CBS.com Prepping HTML5 Video Playback for iPad

[MorphingDragon]

i may have wrote that incorrectly, i often get them confused. what i have is "5M/800k": i download 550kb/s, which is pretty lame.

there's lots of new government initiatives in some countries (canada NOT included ) to increase broadband speeds that would allow rich internet technologies like Flash, HD video streaming and online gaming to truly prosper.

here is a screenshot showing speed averages by country from speedtest.net

New Zealand isnt even on that list.

 

[Glideslope]

Die Flash, die.

Then Die again. Wow, I feel better.

 

[Simple1]

Simple1, for someone who doesn't know how to browse a website you're awfully vocal about this topic.

WOW! did you open up the image or you're just foaming off at mouth? my activity monitor is at the top of the menu bar!!! thus why I posted the image because I'm on the intro page and my quad core machine is using 40% of it's cpus for an intro page what do you presume will happen when I actually click enter? u guessed it, all hell breaks lose!! 60% cpu on a freaking webpage? is that efficient? for 1 webpage to use 60% of all 4 cpu cores?

I think the content of the webpage is fantastic, I just don't agree that is uses my computer efficiently which is why we are having this discourse.

Any person with reasonable deductive skills would see that if the poster and I had similar CPU usage for flash that we should have similar results for HTML 5. Where are your numbers for flash? Good to see you're still trolling after I posted my source.

That's still weird why I'm seeing much higher numbers. Are you running the latest Safari with nothing else or running some other webkit build?

Certainly you're wrong. I'm using an early '08 Macbook Pro. Hardly old.

The first link ran like crap. The second link proves my point (more on that later).

Prove it. Show a screencap of your activity monitor.

I posted the screenshot of my activity monitor. That's straight up fact. Not too hard to comprehend?

What are you trying to prove with your static shots of webpages?

Wrong! You want facts? How about a quote from the 2nd link *you* posted:

I think you just like listening to yourself!! are you sure you and darkman aren't one and the same? did you open up the image or did you just deduce that I gave you a static page to look at because youtube is so nice? look at the menu bar, do you see those 8 cores being displayed? gasp interesting that they all spike up when looking at the flash images vs html5 ha?

specifically to your last point you stated
"As far as I'm concerned, why should I even care about HTML 5 if it's still nowhere near as good or efficient as flash on Windows? Why won't Apple allow hardware acceleration for flash on OS X? The "most advaced OS" won't allow 3rd party hardware acceleration? You've got to be joking."

you wanted facts and I showed you my activity monitor playing an html5 page playing just as efficient as windows.

Turning full circle, if Anand is right, and I don't doubt that he is, Apple complaining about Flash being a CPU Hog while not exposing "the appropriate hooks" to enable Adobe to access hardware acceleration seems disingenuous at best. Flash's ability to access hardware acceleration in 10.1 [on Windows] dramatically reduced Safari's CPU consumption from 23.22 to 7.43, a drop of 68%, which really makes you wonder how Flash would perform on the Mac if it could access hardware acceleration.

I hardly ever doubt Anand but him saying that Adobe doesn't have the right hooks is wrong!!! how does microsoft do it with silverlight? why does it seems that Adobe who is the God of this great flash plugin can't seem to get hardware accelaration without access to the physical hardware layer? and everyone else is able to? once again did you take a look at the QTkit API link that was posted? you know these are the api's apple has provided for the rest of the industry who seem to get it!! Silverlight runs circles around flash on a mac! yet they perform the same kind of tasks more or less. Maybe Microsoft just has better programmers , I certainly can't be mad at that, I love good programming skills.

I find it highly suspicoious that the 1st link ran like crap why don't you show us a screen capture, i'll show you mine if you show me yours

So HTML 5 in Safari was at 12.39% and flash on Windows was at 7.43%? LOL. Did you even read the article you posted? Oh yeah, Firefox with flash on Windows was at 6%! That's *half* of Safari/HTML 5 in case you didn't know.

How do you like those *facts* now?

Already answered this with my 2 html5 screenshots, you asked for evidence of when html5 ran better than flash. I'll show you again on a MBP look at the attached screen shots this time I'll give you 3 activity monitor screens, because I know sometimes it is hard for you to understand, you like pictures

so coming full circle, 3 different machines ( Mac pro from work w 8GB, iMac i7 w 8GB & MBP w 4GB, not that the memory matters just love gobs of ram) and consistently flash sucked compared to html5 on OS X! (108% I mean can you believe this s$%t, and it wasn't fullscreen, I would imagine my laptop might blowup at that point.) this is nothing new I've said it earlier this has been the way it has been since 10.2 when i switched, maybe it was better before

p.s - I guess it is not all in Jobs head then ha?

