Month: May 2011

One of my favorite parts of the new HTML5 spec is the browser based support for video and audio. Up till now, adding video (or audio) to your web page involved an annoying process involving Adobe Flash and inserting some of the ugliest code known to man into your webpage. The <video> and <audio> tags will change all of that!

The <audio> and <video> tags operate the exact same way, and I don’t want to accidentally encourage anybody to place background music (or the sounds of farm animals) on there website! So from here on out we’ll talk solely about the <video> tag!

From a code standpoint, embedding video couldn’t be easier. Open a <video> tag, place the actual video source inside, and the browser does the rest!

All modern browsers support HTML5 video, but (there’s always a but) they support difference video formats. The latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera support Google’s WebM open video format. Both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari don’t support WebM and instead use H.264 for video playback.

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