I’ve highlighted two forthcoming (commercial) HTML5 video players recently and someone brought the OSM Player to my attention. Unlike the others, this is an open source project that media for HTML5, YouTube, Vimeo, and Flash (the Flash video player is the fallback). Like pretty much everything good these days (!), it’s written in jQuery, which means that this player can also be skinned using the jQuery ThemeRoller. The creators behind the Open Standard Media Player have already created a Drupal module for it and are working on WordPress and Moodle versions, too.
Archives For html5
Apple, who has a complex interest in supporting HTML5, has created a a bunch of pages on their Web site dedicated to HTML5. If you ignore all the politics involved with this, you’ll see several great uses of HTML5: video, typography, image gallery, transitions, audio, 360 degree rotations, virtual reality, and pixel manipulation. Unfortunately, the demos insist you use Safari, but lots of the code, which is available to examine, is not specific to Safari. It just amazing that all this is possible without any additional plug-ins!
LongTail Video, creator of a very popular Flash video player (which I’ve used on a couple of sites), has released a beta version of their new JW Player for HTML5. This player is written in JavaScript, using jQuery, and will fall back upon the JW Player for Flash if the JavaScript version can’t run in the user’s browser. For information on using and customizing the player, see that Web page. The first official release of the player is expected this summer.
Just as interesting, I think, are the thoughts that the creator of the JW Player has on HTML5 video. Initially, you’ll learn about some of the issues regarding video codecs and streaming limitations. But if you read through the comments, you’ll learn a lot more about what’s going into the discussion on just this one (quite important) aspect of HTML5.
I recently came across the SublimeVideo HTML5 video player. It’s hard to say what will actually happen with HTML5, but there are certainly some intriguing things coming out. SublimeVideo is a video player written entirely in JavaScript, that will play videos without any browser plug-ins at all! It allows the user to jump to anywhere in the video, play in fullscreen mode, and works on iPhones and iPads. SublimeVideo works on Safari 4.0.4 and greater, Firefox 3.6 and greater, Google Chrome 4.0 and greater, and versions of IE that have installed the Chrome Frame.
The Web site Scribd, a social publishing site, has recently made the switch from using Flash to using HTML 5. This is a fairly significant change for any site of Scribd’s size to undertake, as Scribd has tons of content available for people to read. They’ve put together a nifty little presentation on their switch to HTML 5 (written using HTML 5) that’s really worth checking out.
