NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

On 5/3/2012 5:29 AM, Petros Ziogas wrote:
> What companies like Mozilla fail to consider is that by dancing around video
> formats and standards all they do is kill the little guys.
>
Hi!

The reason for Mozilla's dance was that they wanted a video codec to be added 
to HTML5 that is royalty free so that the codec required by HTML5 is as open 
as the standard itself. But first Apple and then Microsoft were strictly 
against that and as usual for monetary reasons. I agree that finally picking 
any one codec is needed, although I'd liked that this doesn't become as a 
barrier of entrance for any new browser vendors. Because they now need to pay 
up in order to support that codec. In all that discussion always keep in mind 
that HTML5 is NOT an approved standard. So why get all worked up about things 
that aren't even final yet. I know that reality is different. The major 
browser vendors already implemented their own interpretation of partial HTML5, 
which is right back to the 'works only on browser X' problems of the past. I 
blame the standards for that, because they (intentionally) only describe the 
markup, but not the end result. As you already pointed out, if you want 
something to look and work the same in every browser use Flash. Unfortunately, 
Flash got a bad rap over the years, partially self-inflicted, but mainly 
because irresponsible web designers plastered page after page with Flash. 
Silverlight never got off the ground and is all but canned by Microsoft. Fast 
forward a year or two when Flash is banned and all you got are a bag of screws 
called HTML5 we will also say goodbye to RIA and cloud apps. That change is 
already done in the mobile area, there you mainly find only fat clients. Even 
popular 'cloud' services require you to download a client app.

As far as ease of use and user experience we are currently making big steps 
backwards.

David