The current HTML 4.01 specification was finalized in 1999. 10 years have since passed. The World Wide Web is in dire need of a new standards. HTML 5, has very much become the focus of many in the Web world. HTML 5 support, in fact, is already embedded into the latest browser release – Mozilla Firefox 3.5.
It may be sometime before the HTML 5 specifications are finalized and released (in 2022?). However, a number of browsers are already supporting HTML 5 in their latest releases. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari are among the few browsers who have built support for HTML 5 in their latest browsers.
HTML 5 And Open Video In FireFox 3.5
The new HTML 5 video tag allows webmasters to insert audio videos easily into their websites. Firefox 3.5 also supports Open Video. The open video format supported and embeded within the new browser is the Ogg Theora and Vorbis codec.
HTML 5 and Open Video allows Firefox 3.5 to stream Ogg formated videos without the need of any third party plug-ins. No flash, Quicktime, Real Player, etc. Videos are played directly by the browser itself.
The following video is embedded in here using HTML 5’s video tag.
Your browser does not support the video tag. Upgrade your browser to view the video
You should be able to view the video above if you are viewing with Firefox 3.5 or any other browsers that supports HTML 5.
This <video> tag is certainly a nice improvement from the old <object> tag in HTML4.01. The <video> tag works similar to the <img> tag. Check it out. Just copy and paste the following code into a web page.
<video src=’http://tinyvid.tv/file/3uwvr4t3wi3rm.ogg’ controls=’controls’></video>
That’s all it takes to insert a video into your web page. No worries about the availability of any third party video players like flash, real players, quicktime, etc.
Admittedly, Open Video and HTML 5 still have a long way to go. It’ll take a few years before they are fully supported by the mainstream web. At the moment, only a few sites are embracing the new open format. Among them is DailyMotion, who is transcoding all their video content into the Ogg Theora and Vorbis Open Video format. Check out DailyMotion’s Open Video Demo page.
HTML 5 and all its benefits will certainly reach users long before the final version of the specification is released. Thanks to parties like Google, DailyMotion, and Mozilla Firefox. They are the driving force who will bring forth HTML 5 to the world wide web.
Following are a few more related readings on HTML 5, Open Video and Firefox 3.5