HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Video and
Audio
Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp
A LONG TIME AGO,
in a galaxy that feels a very long
way away, multimedia on the Web was limited to tinkling
MIDI tunes and animated GIFs. As bandwidth got faster
and compression technologies improved, MP3 music
supplanted MIDI and real video began to gain ground.
All sorts of proprietary players battled it out—Real Player,
Windows Media, and so on—until one emerged as the vic-
tor in 2005: Adobe Flash, largely because of the ubiquity
of its plugin and the fact that it was the delivery mecha-
nism of choice for YouTube.
HTML5 provides a competing, open standard for delivery
of multimedia on the Web with its native video and audio
elements and APIs. This chapter largely discusses the
<video>
element, as that's sexier, but most of the markup
and scripting are applicable for both types of media.
