Apple's HTML5 'standards' hype debunked

Safari the new IE6

Also to blast Flash whilst using bloated languages like Javascript and CSS? Heh.

Duly piss off Apple.

Typical.

Anyone emailed Steve Jobs about this?

Own goal

I think Apple have a valid point and HTML5 and open standards are the future, and Safari is a VERY complete and capable HTML5 implementation, but cheap tricks such as using browser sniffing to prevent the page running in other browsers are just that, a cheap trick, and don't do them any favours.

Try the demos here

The really stupid thing is that the same demos are available from the safari developer website without the browser check: http://developer.apple.com/safaridemos/

All work find on Chrome for instance (apart from the video one that needs a quicktime codec - why not the much lauded h264?). Apparently Firefox also works quite well.

Someone should explain the meaning of the word standards to whatever marketing wonk thought this was a good idea.

Have a little sympathy...

...for the poor guys in the office.

Would you want to be the one explaining to Skeletor that HTML5 isn't what he thinks it is, is a year off being completed and actually most Flash video is using h.264 at the moment anyway.

...then you're ordered to produce a showcase site demonstrating how great HTML5 is.

Having difficulty suppressing my contempt for Apple...

Don't. Let fly like Jobs.

BS

HTML 5 is a half baked techology right now. The spec is not completed never mind implemented. Flash does have some problems. But it is still very useful. Especially to advertisers. And for us it is very useful for streaming video. And it is cross platform.

Flash won't be dead for maybe another 5 years.

Open means whatever Jobs wants it to mean.

Also Flash will be on Android, MeeGo, Windows Phone and other platforms.

Apple talking crap again..

of course the iTards will lap it up, I mean why would tha nice Mr Jobs feed up with untruths? However anyone with ANY common sense will ask how comes this does not work with Opera 10.5 when it's WAY more HTML5, CSS3 and SVG compliant than any Apple offering (and any Mozilla or Google offering for that matter too)

Yet more whining from the Apple bashers

We can all agree that HTML5/CSS3 is a work in progress. Apple have created a showcase that presents the _potential_ that this emerging standard is capable of, but instead of giving a little credit where credit is due, other browser vendors start bitching that Apple locks them out by browser sniffing. Well there's a bloody good reason: other browsers don't yet support HTML5/CSS3 to the same level as Safari and Apple, quite rightly IMO, don't want the users to experience a broken demo. Most users wouldn't understand why it didn't work when using their preferred browser

The point about H.264 is a complete red herring: the article seems to imply that only H.264 videos can be used with the new <video> tag. Crap! You can use WebM and Theora if you want and no doubt other formats will make an appearance. Why shouldn't Apple showcase the very video format they helped create?

Rather than whinge like a bunch of snivelling schoolkids, why don't Mozilla, Opera et al create their own showcases? Let's see how good their support for these new standards is. Perhaps some enterprising developer might care to try and create a vendor-neutral version of Apple's showcase so we can truly compare how well current browsers handle these new standards. I suspect it won't be as good as Safari.

=:~)

Works fine in OmniWeb

Well, except for the VR part. If there's any user-agent sniffing, it's looking for WebKit, not Safari specifically. Apple's own guidelines strongly encourage checking browser capabilities dynamically, not by sniffing.

@Chas. Well that would make the site a Safari demo, not a HTML 5 demo then

But most of it works ok in Chrome with a user agent switcher, and isn't that much more exciting than various jquery demos.

At least sites like http://www.chromeexperiments.com have the good grace to let you give them a go in your browser of choice, or kindly explain why it won't work.

Try Konqueror

I've got most of them to work here with Konqueror by installing kpart-webkit and changing view mode to webkit. Video won't work as it is H.264 though.

EPIC fail

Thing is, the iphone/ipod touch is crap at rendering these demo's. The 360 demo is the worst, The frame rate is slow, it takes a age to do anything. And this is on a 3gs iPhone and a 3G iPod Touch.

Not standards yet

I won't be using HTML5 until it's a finalised standard, same goes for CSS3. As for Video embedded with Flash, I will be continuing to use that too. I remember the days before Flash video when the choices were; Quicktime (supported on Apple's and a few Windows based users who installed QT), WMV (Windows only) or Real video (just crap all round).

