Simon Ransome wrote:
On 22/07/2010 17:31, Marcus Harris wrote:
we have a Flash player that works, and the other platforms have Flash players that work, too. The alternatives would be windows and maybe mac desktop apps, or plugins, or just media in proprietary formats.
<snip>
That's a very good point, well made. Imagine if, in the late 90s and early 2000s when IE was *the* de facto browser (with > 95% market share), that MS had actually implemented a <video> tag. [...]
I seem to recall it pretty much did, with Microsoft Video ActiveX control in about 2003. Of course, it was done in a pretty MS way, in that it was easier if you used Microsoft development tools to publish and that it had serious security vulnerabilities patches years later, but I expect a <ms-video> tag would have had those features too ;-)
So, they tried and were about as successful as most MS tech. (One of the reasons MS dominates is that their products multiply faster than tribbles and so *some* are bound to catch on. Windows for Pen anyone?)
One could almost conclude that Flash - given that it is mostly cross platform and has been for a fairly long time, or at worst at least the video format of which was based on a published spec (patents or no) -
Again, there's the myth that Flash is "mostly cross platform". Compare http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/ which shows it supports six Windows versions, three versions of MacOS X, Firefox-only on three Linux distributions (i386 only, although not stated?) and one Solaris. Some of those implementations are partial, too. That's maybe slightly cross platform, definitely not mostly.
may have significantly helped stave off such an absolute lock-in situation for long enough for there to be proper browser competition and to allow discussion about a more open <video> tag to happen at all.
What do LUGgers think has helped <video> happen now? I think the Adobe-Apple tug of war on iPlatforms has helped combine with other unsupported platforms to finally move things forwards. If there had been more unsupprted platforms earlier, that increased market demand means it would have happened earlier.
Regards,