 

[Darkroom]

WOW! did you open up the image or you're just foaming off at mouth? my activity monitor is at the top of the menu bar!!! thus why I posted the image because I'm on the intro page and my quad core machine is using 40% of it's cpus for an intro page what do you presume will happen when I actually click enter? u guessed it, all hell breaks lose!! 60% cpu on a freaking webpage? is that efficient? for 1 webpage to use 60% of all 4 cpu cores?

I think the content of the webpage is fantastic, I just don't agree that is uses my computer efficiently which is why we are having this discourse.

i didn't notice the activity monitor.

just because it's loaded from a browser doesn't necessarily mean it's a "webpage". if you refereed to the Waterlife site, and other sites like it, as interactive applications, you would be more forgiving of it's need for resources.

 

[samwise]

Flash is all very well, and does have it's place.

But

I come across a number of sites which I ClickToFlash where the use of Flash hasn't really been warranted. Yes, it may have made the site more 'flashy', but would the functionality be just as good without Flash?

Take the Chevrolet website - the whole thing is pretty much Flash, but I see very little there that couldn't be done without Flash. Open the index page and you have a Flash tracking cookie at top left , then two large Flash frames - one with the banner and drop-down menus for list of vehicles, plus other links (no need for Flash that I can see), the other with the scrolling ads, plus information on the vehicle you've chosen - does that need Flash?

i didn't notice the activity monitor.

just because it's loaded from a browser doesn't necessarily mean it's a "webpage". if you refereed to the Waterlife site, and other sites like it, as interactive applications, you would be more forgiving of it's need for resources.

I tried the Waterlife site - first time in it took probably 30 seconds to load (second time was quicker, but still 15s to get to the <Enter> button - the third time, it stuck at 90% loading for ages), which is too long for most surfers. Instant gratification and all that

After that, although it was pretty, I didn't find it very functional or intuitive on what I was doing. Lots of spinning tiny thumbnail pictures when you click on one, which opens a slightly bigger thumbnail, then it all moves around into a new pretty mosaic picture, and then finally it opens the page.

Too foo-foo - when I want to see a web page I expect to click on the link and the web page to open in front of me, not see the web developer showing off his skills in a superfluous manner.

 

[Simple1]

i didn't notice the activity monitor.

just because it's loaded from a browser doesn't necessarily mean it's a "webpage". if you refereed to the Waterlife site, and other sites like it, as interactive applications, you would be more forgiving of it's need for resources.

I can certainly concede that point, if we look at it as an application. You know what to be honest the only reason I even answered to this was because of the notion apple didn't care and wasn't allowing adobe to get things done right.

attached are two silverlight screenshots, not using my resources as well as html5 but certainly much better than flash @ 720. not so sure MS is using the QTkit api after this screenshot foot in my mouth?

 

[samcraig]

One place that flash, for me, works well are movie and other entertainment sites. The dramatic element of having animations and other integrated element on these sites work for me. As I've mentioned before - other sites that use it just because they can but doesn't ADD anything to the experience isn't my cup of tea.

And from an SEO perspective - anyone that puts their entire site into flash loses a lot. And some sites (like restaurants and others) make it a pain to copy/paste addresses/phone numbers/directions and other things by not using html.

 

[Darkroom]

this thread is probably the worst place to post this, but for anyone who is interested i just found out that Adobe is giving away free licenses to Flash Builder 4 that was just released to qualifying developers.

We provide free copies of Adobe Flash Builder 4 Standard to:

-Students, faculty and staff of eligible educational institutions
-Software developers who are affected by the current economic condition and are currently unemployed
-Event attendees who receive a special promotional code at their event

while the Flex SDK + ActionScript compiler is already free to use in any IDE that supports it, giving away Flash Builder 4 Standard (which costs $250) is a pretty generous offer.

And from an SEO perspective - anyone that puts their entire site into flash loses a lot. And some sites (like restaurants and others) make it a pain to copy/paste addresses/phone numbers/directions and other things by not using html.

there are several methods to incorporate SEO with Flash sites. there's embeddable metadata in the .swf, SWFAddress (which also handles deep linking and back/forward functionality), SWFObject, etc. check out this book: Search Engine Optimization for Flash.

