W3C Finalizes the Definition of HTML5 113
hypnosec writes "The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced that it has finalized the definition of HTML5 and that it is ready for interoperability testing. HTML5 hasn't been given the status of standard yet but it is feature complete now, giving developers a stable target to develop their web applications. The W3C said in the announcement 'HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform" and that it provides an environment which can utilize all of a device's capabilities like videos, animations, graphics and typography. The HTML5 specifications still have a long way to go before they hit the Recommendation status. HTML5 will have to go through a round of testing that looks specifically into interoperability and performance after which time it will be given a Candidate Recommendation title."
Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Funny)
Mayan Calendar was right, it is the end of the world..
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Funny)
At least for Adobe.
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Write once, runs anywhere ? (Score:4, Interesting)
If my memory still serves me correctly, one of the promise of HTML5 is "Write Once, Runs Anywhere" .
I dunno about you, but as a developer, I still find that "Write Once, Runs Anywhere" promise not-yet-fulfilled
Wonder if this final draft will bring about the final fulfillment of that promise?
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Qt is pretty good about that, assuming you don't use any OS-specific API calls. True, Qt won't run on every tablet/smartphone ever made but it covers Windows, Mac, and Linux pretty well.
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Qt is pretty good about that, assuming you don't use any OS-specific API calls. True, Qt won't run on every tablet/smartphone ever made but it covers Windows, Mac, and Linux pretty well.
MOD PARENT UP PLEASE.
However, you forgot to add ANDROID support.
Check https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/android-qt [google.com]
And in 2013, iOs tier1 support ins in the pipeline, as well as Android (Necessitas project is still Beta, but apps built upon it are pretty solid already).
HTH
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If you want software that runs on as many machines as possible, write it in NES compatible 6502 assembler.
Virtual machines for those are more supported than Java, Flash and HTML combined.
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Like Java -- "Write once; debug everywhere."
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Adobe makes money by selling tools, not giving away a free content player.
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow I read that as "Adobe makes money by selling souls..."
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Selling tools that generate content for Flash player. It's true that now they are an established brand and will likely be able to generate review by modifying the tools to produce HTML5 media, but it will open the field for more competitors to create tools
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And PhotoShop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Edge, and other tools that don't end up requiring Flash to exist.
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Funny)
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cough Edge [adobe.com] cough
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cough Edge [adobe.com] cough
Oh well done - you got the joke.
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow -- you are so sharp and witty and so absolutely right! Adobe has nothing to offer but Flash!!!
It's not like they own Phonegap for creating naive Mobile Apps with HTML5 and JS, or have their HTML5/jQuery Edge App, or do anything at all but try to promote Flash! Because Adobe is all about Flash! It's just Flash Flash Flash, all day and night for Adobe. They have no other products and boy -- are they going to get it because here comes HTML5, our lord, savior and messiah and boy -- HTML5 is gonna kill Adobe!
Adobe is so dead -- hurr-durr!
FFS -- some days ./ users just make my had effing hurt so much.
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You don't have to manage systems that have Adobe products installed then do you?
Try it for a while; Adobe will make your had effing hurt a LOT more.
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Interesting)
Until HTML5 takes over and becomes the major headache for everyone. Seriously, it's not even HTML, it's HTML plus other frameworks (codecs, javascript, etc). As much as flash is annoying, at least it's a real application and not a an ad-hoc collection of technologies making a misguided attempt to turn the browser into an application platform.
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The fact Flash is "a real application" is part of the problem. The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another. This means the public cannot decide which platforms are supported, only Adobe can.
Web applications are so great because they are made up from a collection of parts that have nothing to do with each other, but are all available on different platforms. This ensures the web is completely platform independent, which makes it a great environment for applications. Sure, they might be wonky
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another
Yeah, in the face of Flash, all those loud-mouthed open-source guys (and other companies) did a fine job of making some good old fashioned competition.
