Please Don’t Screw Up HTML 5

Michael Lankton | Jun 30, 2009 | Comments


HTML 5 is upon us, and it should change the way we deliver web content. That is, if the browser makers and web designers don’t screw it up.

Whether you use a Mozilla or Webkit based web browser, chances are that once you’ve installed all the plugins you need, your web surfing experience is pretty complete. Good looking, dynamic web content abounds, and the web browsing experience delivers a lot more than it did 10 years ago.

Maybe you’re using a computer you don’t own or have the ability to install software on. How is your internet experience now? What if the site you need to get on requires Flash and you don’t have it? HTML 5 addresses that by adding elements for video and audio, and every web browser that is HTML 5 compliant will work, no plugins necessary. Much simpler, much more elegant, and everybody gets the same experience regardless of platform.

The good news is that Mozilla and Webkit both understand the HTML 5 elements for multimedia content. If your browser doesn’t grok the HTML5 multimedia elements, it’s incumbent upon the web designer to embed fallbacks that utilize Flash, javascript or whatever to deliver an alternate delivery, or at least a message letting you know that your browser sucks.

Flash and javascript should only be used as a fallback though. We finally have a clean, platform agnostic, resource friendly means to deliver rich web content. Please use it everyone. My fear is that people will keep using proprietary delivery systems like Flash, and it’s time to move forward and away from it.

Browser developers: please educate your users and developers and support the elements that HTML 5 provides to deliver rich web content.

Web designers: quit using Flash and javascript to achieve something that a simple video tag could do.

The same web experience. Regardless of operating system. Regardless of web browser.


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About the Author: Have you been a bass player in a hardcore punk band? Built stroker Harleys? Have you been in a fight this month? Written an article about SEO that somehow managed to turn into a social commentary editorial?Mike has.Since 2007 Mike has been sharing his unique worldview with Connected Internet readers. Stop back to see what Mike is thinking about next week.

  • Aww, noooo
  • You wrote: "Maybe you’re using a computer you don’t own or have the ability to install software on... What if the site you need to get on requires Flash and you don’t have it?"

    It is much more likely in a corporate or other institutional environments that you will be using IE with Flash than Firefox 3.5 or Safari. That's just the way it is.

    Asking people not to author in Flash isn't going to make a difference as long as HTML 5 is not available on the vast majority of installed browsers. On the other hand, if you can convince Microsoft to implement HTML 5 in their next browser, that would make a big difference about five years after they finally release it.
  • Exactly, and a big oversight on my part. IE8 is not supposed to support the video tag, and why would they?

    People in the workplace are still going to be screwed, whether Mozilla and Webkit are standards compliant or not, because most of them will be stuck with IE.

    :(
  • So in order to get the best web experience we need to stop using IE and switch to Firefox?
  • Hahaha.. I like this one. Firefox rocks, I mean the plugins rocks :)

    IE is a big pain for web developer...
  • I asume you don't like Flash at all :)
  • You wrote: "People in the workplace are still going to be screwed."
     
    Not really. Some employees aren't supposed to be watching video on their secure corporate machines, but many others have Flash at work and can watch video. Adobe licensed the right to decode H.264 in Flash so H.264 has become something of a Web standard for high quality video despite its cost. Something like 80% of (non-mobile) Web video is displayed in Flash. And it works reasonably well across operating systems and very well on Windows. HTML 5 is a great idea, but why bash Flash while we wait to see what Microsoft and others do with the HTML 5 draft proposal? The evolution of the Web isn't a winner-take-all sporting event. It's not like the desktop operating system market of the 80 and 90s.
  • The job of a web browser is to render html into something that we can read. There are standards for the various flavors of html, and web designers make their pages based on these standards. If your web browser does not comply to the html standard, you are not seeing what the web designer intended you to see.
    Therefore, yes IE is crap. It is not standards compliant. Much of the web is broken in IE. Everyone would be much better off using a Mozilla or Webkit-based browser, and there are many to choose from.
  • j_chi
    If html5 is developed with a plug-in option then it won't be held back by any one browser holdout. So if firefox / chrome bake the standard into their browser and ie / safari don't users could just add the html5 plug-in to those other browsers. Thereby having the same user experience across all platforms as java does now. This should also speed up adoption significantly.

    Just an idea.
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