 

[zweigand]

That's still weird why I'm seeing much higher numbers. Are you running the latest Safari with nothing else or running some other webkit build?

My tests were done with the latest Safari on Snow Leopard. I am running the latest beta build of Flash. The only other thing that might affect it is that I'm running the codec pack perian.

I'm on a 3 yr old 24" White iMac. 2.16ghz C2D, 3GB RAM, 7600GT.

 

[samcraig]

there are several methods to incorporate SEO with Flash sites. there's embeddable metadata in the .swf, SWFAddress (which also handles deep linking and back/forward functionality), SWFObject, etc. check out this book: Search Engine Optimization for Flash.

Those solutions don't come close to what you can do with straight html though. And if you work in a competitive landscape - you want every edge. My .02

ETA: Plus the workarounds involve a lot more "work" to achieve the same results.

 

[zweigand]

this thread is probably the worst place to post this, but for anyone who is interested i just found out that Adobe is giving away free licenses to Flash Builder 4 that was just released to qualifying developers.

while the Flex SDK + ActionScript compiler is already free to use in any IDE that supports it, giving away Flash Builder 4 Standard (which costs $250) is a pretty generous offer.

Or a fire sale j/k

Seriously though, Adobe knows they are about to lose a large chunk of their Flash business to HTML5 video. You can bet they are going to be throwing out deals left and right trying to entice people to keep developing with it.

 

[Mad Mac]

I find it highly suspicoious that the 1st link ran like crap why don't you show us a screen capture, i'll show you mine if you show me yours

See screencap.

Already answered this with my 2 html5 screenshots, you asked for evidence of when html5 ran better than flash. I'll show you again on a MBP look at the attached screen shots this time I'll give you 3 activity monitor screens, because I know sometimes it is hard for you to understand, you like pictures

It wasn't obvious your menu bar was showing core activity, mainly because I wasn't expecting to look there. Maybe be a little more specific next time? Guess you're just too L337 D00d.

I showed you my activity monitor playing an html5 page playing just as efficient as windows.

So at best HTML 5 is just as efficient as Flash in Windows? LOL. So what you're really saying is that Flash is fine and it's OS X that's borked? Obviously Adobe can code when their hands aren't tied.

attached are two silverlight screenshots, not using my resources as well as html5 but certainly much better than flash @ 720. not so sure MS is using the QTkit api after this screenshot foot in my mouth?

Silverlight is a little more efficient, but not by the leaps and bounds both Flash and Silverlight could be if they had access to hardware acceleration on OS X. Maybe the API's that Apple allows need to be re-written or something but saying Flash is junk *is* being disingenous. Sorry, but I'll take Anand's assessment of Flash on OS X over yours.

My tests were done with the latest Safari on Snow Leopard. I am running the latest beta build of Flash. The only other thing that might affect it is that I'm running the codec pack perian.

I'm on a 3 yr old 24" White iMac. 2.16ghz C2D, 3GB RAM, 7600GT.

Ah, ok. Does Snow Leopard have optimizations for HTML 5 video? I'm on 10.5.8 for both '08 Mac Pro and '08 MBP and neither liked HTML 5. Perhaps this explains things...

 

[MorphingDragon]

See screencap.

It wasn't obvious your menu bar was showing core activity, mainly because I wasn't expecting to look there. Maybe be a little more specific next time? Guess you're just too L337 D00d.

So at best HTML 5 is just as efficient as Flash in Windows? LOL. So what you're really saying is that Flash is fine and it's OS X that's borked? Obviously Adobe can code when their hands aren't tied.

Silverlight is a little more efficient, but not by the leaps and bounds both Flash and Silverlight could be if they had access to hardware acceleration on OS X. Maybe the API's that Apple allows need to be re-written or something but saying Flash is junk *is* being disingenous. Sorry, but I'll take Anand's assessment of Flash on OS X over yours.


Ah, ok. Does Snow Leopard have optimizations for HTML 5 video? I'm on 10.5.8 for both '08 Mac Pro and '08 MBP and neither liked HTML 5. Perhaps this explains things...

HTML 5 on windows I think is Quicktime with Safari, and whatever Google has done for Chrome.

-- Comparing pre-release versions of flash is pointless, they're pre-release.