Seriously. The alternatives to Flash were Java, millions of mal-ware infested media players, and eventually Silverlight. Everything either outright sucked, was mis-applied, or was too late to market to matter. Today, HTML5 is literally the only thing to go up against Flash, and HTML5 pretty much sucks. Just playing audio is a major challenge. just audio. That's pretty damn sad. The most revolutionary thing HTML5 has to offer is... a frame buffer? Really? It took this long?
Everyone else was wetting their pants about some mythical standards-compliant angel to come from the heavens and save us all, but they all either refused to work on it, or was too busy bitching over the proper color of the bike shed. No shit Flash took over the market.
I like Flash, despite its problems, because it actually works and works well. If it swamped the market, that was the fault of the market not responding and making something better.
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Well, it works but badly. If I suspect something's chewing up lots of CPU time on my computer and take a look at what's running, it is almost always Flash that's maxing out one or more cores. Closing the browser tabs with Flash applications isn't enough to stop it, either - the browser must be closed to kill off all the flash processes.
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It's a hidden blessing that Flash only uses a single core. On a single core, Flash will bring a computer to its knees, but a dual core processor will barely be affected at all. If Flash eventually supports multiple cores, then heaven help us.
Incidentally, it's actually braindead developers that are responsible for Flash being so slow. All they have to do is add a few wait states to their code and the problem disappears. I've actually seen a number of Flash games that were programmed properly, and will n
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Interesting)
Your last paragraph sounds great, I agree it's a nice thing to aim for in theory, but have you actually worked on any serious cross-platform HTML5 projects in practice? It's a fucking nightmare.
I actually really, really hate Flash such that I've always refused to learn it and still refuse to, but we've actually had to resort to Flash on some projects because it's still the easiest way to implement cross-browser unified web experiences. HTML5 projects work poorly across different browsers and platforms.
HTML5s only real strength seems to be for building mobile web pages, on the desktop HTML5 still works and looks completely different between Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, but even on mobile it's hardly the unified development dream we were sold it to be by WHATWG - far from it. Web development now, with HTML5 is more awkward than I remember it being for many many years because of the countless inconsistencies.
The fundamental issue is that like you say, "they might be wonky sometimes" but how is that different to older versions of (X)HTML? HTML5 is just more of the same - more features that don't work right/consistently between platforms, but because there's so much of it, if you try to use any sizeable number of new HTML5 features then you'll end up with more of an inconsistent clusterfuck than ever before. Or in other words, nothings changed, you could always use a minimal set of HTML/CSS features and get a page to work on all devices, and as you added more the inconsistencies grew, that's still the case, HTML5 doesn't change that, it just adds more inconsistencies to fuck things up with.
Honestly, your last paragraph is noble sounding but you're ultimately just parroting WHATWG's marketing blurb, and they simply didn't manage to live up to the hype they sold in practice with the production of HTML5. The end product is really quite a train wreck, partly because the spec was badly produced, partly because no matter how good the spec, browser vendors are still utterly shit at their job, and shit at achieving a decent degree of interop between each other's offerings.
I do agree with the GP, between current browsers being such a quagmire of shite as the codebases have become ever more screwed up with the addition of new features over the years, and the fact that HTML and related technologies were never really designed with the complexity of webapps people ask for in mind today, we'd be far better off if we just kept HTML as a web document format, and created a new set of technologies for web applications. I've mentioned it before, it could still interop with HTML, using say, app:// as a new protocol running alongside HTTP allowing linking and so forth between HTML pages and apps to work seamlessly, but ultimately the web isn't going to move in the direction people want it to move in unless some ground up technology like this is built.
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"Seriously, it's not even HTML, it's HTML plus other frameworks (codecs, javascript, etc)." So what? Does this offend you on a philosophical level? W3C already tried the "pure" approach with XHTML, and it was universally hated."
By who? In the business world it's still the standard even with the advent of HTML5, even over XHTML5 because it's the only professional HTML spec to date that actually caters to the needs of system developers who actually build the systems people use day in and day out. Because it's
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Funny)
...It's just Flash Flash Flash, all day and night for Adobe...
