BBC Thinks HTML5 Is Not Yet Ready For Primetime

There is some hope among the people who want open standards on the web that HTML5 is going to be their savior. In fact, web is built entirely on top of open protocols and technology and HTML 5 is the natural next step to keep web open to all. Particularly, people saw the use of HTML5 for video as a solution to their Adobe flash problems. HTML5 video is interoperable with HTML web content and can be manipulated by CSS3 and Javascript which can effectively control the playback. The advantage of having such an interoperable technology is that the video can now be integrated to a website with a player that can be easily made to match the look and feel of the site. This increases the user experience tremendously and makes the video viewing experience more seamless. When Youtube announced HTML5 videos, many in the open web community rejoiced and thought soon the world media will embrace HTML5 in a big way. However, the adoption is much slower than what open evangelists expected and part of the reason appears to be issues related to monetization.

For starters, let us take a moment and see the pros and cons of HTML5 with respect to web based video services.

Pros:

Vendor neutral and open standards based
Will ensure open web principles
Highly interoperable with web content
As pointed out in the first point, absolutely no vendor lockin
Seamless user experience

Cons:

Still not mature and incomplete too
Non cooperation from browser vendors. Microsoft is slow to adopt standards and Apple is trying to push their own proprietary implementation as the right one for viewing HTML5 content
Problems associated with a seamless integration of advertising
Problems associated with protecting videos for pay (rather, should I say lack of draconian DRM?)
Issues related to accessibility (like closed captioning)
Lack of support of HTML5 video tag in certain mobile browsers
Lack of consensus over codecs

However, some of these cons will go away in the near future but they are still problems for content providers looking for ways to use HTML5 in their business.

Yesterday, Erik Huggers, Director of BBC Future Media & Technology, wrote a blog post explaining BBC’s position and why they are still using Flash. In short, his response is “HTML5 is not ready for primetime”.

The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand I have concerns about HTML5’s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.

He points out some of the reasons behind his take on HTML5 in the same post.

Not too long ago some browser vendors were showcasing proprietary HTML5 implementations; which in my view threaten to undermine the fundamental promise. Recent activity in the HTML5 Working Group and the apparent split between W3C and WhatWG suggests HTML5 might not be on the path we expect, or deliver what I believe our industry requires. Despite grand overtures from Microsoft toward HTML5 support, their new browser is yet to ship and so the jury is out. The tension between individual motivation and collective consensus has brought an end to many noble causes in the past, and here, the pace of progress appears to be slowing on bringing HTML5 to a ratified state. History suggests that multiple competing proprietary standards lead to a winner-takes-all scenario, with one proprietary standard at the top of the stack, which is not where most of us want to be…

Though Mr. Huggers post could be related to problems they are facing with the ability to monetize well with HTML5, it does raise a valid question on the dangers posed by the push and pull of different browser vendors on the final form of HTML5. It is time for the working group and community to wake up and ensure complete openness we all have come to expect in HTML5.

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3 responses to “BBC Thinks HTML5 Is Not Yet Ready For Primetime”

kris August 14, 2010 at 9:29 am | Permalink

Erik Huggers comments are a bit strange.
He thinks proprietary standards lead to a winner-takes-all scenario , which is true in most cases, but why does he support Flash and not HTML5?

It’s a contradiction.

He needs to support both!
YouTube does it, why can’t he?

I visited the BBC with my ipad and I can’t see the videos in their news section. How smart is that?
He needs to support open standards and use HTML5, and stop whining about the browsers.

He does have a point about the browsers having their own html5 implementations but all that means is a few more lines of code in the CSS. It’s no excuse!

The webkit browser is open source.

Which means the lines of code that work for Apple’s Safari also work for Google’s Chrome browser!
It may not look 100% the same, but there ain’t gonna be a winner-takes-all.

What he needs to do is look at what browsers are being used, and show an HTML 5 video or a Flash video.
Or tell them to switch from IE to a webkit browser like on sjobs.me. Problem solved!

IE is the one giving us headaches!
Juha Saarinen August 15, 2010 at 12:49 am | Permalink

Messieurs Huggers and Subramanian should look at IE9 preview before writing off Microsoft’s support for HTML5.
Krishnan Subramanian August 15, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink

Juha,

I guess you saw what I wrote above. Microsoft is slow to adopt HTML 5 which is a well known fact and if they had shown some enthusiasm early on, we might have seen a better adoption with HTML5. IE9 is still in preview and no one other than early enthusiasts are using it. I really don’t understand what is your point with respect to what I said.