Before Flash® video, different approaches were used to embed video content, requiring visitors to install various plug-ins. Flash® became the standard, but it slows down processing speed. The new trend is to use the video tag in HTML 5, but older browsers may not support it, so a Flash® fallback may be necessary.
The interactive nature of the web often requires sites to feature embedded video content. At one point, there was no standard way to achieve this. Every web master has taken a different approach to embedding video clips, so visitors were often expected to spend a fair amount of time installing various plug-ins if they wanted to be able to see all applicable content on the site .
When Flash® video arrived on the scene, it quickly became the standard for online video content. The program was installed on almost every computer, so visitors didn’t need to waste time searching for a bunch of different plug-ins. Unfortunately, Adobe® Flash® uses large amounts of processor time and significantly slows down overall processing speed. Windows Media®, Quicktime®, and Real Media video formats can be used in place of Flash, but support for these formats isn’t as widespread.
Now, the trend in web design is to use video or tag to embed video in a page. This tag is intended to eventually replace Flash® video by linking video clips the same way as an image or tag links to an image file. Since video clips must have the ability to skip, pause, and rewind content, however, this tag requires a little more precision to use properly. For example, many web masters have started using the video tag in combination with Javascript to post-process video and extract frames.
The video tag is new in HTML 5. If you plan to build a website using this tag, note that you can write text between the start and end tags that will show to older browsers that they don’t support this tag. Unfortunately, visitors who expect to see videos on your site are likely to be very frustrated when they receive this message. People generally like to stick to the technology they are most comfortable with, so they may resent being forced to update their browsers to view your website correctly.
If you find that a significant number of your site visitors are using older browsers, using Flash® to embed video in your web pages may be the best approach. When using the video tag to add video clips to web pages, you can set the code to automatically degrade to a Flash® fallback if the visitor’s browser does not support the video tag. The downside to this approach is that you’ll need to upload the MPEG4, Ogg, and FLV versions of each embedded video clip to your own servers.
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