Of course not. They have Adobe Reader, too.
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It's not like they own Phonegap for creating naive Mobile Apps with HTML5 and JS,/i>
you're referring to Apache Cordoba right?
Kudos to Adobe for giving it to the Apache Foundation though, they get a lot of bad press - mainly because of crappy Flash-based adverts - but they deserve a bit better. Only a bit mind, if they release a version of Flash without security flaws or Reader that opens quickly without a mass of 'features'.
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I don't see this happening. There is a lot of user-generated content, mostly games and animations that are often uploaded to third party websites, like Newgrounds [newgrounds.com]. I don't think that any website on its right mind is going to allow Joe Developer to upload unverified javascript to their servers and post them publicly.
While it might be true that Canvas2D can display Flash in the enterprise environment, I don't think it can be a substitute for hobbyists who just want to publish their content. Not at this point
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Meanwhile, in reality, mobile browsers are the most advanced browsers out there. It's the desktop ones *cough* from Microsoft *cough* that are causing problems, not the mobile space.
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Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
Now we can complain about Apple causing problems with their poor standards support. (Their refusal to include support WebGL outside of iAds drives me nuts. Perhaps they feel threatened by it like they felt threatened by Flash?)
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Actually mobile browsers are not the most advanced. Chrome and Firefox for the desktop are definitely more advanced than their mobile counterparts. The gap is fairly small at least usually.
IE ... well lets just kill that one already.
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But... I feel fine!!!
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Mayan Calendar was right, it is the end of the world..
I don't know, are you certain they are going to be able to port Duke Nukem Forever to HTML5+WebGL in those few days remaining?
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On Hurd running Enlightenment.
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Sigh, it's 2012 and when I write a piece of software now, I'm still not sure it will run everywhere. In fact, I'm not sure if it will run tomorrow on my own system.
That's called progress?
HTML5 is so complicated from a browser implementor's point of view that we can say without doubt that there is absolutely NO implementation that adheres to the standard. And there probably never will be.
W3C should have made HTML5 simpler and more internally consistent, not more complicated. Primitives need to be simple.
In f
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Sigh, it's 2012 and when I write a piece of software now, I'm still not sure it will run everywhere.
When were you ever sure of that?
Native applications are anything but a guarantee other people will be able to run them, they are strictly bound to the same exact device they were written for. Even releasing the source code isn't a guarantee it will run on other people's system.
Meanwhile, web applications run on anything from a PC to a phone, from a tablet to a TV set. Sure it's a living "standard" with huge gaps, sure some implementations slightly differ (and some not so slightly). But all of that is being
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When were you ever sure of that?
Since the 1980's when I learned C, would have said 70's, but I wasn't alive then. My C "hello world" program I wrote in 1986 on a hand me down 80286 still compiles and runs just fine on x86, x86-64, Power PC, Itanium, ARM, MIPS -- You know what? Show me a processor without a C compiler so it WON'T run on, that would be a much shorter list... That's just one example. My 1990's era hash table implementation is only now under threat of replacement because C++11 finally has one, but for over two decades my
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Note: that's a one time cost per platform, not compiled each page load like your "web apps". Native code saves electricity, and is thus more green than web apps.
Native applications are not the same as native code. You can write "web apps" in native code just fine, see e.g. Wt [webtoolkit.eu] or Go.
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That's still just the server-part though. Client-side code (i.e. Javascript) is compiled on every use.
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That depends on the JavaScript VM; some cache the generated machine code (even across different websites).
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1096907/do-browsers-parse-javascript-on-every-page-load?lq=1 [stackoverflow.com]
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I'm disappointed. I followed the link in your sig in the hope of seeing a cat/goatse/Rick Astley but all I got was an ad that matches its description. Congratulations, you invented the reverse rickrolling. That or I spend too much time on the web.
W3C Testimonials Members list on HTML 5 funny (Score:2)
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XHTML 2.0 was actually much better than this crap, but it's not an iterative improvement, it's a whole new language altogether.
