HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Flash and Apple
Within the last several years, Adobe Flash became the dominant format for embedding
video on the Web because Adobe Flash Player was free and available on a variety of
different platforms and operating systems. However in April 2010, Steve Jobs, CEO of
Apple, explained that Apple would not support Flash on its mobile devices, including
the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Among the reasons cited, Jobs included his concerns that a)
Flash was proprietary, a fact that inhibits the future development of multimedia on the
Web; b) Flash was not secure or reliable and adversely affects the performance of mobile
devices; c) Flash was a significant drain on battery life; and d) Flash was designed for
PCs using a mouse interface and could not be adapted to the touch interface found on
mobile devices. Rather than relying on Flash, Jobs advocated the continuing develop-
ment of open standards for Web video including the rapid adoption of HTML5.
However, thousands of Web sites had made considerable investments in Flash and
were not happy with the prospect of significantly retooling their sites. In response, in
March 2011, Adobe released a tool to convert Flash files to HTML5-compatible formats
so they run on Apple's mobile devices. Also, Flash is supported on several mobile operat-
ing systems, such as the Android platform for mobile devices.
Users running older browsers will not be able to use HTML5 video; so for complete
cross-browser support, you'll make a Flash version of the
Royal Wedding
clip available
to users. Maxine has created an Adobe Flash Player file named
rwdance.swf
containing
both the video clip and the controls to run it.
Embedding a Flash Player
To embed a Flash Player, you use the
object
element
<object data=”
url
”
type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”
width=”
value
” height=”
value
”>
<param name=”movie” value=”
url
” />
parameters
</object>
where
url
is the location and filename of the SWF file, and
parameters
is other param-
eter elements that manage the appearance and actions of the player. Notice that you
always must include at least the
movie
parameter to identify the video file to be played
in the Flash player.
Adding a Flash Player File
• To add a Flash player (.swf) file, use the
object
element
<object data=”
url
”
type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”
width=”
value
” height=”
value
”>
<param name=”movie” value=”
url
” />
parameters
</object>
where
url
is the location and filename of the SWF file, and
parameters
is other
parameter elements that manage the appearance and actions of the player.
You'll nest an
object
element within the
video
element you just created to display a
Flash Player for the
rwdance.swf
file, setting the dimensions of the player to 280 pixels
wide by 239 pixels high.
