07.02.11
Web Plug-ins Dealt a Blow
Thanks to Firefox/Mozilla, Google, and even Opera
Summary: The World Wide Web is getting freer, so we are finally going to embrace both Ogg and WebM for multimedia
Microsoft Silverlight is nearly dead and Windows Phone 7 is never going to save it because it just isn’t selling. Flash, in the mean time, is under attack by Google from two fronts; one is WebM and the other is a Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool.
For those who have not heard yet:
-
Google offers Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool
Google announced an online tool allowing developers to convert Flash animations to HTML5. Thanks to “Swiffy,” those animations can then be run on Apple’s iPad and other devices that do not support Adobe Flash.
As HTML5 appears to be moving ahead of technologies such as Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft Silverlight with some developers, Google has moved in with Swiffy, a new Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool.
-
Swiffy- Convert Flash files to HTML5
Swiffy is a small tool from Google that converts Flash files to HTML5 for use on non Flash player devices.You can upload SWF file and Swiffy will convert it to HTML5 file which can be displayed on all modern browsers “with a high level of SVG support such as Chrome and Safari.”
People sometimes ask why TechBytes makes content available as YouTube videos in additional to the original Ogg files; well, the answer is always the same. YouTube won’t require Flash for much longer. it will be webM-based, without the dependence on the MPEG cartel , either, Google deserves credit for doing the right thing in that regard. We will soon have the option to choose between WebM and Ogg.
Remember what makes Google different from Apple and Microsoft (which actively support the MPEG cartel). █
NotZed said,
July 2, 2011 at 7:42 pm
“Remember what makes Google different from Apple and Microsoft (which actively support the MPEG cartel).”
Although I don’t think google’s interest here is entirely altruistic. Everything they do is about making money and not having to pay recurring fees to do it. i.e. no per-server license costs by starting with gnu/linux, no per-device license fee for java by writing their own broken version, etc. I bet even FaeceBook would have given them access to data if they paid (enough) for it, but with G+ they can keep it all in-house.
Not that i think that is necessarily a bad thing – so long as they don’t close this opportunity off to those that follow. This is really what licensing fees do – lock in the status quo and prevent unfunded competitors from entering the market.
And of course the good-will they engender in the world at large for supporting open standards is worth a good deal of money in itself too.
So in the end it’s still about making loads of dough – which ultimately leads to greed, which is increasingly obvious is real root of all evil and the main cause of so much misery in the world.
NB: ‘swiffy’ is server-side only (i.e. ‘fog service’) with no source. Doesn’t work at all on my client. And in any event i’m utterly dreading the day that animations and sound start playing when i visit every web page – without being able to opt-in as I can with flash-block (or not installing flash). And unlike flash-block which (more or less) fully contains the application, you can’t just disable it since then nothing will work.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz said,
July 4, 2011 at 3:21 am
It never is. However, it can sometimes be compatible with the people’s interests.
saulgoode said,
July 6, 2011 at 11:54 am
Your dozens of iframe embedded Youtube videos have made visiting your website tedious and unpleasant. Loading on a Celeron-era processor (P4 2GHz) takes about 20 seconds and the browser is blocked from doing anything else during this time (other CPU processes are also hindered). None of these embedded videos appear to be viewable on a machine without Flash support. Are any these supposed to be in WebM format? Does WebM work for embedded video? Is it not possible to link to the Flash and MPEG4 versions offsite?
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 6th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Google is supposed to switch over to WebM. The mistake that I made, now that you mention it, is that I don’t abbreviate posts (for multi-post pages). I will correct this.
twitter Reply:
July 7th, 2011 at 11:03 pm
Thanks for the notice, I thought it was just me. Videos might work in a version of Firefox that I don’t have but I never bother. US bandwith is so bad that it is easier to download things and watch them later. Thanks also, Roy, for fixing things.
One thing you can do to help is to change your gtk-gnash settings to “start is pause” or remove gtk-flash completely. This makes it easier to browse all sorts of web pages, even with an 1.2 GHz PIII like the one I’m typing this message with.
I’ve also read that any YouTube can be played as WebM if you append “&html5=True” to the URL.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 8th, 2011 at 1:46 am
The videos posted from now on will appear in the front page with just the first video and a button for “more”/”read on”. I hope this helps. It sure takes little effort to make those videos, compared to other things. TechBytes probably takes the least time.