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It was only "better" on paper (in theory) in some aspects. Without usable implementations in browsers, and wide testing of web content written in it, it's impossible to know if the benefit of its design is actually really better than HTML5.
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XHTML 2.0 was actually much better than this crap, but it's not an iterative improvement, it's a whole new language altogether.
Not hardly. XHTML 2.0 is a pain in the ass. The entire XML child spawn of crap was nothing but overhead.
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Wether it is XML or SGML hardly changes anything with regards to performance.
The evolution of XHTML 2.0 was to ditch compatibility and move to semantic document markup.
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if it weren't for Apple and Google we'd be screwed in a never ending cycle of XML/XHTML/ crap
Indeed, thanks to Apple, we now have "apps".
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I really want to see Packaged Apps [chrome.com] take off across all browsers, mobile and desktop. I'm willing to take a little performance hit to have apps available across all platforms.
Re:W3C Testimonials Members list on HTML 5 funny (Score:4, Informative)
While every standard has its issues I'm really hoping your hatred of XML/XHTML isn't the usual one. That is, that the "problem" with XHTML and XML is that parsers simply refuse to deal with broken XML/XHTML*, as far as I'm concerned that's a feature, not a bug.
* I've heard complaints about this many times, the core complaint seems to be "well, now I have to write markup that's actually standards-compliant and that's just too hard! I want HTML that will render even if it's horribly broken!"
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"well, now I have to write markup that's actually standards-compliant and that's just too hard! I want HTML that will render even if it's horribly broken!"
Of course they do. They miss the days of things like the following when they move to XML/XHTML, and I only added the doctype to get rid of "quirks mode" in IE:
<!DOCTYPE HTML "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<title>Page Title</title>
<p>Under construction!<br>(Isn't it pretty?)
Instead, you have this with XHTML:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> />(Isn't it pretty?)</p>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Under construction!<br
</body>
</html>
For the most part, that's about as minimal as you can get in both cases while still having some content. There is no indication of language, so it could be English or Arabic or whatever. The character set and MIME type are both missing as well, so either of those documents could be a Windows-1252 document with text
Incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
It is by no means finalised. This is like a beta. It's feature complete, now they've got to shake out the interoperability bugs between implementations. During this phase, they can discover that there are flaws or omissions within the specification, which will entail changes to the specification. When they have multiple interoperable implementations, then it will be finalised.
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Yes, but at least now we can program towards a standard that the browsers cannot properly interpret because they aren't built to that standard.
That way we can work out the bugs of figuring out if the bug is the browser or the standard.
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ha!
Good luck trying to get these corps who just blew $10,000,000 upgrading to IE 8 in the last 6 months to throw out their investment because some geeks want cool translucent and animated css 3 divs. Try convincing old people and those who got hit hard in the great recession who are underemployed and work at Walmart (20% of the workforce still!) who are stuck with XP and IE 8 and can't afford a new computer?
HTML 5 is going no where until 2019 or 2020 when Windows 7 hits EOL sadly.
Maybe I am a pessimist but
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I know, right? It's such a shame that MS won the browser wars and killed off the competition.
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So IE has a 0% marketshare!
I can just tell any client ignore 20% of your sales from these users? Wow ...
No they wont change as they are set in their ways and many do not know what a browser is. That blue E is how you get to Google is all they know. Many do not want to install software they never heard off and find that act threatening! IE is what they know it works and if you do not support it on your website a competitor will.
The corps in my example above have intranet apps that only work in IE 6 or IE 8.
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Good luck trying to get these corps who just blew $10,000,000 upgrading to IE 8 in the last 6 months
I certainly hope that if they were spending money to upgrade in the last 6 months that it'd be to upgrade to IE9, not 8.
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2. you can't stop people from being retarded, if you don't know how to upgrade your browser from IE 6, you probably don't care about css3 shadowing on my web page either.
3. There is no compelling reason to make an intranet app follow w3c, and certain older versions of Visual Studio were well known to produce IE only friendly code that was never to standard to begin with (upper
Codec? (Score:1)
Canvas 2D, Level 2 ?? (Score:2)
What is this an RPG ??
