SublimeVideo — HTML5 Video Player

This is so fucking great: an HTML5 video player by Jilion with beautiful playback controls, click-to-play control over automatic buffering, full-window playback with gorgeous animated transitions, and more. Works great in Safari, MobileSafari, and Chrome; Firefox support is in the works. Oh, and if you’re using a current WebKit Nightly build: full-screen playback. Seriously, this is the real deal — full-screen H.264 playback with no Flash, no browser plugins, full iPhone OS support, and sane CPU usage, better in every single regard than any video player ever made with Flash.

When I wrote this piece on HTML5 and auto-buffering last month, I was focused only on the built-in browser controls. SublimeVideo shows that I was wrong (or at least myopic) — the existing browser support is probably good enough, it just needs to be supplemented with JavaScript to exert necessary control over buffering and more attractive playback controls.

Update: Their server was down for a while, but appears to be back now.

★ Monday, 1 February 2010