Microsoft embracing HTML5 / H.264 for IE 9

Too little too late.

What matters is not what pretty words comes out of Microsoft's mouth, but how many % of IE users that support HTML5, and when. And I'd say if it's not 90% within a year or two, IE is dead.

I hope IE9 is way better than IE8.
I've had nothing but problematic errors and IE constantly restarting after updating 3 months ago.
If i want to write an email, I got to do it in MS Word and copy and paste it onto the Yahoo email or else I get an IE error and loose everything I typed. :-@

So that's the idea: both Apple and Microsoft are part of the group that receives money because of the patented H.264 codecs. HTML5 video could use a completely free open source standard like Ogg Theora whose quality level is close to H.264.

While Flash achieved a high success as a video player (75% of Internet videos rely on Flash), truth is that any fully open source codec as an HTML 5 standard would be a great addition.

The success of HTML5 video is not the demise of Flash. Flash is still a great framework to develop animations, games, RIAs and other interactive stuff.

There seems to be lots of connections and economic interests behind Apple and H.264. These infographics help to better understand the relationships among Apple, Adobe, (iPhone, Flash), H.264 and HTML5:
http://trebleclick.blogspot.com/2010/05/apple-and-adobe-infographics.html

add me in

But what container will they use?

It's about time! Go web standards!!!

IE is getting better. It helps the windows non-power users catchup

I really like how the term "open standards" that we've fought so long for in the web development industry is coming to bite us in the bum these days with talk of HTML5 and H264.

A comment above said that: "H.264 is an open standard, as is HTML5." and that is technically correct (the best kind of correct), but it glosses over one MASSIVE point: that in order to use the HTML5 standard you have to pay the square root of bugger all, where as with H264 you have NO IDEA how much it will cost right now. It is very specifically unknown amount that can and no doubt will change in the future. Just as Unisys decided to start charging for GIF after everyone was using it, so too will MPEG-LA.

Put rather simply, both Apple and Microsoft have commercial reasons to support H264. They are part of MPEG-LA and their patents contribute in part to what is licensed out. They will both make royalties from every H264 license sold. It is very much in their interests to protect this revenue - something that a truly unencumbered and fully free video codec would most certainly threaten.

I seriously hope that Google will free VP8 and make YouTube an H264 free zone. If they do this it will seriously shake up the whole video debate. Imagine IE and Safari not working with YouTube? Apple and Microsoft will simply not let that happen and will have to act.

I'm not certain that Google will do this, but it would certainly be in the public interest.

Anyone who does not have a commercial reason to think that this the use of H264 is a good thing, but still thinks so anyway is sleep walking into another GIF debacle but IMO with much more riding on it.

We are all talking about IE9, but we completely forgot about Safari.
What are the folks at Apple doing about Safari, any idea?

The MPEG-LA has granted a "free internet broadcasting AVC license" until 2015. After that, who knows? Do you really think it's a triumph for an open user experience when the price of something is "TBD" five years from now?

It's asinine to think that legally someone could sell you a typewriter and then also think they could charge your for every page you produced on it. That sort of stranglehold upon production can only degrade the human experience (in the opposite way that the invention of the printing press enriched and emancipated it.)

The question everyone should be asking is why large media powers, (Apple, Microsoft, etc.) are committing to locking their browsers to h.264 ONLY, rather than allowing for their HTML5 to support any plug-in video format. I doubt that it is done in "service to the users".