5 support – Company : Opera
Chrome – 2.0 – limited HTML 5 support – Company : Google
Safari – 4.0 – good HTML 5 support – Company : Apple
Internet Explorer – 8.0 – very limited HTML 5 support – Company Microsoft
All good and interesting but one special feature brought a lot of attention is the last months: the video tag. This tag wanted to define a standard video codec for all browsers. The most discussed codecs where :
H.264 – it’s propertary , it’s not free( MPEG ) , and it’s popular
Ogg Theora – free and open source , not popular , pattens issues
Browsers position regarding Ogg Theora
Pro
Firefox
Opera
Against
Chrome – they won’t put this on Youtube because of performance issues
Safari – Apple’s concern regarding patents
IE
Brower position regarding H.264
Pro
Chrome
Safari
Against
Opera
Firefox
IE
Adobe Macromedia Flash is the winner. The support for flash is cross-browsers and they really don’t want to see a standard overthrown them.
In the end the conclusion is that:
HTML 5 will not specify a single codec for Web development.
Great HTML 5 – video tag exemple.