It's simpler than that

I can't help thinking that this is a media storm to appease all the iPad/iPhone users whose mates point out that their new "Shineys" won't render half of the internet. This 'demonstration' gives them the opportunity to go "Ahh, but look at this! Marvel at what will happen when the rest of the internet catches up with us!"

TBH I don't care either way, but we do need extremists to push technology. I can't imagine any ElReg reader would defend Flash applications as being the best in the world - I've had far too many browser crashes (all of them apart from Safari, of course*). The only thing wrong with the H.264 bit of HTML5 is nothing technological, it's just that the big boys have included the ability to demand money out of the rest of the playground.

All standards (in all walks of life) should be fully open, royalty free and promote competion for the benefit of the consumers. If there were less greed around this could be possible...

* Safari? Never bothered using it.

Innovation by theft

Of course, the Mac cult will see this as another example of innovation.

Why don't the rest of the people GET IT and see Apple for the genius it is?!? This is just another example of Apple breaking new ground, just like they invented the mp3 player, the smart phone, and the table. Nobody else ever THOUGHT of doing this! They are clearly the first! Everybody else are just jealous geeks who don't have the cool white ear buds.

Typical Apple BS

The story claims that the Apple HTML5 tests actually only use the audio and video tags for HTML5...the issue is that unless you install Quicktime as well, Safari can't even handle these tags. The browser doesn't support HTML5 very much at all, and they simply hiding behing typical Apple marketting bullshit. Adding also that Apple have barred other browsers which actually support HTML5 better than Safari from the tests on the site, it's nothing but typical Apple smoke and mirrors.

Some nice demos of HTML 5 <canvas>

http://www.facebook.com/canvasdemos

Correction: CSS vs. Javascript

"CSS is a member of a family of related HMTL5 technologies that includes Web Workers to run tasks in the background of a browser, Web Storage to store string data in a key-value pair database, and Web Sockets for server communications."

Web workers, web storage, and web sockets are not CSS technologies. They are JavaScript technolgoies. These three technologies aren't even closely related to CSS other than the fact that they're all handled by a browser.

As my friends who work at Apple like to say

You can tell when Jobs is BSing by the fact that his lips are moving.

yup - got a good laugh from the site Friday late afternoon

The one I love the most is the 3D "rendering" demo... the one that shows the next image in an array when moving left to right with the mouse... it was appalling... the whole thing was pointless, it wasn't really html 5, and there was absolutely no reason for force me to use Safari again for it... Apple keep pulling these dumb stunts, and the more they do the close I get to just selling my macbook pro, never mind updating to a new one.

Paris - because at least she doesn't pretend to be a genius while spouting bollocks.

but apple fans won't care about the bollox

in my experience, apple fans are completely blind to any attempt at a reasonable discussion, and the more you try and find out why they toe the line on the jobsian myth of perfection, the less they explain and the more they push back with accusations of you being an "apple hater"

kind of like the christian fundamentalists in the USA vs the scientific community.

Reg fail

So you want to view a demo written for Safari on a 3rd party browser and moan when it doesn't work?

This constant bashing of anything that isn't Ubuntu is getting a little tired, perhaps you should change the record.

Doing a Microsoft!!1!

LOL. This just crashes my copy of Safari!!

This is very reminiscent of the old Microsoft; the internet our way and only using our technology approach of IE5.5/IE6.

Apple appear to have initiated the Douche protocol

HTML5 will be nice when it's finialised and implemented/supported properly. All this we'll only support these elements, while another browser will only support those elements is going to ruin it.

I recently wrote a HTML5 video implemention script in jQuery, which has necessary fallbacks depending on what technology you are using, what should be a; <VIDEO>...</VIDEO> type affair has MUTATED into a massive script that utilises QT, MP4, OGG, FLASH, VIDEO tags, and a JPG/TXT area for appropriate messaging...

i like HTML5 because it tells the browser what to do and not the other way round. They should then say YOU WILL use these codecs. It's tough if you don't like them, we're trying to standardise things here and you're all f*cking it up!!