Head of Microsoft's Internet Explorer says HTML5 is the 'future'
Following Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' comments this week predicting Adobe Flash will fall to open standards like HTML5, the general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser agreed and said HTML5 is "the future of the Web."
Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, indirectly referenced the conflict between Jobs and Adobe on Thursday, when he wrote on the IEBlog about support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer. He noted that the forthcoming IE9 will support hardware acceleration with H.264-encoded HTML5 video playback in Windows 7.
"The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C," Hachamovitch wrote. "HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only."
Apple played a prominent role in the growth of the MPEG H.264 video codec by making it the standard for compression in iTunes. Now an industry standard, H.264 has broad hardware support, which allows users to easily film video, put it on the Web, and have it play on any operating system or device, Hachamovitch noted.
The IE general manager also acknowledged that most video on the Web today is based on Adobe Flash, and using a browser without Flash is difficult. But he also admitted that Flash has "issues."
"While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers," he wrote. "Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today's web."
While Hachamovitch's comments did not specifically acknowledge it, they came just hours after Apple's Jobs publicly slammed Flash, suggesting the Web format was created for the "PC era," while the world is currently moving to the "mobile era." Jobs said that Flash is prone to cause crashes, hurts battery life on mobile devices, and is not designed for touch screens.
Later Thursday, Adobe's CEO fired back, suggesting that most crashes of Flash in OS X are not related to his software, but instead are the fault of Apple's operating system. Shantanu Narayen said that his company and Apple have different views of the world, and Adobe believes the future is multi-platform. He said Flash allows developers to write software and provide video in one format and have it accessible on a range of devices, while Apple's App Store is restricted to the iPhone OS ecosystem.
Microsoft's comments indicate that it, like Apple, is placing the majority of its browser support for streaming video behind HTML5. Apple has banned Flash from its iPhone OS-powered line of devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Users with that hardware can watch streaming video with HTML5 or through software available on the App Store.
Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, indirectly referenced the conflict between Jobs and Adobe on Thursday, when he wrote on the IEBlog about support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer. He noted that the forthcoming IE9 will support hardware acceleration with H.264-encoded HTML5 video playback in Windows 7.
"The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C," Hachamovitch wrote. "HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only."
Apple played a prominent role in the growth of the MPEG H.264 video codec by making it the standard for compression in iTunes. Now an industry standard, H.264 has broad hardware support, which allows users to easily film video, put it on the Web, and have it play on any operating system or device, Hachamovitch noted.
The IE general manager also acknowledged that most video on the Web today is based on Adobe Flash, and using a browser without Flash is difficult. But he also admitted that Flash has "issues."
"While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers," he wrote. "Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today's web."
While Hachamovitch's comments did not specifically acknowledge it, they came just hours after Apple's Jobs publicly slammed Flash, suggesting the Web format was created for the "PC era," while the world is currently moving to the "mobile era." Jobs said that Flash is prone to cause crashes, hurts battery life on mobile devices, and is not designed for touch screens.
Later Thursday, Adobe's CEO fired back, suggesting that most crashes of Flash in OS X are not related to his software, but instead are the fault of Apple's operating system. Shantanu Narayen said that his company and Apple have different views of the world, and Adobe believes the future is multi-platform. He said Flash allows developers to write software and provide video in one format and have it accessible on a range of devices, while Apple's App Store is restricted to the iPhone OS ecosystem.
Microsoft's comments indicate that it, like Apple, is placing the majority of its browser support for streaming video behind HTML5. Apple has banned Flash from its iPhone OS-powered line of devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Users with that hardware can watch streaming video with HTML5 or through software available on the App Store.
Comments
lame...
what do you expect from a me too company? a me too statement
lame...
On the other hand they are currently trying not to be a me too company - and therefore just killed the Courier.
On the other hand they are currently trying not to be a me too company - and therefore just killed the Courier.
i don't think you can kill something that doesn't exist, can you?
it would do us all a lot of good if they killed IE instead, which does exist, unfortunately
what do you expect from a me too company? a me too statement
lame...
I think that's a little unfair. Microsoft are starting to improve the way they do things. After years of having a self taught amateur as their head of software, now with Ray Ozzie, they are starting to do things more sensibly.
Whilst they are still way behind, Apple fans should not be so smug about Microsoft, with their money and good people leading them (excluding Balmer here), they can remain a force.
On the other hand they are currently trying not to be a me too company - and therefore just killed the Courier.
First of all you are assuming there was a Courier to kill, other than a rendered animation. You know I have a great startship animation I did, it's awesome and has photon cannons, a warp plasma drive that runs off of smiles and food dispensers that make a hot fudge brownie sunday that will make you blow a load! But eh, I think I'm going to just shelve it for now for future consideration.