And still no standard support for 3D ?
Anyone know if the mouse being constrained to a window made it into the draft?
*sigh*
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The only "sane" reason I can think off the top of my head for being able to constrain the mouse to the window is for 3D (mouselook). What other reason would they allow that?
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Attracting your attention in advertisements?
Marble Madness (Score:2)
The only "sane" reason I can think off the top of my head for being able to constrain the mouse to the window is for 3D (mouselook). What other reason would they allow that?
For any activity that uses gestures on the trackball, trackpad, or mouse other than moving the cursor to a specific point within the viewport. One example of such a gesture is controlling the speed of the ball in Marble Madness or Bobby Bearing.
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It would need to be OPT IN obviously controlled by the user + browser.
Title (Score:1)
W3C Finalizes the Definition of HTML5
I don't know why, but I read that initially as "W3C Demonizes the Definition of HTML5". I like my version better. For web developers, the idea of yet another standard to make their site compatible with probably earns the W3C the special hell they reserve for child molesters, standards body members, and people who speak in theatre. Shiny.
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you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
typical (Score:4, Funny)
I have only just finished reading the HTML4 spec.
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Do you work for MS on the IE team or something? That seems like the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from them...
How far are you into the CSS2 spec? I know, I know, you've only had 14 years to read it, and that's not quite long enough, and CSS2.1 is only just "finished" last year.
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Quick! (Score:4, Funny)
Someone get a copy of this over to Microsoft's IE dev dept!
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Someone get a copy of this over to Microsoft's IE dev dept!
Did you mean to reply to this post instead:
I have only just finished reading the HTML4 spec.
"it is ready for interoperability testing" (Score:1)
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I bet you were one of those in 1999 that declared most browsers will use HTML5 when HTML4 is done.
versioning will never fix fundamental flaw (Score:3, Interesting)
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As to what? Javascript?
I bet you've never, ever used a unit test in your life.
A whole generation, ruined.
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I'd say the HTML saga did the opposite of stifling innovation. It strongly encourages it.
It does stifle productivity more often than not though.
A half dozen years late courtesy of Firefox... (Score:2)
I hate to be writing this, but if it hadn't been for Firefox fighting a losing war for ogg for the video tag (as in duh, who builds hardware for that when x264 is the de facto standard?!?), this article would likely have appeared on Slashdot a half dozen years ago.
Re:A half dozen years late courtesy of Firefox... (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll hate *much* more the day the H.264 licensing moster raises its ugly head.
Next round for starting asking for licensing fees is 2015
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing [wikipedia.org]
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You'll hate *much* more the day the H.264 licensing moster raises its ugly head.
Next round for starting asking for licensing fees is 2015 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing [wikipedia.org]
Which won't happen. The patent holders have too much invested in hardware to cut off their noses to spite their face.
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You'll hate *much* more the day the H.264 licensing moster raises its ugly head.
Next round for starting asking for licensing fees is 2015
Royalty increases max out to 10% per five year term. H.264 royalties are for all practical purposes of no concern to all but the largest commercial distributers of H.264 hardware and content. The geek may have noticed that Chrome still supports H.264 with no changes in prospect and Firefox will support it when video hardware supports it --- and hardware support for H.264 is universal.
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Except when dedicated h.264 hardware isn't available. I don't recall having any such decoder in my desktop. Oops, looks like I don't get h.264 support. Worse if you don't run Windows or OS X, then you're perpetually in a legal grey area.
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Not really. There are many new additions with HTML5 and the codec choice was just one major visible fight among countless small decisions on tags, attributes, DOM, etc.
Personally I think even the buzzword is a misnomer (Score:2)
http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/07/why-html5-buzzword-is-misnomer.html [blogspot.ca]
Unfortunately it's insecure by design (Score:1)
https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-12/Briefings/Shah/BH_US_12_Shah_Silent_Exploits_WP.pdf