Killing Flash

No, not that one:

(Photo from Cryptonaut used under CC license)

I'm talking about Adobe's Flash.

Like a lot of people, I don't like that technology at all (for building internet websites). It's a proprietary software with all the usual drawbacks (you don't know what the software does, you are not allowed to find out what it does, you can't use an alternative software for playing Flash content, you are tight to Adobe's fate…). You should know that Flash is installed on something like 99% of computers, much more than Microsoft Windows, so it's a very interesting target for pirates, a security flaw in Flash player (and it already happens) is a very good opportunity for a cross-platform virus/malware.

So it has nothing to do on an open web. Read more about this in this article: When you see Flash, duck and cover.

But unfortunately, Flash is used a lot, especially for playing audio and video on a website. Have a look at Youtube or Dailymotion.

Even on my blog I have used it for playing videos and songs (for instance in my Roomba and OpenBSD posts).

For a long time I was hearing about new "audio" and "video" tags in HTML 5 specifications. Sounds interesting for building websites using open standards and not depending on Adobe's Flash anymore for this usage.

Those of you knowing a bit the world of video/audio codecs may wonder how we can have an "open standard" about audio and video. In fact codecs are crippled with patents (a lot of them). Even on HTML 5 specs it's written that the codecs situation is problematic.

So replacing a closed proprietary technology with patented codecs is not really an improvement.

You might be interesting reading why we need open video.

Fortunately, there are some good open source, patent free codecs. On xiph.org you can find ogg multimedia container, the vorbis audio codec and the theora video codec. Vorbis and theora are high quality codecs, but yes, you can find better video codecs than theora, but they all use some patented algorithms.

Few weeks ago mozilla released a beta version of Firefox handling those new tags for vorbis and theora content. One of the most used web browser will now be able to play videos that way. The question is "Will people (webmasters) use this technology?". The answer seems to be "YES".

Dailymotion is trying a version of its website using the new HTML5 tags and vorbis and theora codecs. If you have installed Firefox 3.5, you can try it on Dailymotion demo video or even using Dailymotion openvideo website.

This is very good news for web's future.