Adobe’s John Dowdell on Chrome Dropping H.264

He’s downright giddy:

The VIDEO tag was simply not well-considered at the outset. Its original rationale was: “You don’t require a plug-in to view images… video is the next natural evolution of that.” But from the very start the practical questions about use were swept under the rug… at least until the rug started piling up too high. It wasn’t sustainable.

So, (a) he thinks Chrome just killed the HTML5 <video> element.

Video publishers need the VIDEO tag for one purpose only: to support Apple’s non-standard HTML browser and its denial of third-party extensibility via APPLET, OBJECT, and EMBED.

And (b) Dowdell thinks <video> is needed only for iOS devices, and (c) that MobileSafari is non-standards-compliant because it doesn’t support plugins like Flash. I.e. Flash is standard, <video> is not, and we’ve always been at war with Eurasia.

(a) Might be true, (b) obviously is not, and (c) is pretty much the craziest thing I’ve read in a while.

But: we have an answer to my question about who’s happy about Chrome dropping H.264 support.

★ Friday, 14 January 2011