Why HTML5 Media is not Enough

by devongovett • 15 years ago

47 13 15 years ago

TomOfTTB2• 15 years ago

It occurs to me we're starting to go around in circles. The author suggests...

"To make it work in both Chrome and Firefox, we had to use sink.js, to abstract the differences between the audio APIs."

But isn't that exactly what Flash is? Yes sink.js would be an open solution but it would be an open solution based on proprietary APIs built into the browser (which themselves are open source but which can't be changed without approval of their governing bodies making them not that much different than Flash and its product teams)

So really we've traded Flash's native audio processing for a JavaScript solution using a Web API which in turn uses native APIs.

It seems like it would be more productive to force the browsers to develop one common API

nddrylliog• 15 years ago

Of course, at ofmlabs we all want sink.js to be made unnecessary as soon as possible! It's just a pragmatic solution when you want to make an audio demo and cannot wait 3 years for the browser implementors to reconcile :)

In the long term, we have been participating in the W3C Audio WG, and discussing with various folks at Google and Mozilla, to try and understand where the debate is going. Robert O'Callahan's MediaStream API seems the most promising so far.

We are not advocating the use of sink.js as a long term solution!

TomOfTTB2• 15 years ago

I have no criticisms for sink.js my comment was more on the philosophical side. The danger in a solution like sink.js is it becomes "good enough" until people need more than it can provide. Then they turn to the APIs and end up dealing with fragmentation.

If you think about it that's exactly what happened with IE circa Version 5. The one good thing IE did was make it possible to develop for one browser. What the industry should have done then was what they're doing with HTML5 now. Define a standard so other competitors could enter the market without creating fragmentation. But that's not what happened and now everyone has to write for 3 browsers (if not more thanks to IE7,8,and 9)

Same with sink.js. For all the bad in Flash almost everyone has it and it's a consistent thing you can write to. If people use sink.js now and don't pay attention to the fragmented APIs underneath we'll end up having to write to 3 different APIs down the line.

So again I'm not against sink.js. I'm just saying people using it need to realize exactly what you said and pressure browsers for a common API in the long run.

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

> But isn't that exactly what Flash is?

JS and the various browser APIs for media come with the browser. Flash doesn't necessarily. You can count on Chrome and Firefox having a media API, but not Flash.

tomlin2• 15 years ago

At this point, can I count on a user having Flash over Chrome or Firefox? Today, I'd say that a user having Flash is a more reliable bet than them having Chrome/Firefox. And if they have Chrome, they have Flash.

I get where you're going, but this conversation always gets dicey. People want Flash to die, so they sit around the campfire dreaming about why it is bad, but fail to see why it has succeeded thus far.

If we really want Flash to die, we should be concentrating on advancing the standard (or abandon the slow-moving committees involved).

Instead, this rhetoric of how Flash performs, or its inherit proprietary format gets brought up. Over and over. Ad nauseum.

And yet Flash – today – outperforms the alternatives in almost every realm of multimedia. Audio API, Camera support, 3D/vector drawing, video decoding, licensing, streaming.

Drama and vilification won't change the fact that I still can't allow a user to upload a video with a webcam using standard web technologies – probably not until 2020 (or whatever other gratuitously pushed off date it may be). I still can't reliably build a highly interactive, full-width experience without the browser having a fit.

This is the reality.

Why HTML5 Media is not Enough

Related Stories