Secondly they aren't being 'me too' they see that Jobs has started a battle and it makes sense for them to be on the side of open standards, while I don't believe they EVER would have made any of those statements without Apple firing the first (and second and third shots) they know it makes sense for them to stand on 'that side of the line in the sand', good will do the same soon most likely, not because of a 'me too' attitude but because it makes sense and is what is best for them.
Apple reported sold over 1 million IPADS>>>WOW!!
Is it just me or is this guy on every thread?
Anyway, as for IE9 and HTML5 all I can say is THANK GOD. Unfortunately there are still millions (yes millions) of people still using Satan (IE 6), so even when IE 9 is released it will be awhile before we can move away from Flash. But MS and Jobs are both right theoretically, HTML + JS + CSS3 does == the death of Flash. But it won't be until IE9 over takes the older IE versions in global market share.
The most exciting part about IE9 for me is the DOM level 3 support for JS, which is what really allows JavaScript to do anything even remotely like Flash and what most people mean when they say HTML5 is replacing Flash. For those of you who care about semantics, HTML5 is NOT replacing Flash, HTML/JS/AJAX/CSS is. And the most critical part of that puzzle is JS which has been a nightmare to develop with any kind of consistency across browsers until recently (webkit / html5) and is still being held up by IE8.
All these examples you see going around with fancy HTML5 + JS implementations are only running well on webkit browsers which basically means they are useless in the real world. IE9 however will finally bring MS into the present day and hopefully change all that. Now if we could only get the corporate world to abandon IE7 and XP we could really free the web.
Apple reported sold over 1 million IPADS>>>WOW!!
But I though no one wanted an over sized iPod Touch
This time MS gets it.
But I though no one wanted an over sized iPod Touch
The iPod Touch is just an undersized iPad!
This is big. This means that all those businesses still holding on to flash now see that not only safari, firefox and chrome will heavily support the html5 platform. But also IE. Though the browser is absolutely wanting, it is unfortunately still used in most businesses and corporations. Therefore compatibility would have always been a concern on the internet. This also means the web developers only have to focus html 5 rather than html5 and flash.
We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. While this is big (albeit old) news the biggest coup isn't against Flash as a whole as there are many things to be done and many years to go before HTML5 will even be a contender for the greater part of Flash, and it won't do it without JS and CSS in toe.
The two biggest gains here are the HTML5 video tag and H.264 support.
The first one attacks Flash as a video portal. HTML5 video will be the primary way we watch video in the future. Looking at the handsets and the current options Flash for video has already started to drop and will continue to shrink in favour of lighter and better technologies.
The latter attacks Firefox's silly play not to support H.264. When you have Google, MS and Apple all supporting it in their browsers; with YouTube, Vimeo, YouTube and Netflix all using it on their servers; and finally CPU and GPUs providing HW acceleration for H.264 and not Ogg you get a very clear picture of what video codec is going to dominate in the future. Mozilla and Opera can't fight all those companies.
Following Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' comments this week predicting Adobe Flash will fall to open standards like HTML5, the general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser agreed and said HTML5 is "the future of the Web."
I, for one, won't dis MS for this bit of news.
MS has a lot of clout. For them to make this statement about Flash right after Steve's dissertation...
... Flash is definitely dead.
The iPod Touch is just an undersized iPad!
Do you still have the cartoon where a group decided to work day and night to catch on to the competition?!
Do you still have the cartoon where a group decided to work day and night to catch on to the competition?!
Apple reported sold over 1 million IPADS>>>WOW!!
Where does this number come from? If you cite something, provide the reference. As others pointed out here: just announcing isn't enough.
But once the processor thermal wall was hit, it changed a lot of things. Multi-cores, hyper-threading, Grand Central and laptops stuck on dual cores, the new 13" MacBook Pro didn´t get a processor upgrade. Even the i5 and i7ś are much too hot in the new 15 and 17¨ MacBook Pro´s, Intel likely has gone as far as it can with laptop processors.
3D gaming has been leaving computers for consoles with more processors and elaborate cooling systems, that leaves laptops to become less powerful, smaller, thinner and lighter.
This generation of MacBook Pro´s might be the last, Apple might introduce some sort of iPad/MacBook Air combination device with the lower powered A4 processors.
Shantanu Narayen said that his company and Apple have different views of the world, and Adobe believes the future is multi-platform. He said Flash allows developers to write software and provide video in one format and have it accessible on a range of devices, while Apple's App Store is restricted to the iPhone OS ecosystem.
The fact that he has to argue something completely unrelated shows Adobe doesn't have a leg to stand on. Video delivered with HTML5 is most certainly not limited to the iPhone app store.