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On desktops, falling back to flash for H.264 decoding is a pretty good strategy. On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if
by MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
On desktops, falling back to flash for H.264 decoding is a pretty good strategy.
On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if existent) on Android devices--and now there is no clear solution that doesn't involve serving multiple encodings.
Before this change, you could be comfortable that your H.264 HTML5 video would play on the majority of smartphones; the flash fallback was only necessary for desktop browsers.
- eordano 16y agoThere is no Chrome for smartphones, and so far no one has said anything about dropping H.264 on Android (although you can see it happening as soon as WebM extensions for ARM start being more popular). (edited: typo)
- MiguelHudnandez 16y agoYou are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
- DrHankPym 16y agoBecause Android is open and developed with the cellular carriers and manufacturers. If they want to add a H.264 chip, why would Google stop them?
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoThey'll almost certainly have an H.264 chip but the standard Android browser (and Firefox and Opera Mobile) might not take advantage of it when faced with an HTML5 video tag. Maybe we'll see Apple and Microsoft release browsers for Android!
- beej71 16y agoThat's a fine argument, but it's just not the one in the article.