Internet Explorer gains modicum of HTML5
Internet Explorer fans can now get a taste of the video elements in HTML5 without having to switch browsers. Through a new in-development plug-in bundled with codecs from Xiph.org, users can activate rudimentary support for OGG-formatted HTML5 video on Windows 32-bit and 64-bit computers.
Checking off the HTML5 box during the plug-in's installation is the easy part.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)There are several problems that the plug-in has yet to solve to bring it up to parity with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and the latest Opera beta, which natively support HTML5 in full. The plug-in leaves out support for H.264, lacks playback controls such as seeking, doesn't offer any HTML5 interface, and requires changing an XMLNS attribute within the <video> tag to make it work. The plug-in and installation instructions come courtesy of developer Cristian Adam.
The attribute users need to add is xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/video".
In short, it's complex to implement and an imperfect HTML5 solution for Internet Explorer at the moment. Future versions are expected to clean up much of the mess, so IE could wind up with decent, unofficial HTML5 support sooner rather than later.
Currently, the plug-in isn't the only way to get HTML5 support in Internet Explorer. Google's Chrome Frame will let you render HTML5 via the Chrome browser in IE. Users who want to run the plug-in in legacy versions of Internet Explorer can follow instructions from the plug-in author here.
It's safe to say that trying to implement it isn't for the faint-hearted. Despite the available work-arounds, Internet Explorer still has a long way to go before it is HTML5-compliant.
(Via Download Squad)
Seth peers into the deep, dark corners of software so that you don't have to. He has yet to suffer a single nightmare about OS/2. You can follow him on Twitter. 
The reason why Microsoft is the last in implementing anything is because unlike others, Microsoft has to also take a step back and think of how making any change would impact it's primary customers aka Corporations. IE is the de facto for Corporate Intranet and Corporate Apps (in majority of the Fortune 500 companies).
Unlike consumers, corporations take forever to make a decision about upgrade. We just upgraded to IE7 a couple of months back and the only reason why it took us this long was because the millions we poured into our in-house application was not compatible with IE7. Had we not moved to Oracle Apps, we wouldn't have upgraded to IE7 and would have been stuck on IE6.
For Chrome, Safari, Opera, their target audience is consumers who can switch in a blink of an eye because the only investment they have is the $1000 computer and some off the shelf software (Office, Photoshop, etc...) most of which (if not all) are compatible with latest browsers. As for Firefox, it is slowly gaining momentum in Corporations but only time will tell just how well companies embrace Firefox as compared to IE.
Just something to think about.
Though it looks like that's bound to change soon with IE9.
And to note, IE6 was actually ahead of the market when it came out even supporting many features that sparked a good amount of the HTML5 spec today, though at the time they were proprietary.
IE has driven up the cost of web development for over a decade now. I'm tired of doing crappy hacks to get a web page to render and behave properly. IE8 is better than IE6, but it is still the most problematic of all the major browsers.
HTML5 isn't done. It isn't a "standard" until it's done, and frankly, people ***** and moan everytime IE upgrades come out. Heck it's been out a year and my university STILL has no IE8 (the easiest of them all) support.
At the least you'll see maybe a partial version in IE9, whether it's been completed or not. But Microsoft is among those who wish for HTML5 to see the light of day.
Compliant with what? A half-finished specification?
The spec changed as recently as five hours ago (check out @WHATWG) - so it's a bit incredulous to suggest that "Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and the latest Opera beta... natively support HTML5 in full." Was that the old draft they supported or the new draft?
Tim
Please stop pretending that html5 is a "standard", it is not. It might one day become one but currently it's just a working draft that in current implementations offer very little of any consistency, so let's not pretend that a browser exists today that supports html5 "in full" as you so ignorantly put it.
Then there's the myth that Safari actually "natively" supports anything related to html5. Fact is, that if you want to pretend that Safari supports the video tag, then you'll have no choice but say that Internet Explorer does as well. See, Safari doesn't actually support video in the browser, just try installing Safari on a clean system without Quicktime... woops, video tag not working :( So when you then look around what's actually going on in the browser, you'll see that when Safari encounters a video tag, it actually rewrites it to oldschool embed code for the Quicktime plugin to consume. Let's not even mention what goes on with Safari on Iphone, where the video tag simply triggers the standalone Quicktime application.
Yet reporters like you continue to insist that this is what "full html5" support looks like... if this is indeed what html5 is supposed to be, then Internet Explorer (any version) with a 5 line Javascript included fully supports html5 as well.
- by Maeldor February 25, 2010 3:25 PM PST
- "Internet Explorer fans"
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(18 Comments)Lol. I think even Microsoft fans aren't a fan of IE.