Ian Hickson on Codecs for the HTML 5 ‘audio’ and ‘video’ Tags

The goal was for there to be at least one standard video codec that would work across all HTML 5 browsers — one format that would work across browsers and platforms with no plugins.

But, alas, the result is an impasse. Apple won’t support Ogg Theora, and Mozilla and Opera won’t support H.264. (Google, admirably, is willing to support both in Chrome, but they don’t consider Ogg good enough to use for YouTube.) So there will be no standard HTML 5 video codec. So it goes.

(Let it be said that Ian Hickson is the Solomon of web standards; his summary of the situation is mind-bogglingly even-handed and fair-minded.)

★ Wednesday, 1 July 2009