HTML 5 <video> tag vs Flash video. What are the pros and cons?
IMPORTANT UPDATE
This question was made over 9 years ago. It made sense then, it doesn't make it now. Flash is hard on its way out; <video> support is ubiquitous, including mobile devices. Almost anything that Flash could do, HTML can now do too. HTML won, Flash lost. If you're pondering on how to embed video in your page, just use <video> and don't give it a second thought. This question is only preserved for historical value.
Original question
Seems like the new <video> tag is all the hype these days, especially since Firefox now supports it. News of this are popping up in blogs all over the place, and everyone seems to be excited. But what about?
As much as I searched I could not find anything that would make it better than the good old Flash video. In fact, I see only problems with it:
- It will still be some time before all the browsers start supporting it, and much more time before most people upgrade;
- Flash is available already and everyone has it;
- You can couple Flash with whatever fancy UI you want for controlling the playback. I gather that the tag will be controllable as well (via JavaScript probably), but will it be able to go fullscreen?
The only two pros for a <video> tag that I can see are:
- It is more "semantic" - which probably holds no importance to a whole lot of people, including me;
- It is not dependent on a single commercial 3rd party entity (Adobe) - which I also don't see as a compelling reason to switch, because free players and video converters are already available, and Adobe is not hindering the whole process in any way (it's not in their interests even).
So... what's the big deal?
Added:
OK, so there is one more Pro... maybe. Support for mobile devices. Hard to say though. A number of thoughts race through my head about the subject:
- How many mobile devices are actually able to decode video at a decent speed anyway, Flash or otherwise?
- How long until mainstream mobile devices get the
<video>support? Even if it is available through updates, how many people actually do that? - How many people watch videos on web pages on their mobile phones at all?
As for the semantics part - I understand that search engines might be able to detect videos better now, but... what will they do with them anyway? OK, so they know that there is a video in the page. And? They can't index a video! I'd like some more arguments here.
Added:
Just thought of another Cons. This opens up a whole new area of cross-browser incompatibility. HTML and CSS is quite messy already in this aspect. Flash at least is the same everywhere. But it's enough for at least one major browser vendor to decide against the <video> tag (can anyone say "Internet Explorer"?) and we have a nice new area of hell to explore.
Added:
A Pro just came in. More competition = more innovation. That's true. Giving Adobe more competition will probably force them to improve Flash in areas it has been lacking so far. Linux seems to be a weak spot for it, cited by many.
Answer
Imagine if there was no img tag. If you want images, you have to use a 3rd party plugin, that is really slow and has no standard way to embed it in a page. You can't easily copy images in this way, and search engines basically have no clue what if it's an image or a game or anything.
Without this, no images were available.
Then imagine that a browser was released that just let you use this fancy new img tag.
The video (and audio) tag are a logical sensible way for things to work. We shouldn't need a third party plugin to use a completely standard media format.