I find Adobe's whining pointless, If I were to do something similar to flash I would probably use OpenGL/CL/AL to do hadware acceleration.

 

[zweigand]

Ah, ok. Does Snow Leopard have optimizations for HTML 5 video? I'm on 10.5.8 for both '08 Mac Pro and '08 MBP and neither liked HTML 5. Perhaps this explains things...

I get quite a different result…

(maximized within a safari window that was scaled to fill my screen)

 

[ryrock77]

I just bought iMac 27" with i7 and 16GB RAM .....and guess what?
Flash still crashing. Adobe is a joke. Bye Bye flash. Not missed

That's because your new iMac sucks. I had a Hackintosh built with 4 TB HD, Quad core, and when I install Windows 7 on it I will only us the Mac side for Final Cut when I need to.

Flash never crashes my Hackintosh or do I have the cpu usage that you all complain about.

Apple has had years to get their OS systems to work well with Flash and have done nothing about this. Flash has worked well on Window OS for years.

Sorry that you guys have wasted so much money on overpriced Apple pc's mad out of Intel parts.

Long live Flash and Windows.

 

[Peace]

CNN is already html5 ready.

 

[ryrock77]

See screencap.

It wasn't obvious your menu bar was showing core activity, mainly because I wasn't expecting to look there. Maybe be a little more specific next time? Guess you're just too L337 D00d.

So at best HTML 5 is just as efficient as Flash in Windows? LOL. So what you're really saying is that Flash is fine and it's OS X that's borked? Obviously Adobe can code when their hands aren't tied.

Silverlight is a little more efficient, but not by the leaps and bounds both Flash and Silverlight could be if they had access to hardware acceleration on OS X. Maybe the API's that Apple allows need to be re-written or something but saying Flash is junk *is* being disingenous. Sorry, but I'll take Anand's assessment of Flash on OS X over yours.


Ah, ok. Does Snow Leopard have optimizations for HTML 5 video? I'm on 10.5.8 for both '08 Mac Pro and '08 MBP and neither liked HTML 5. Perhaps this explains things...

Apple only wants Apple software or plug ins to work well. Why does Photoshop and After Effects run faster in Windows? Adobes fault? No....Apple
does not open up OS X to Adobe.

CNN is already html5 ready.

What does that mean? You will still see Flash Ads in html5.

 

[Peace]

What does that mean? You will still see Flash Ads in html5.

It means all the video content on CNN is in HTML5 instead of Flash if you visit it with the iPad.

 

[ryrock77]

It means all the video content on CNN is in HTML5 instead of Flash if you visit it with the iPad.

What about the Flash ads that are on CNN? you think everyone wants to redo all these flash assets for the iPad? Apples a joke for not including Flash.

How come Flash runs slow on Apple's OS and with Apple you have very out dated video card to choose from? What's the weakest link?

Apple's OS.

 

[zweigand]

What about the Flash ads that are on CNN? you think everyone wants to redo all these flash assets for the iPad? Apples a joke for not including Flash.

It's an advertiser's job to bring the message to their audience. You don't make money by being lazy.

If you are coming to a site to view the ads, you have a point, but you're weird.

 

[Peace]

What about the Flash ads that are on CNN? you think everyone wants to redo all these flash assets for the iPad? Apples a joke for not including Flash.

How come Flash runs slow on Apple's OS and with Apple you have very out dated video card to choose from? What's the weakest link?

Apple's OS.

Last time. If you visit CNN.com with the iPad. Everything is HTML5. Including advertising.

There are no little blue cubes to be seen.

 

[ryrock77]

It's an advertiser's job to bring the message to their audience. You don't make money by being lazy.

If you are coming to a site to view the ads, you have a point, but you're weird.

No not going to view the Ads but asking how they would handle them since they are in flash. It's part of the current CNN website's design.

Maybe your the weird one for thinking that I go to the site to view the adds.

RE: http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

that site is strong work. you're clearly bias if you can't see the affective beauty and interactivity of this site.

The Apple fan boys are made because Apple's don't play Flash as well a Windows does. If Apple's could play Flash the same way Window's does then no one would have a problem with Flash.

 

[zweigand]

No not going to view the Ads but asking how they would handle them since they are in flash. It's part of the current CNN website's design.

You go to CNN on your Windows machine …the CNN web server gives you Flash content.

Someone else goes to CNN on an iPad …the CNN web server sees that you are on an iPad and it gives you a DIFFERENT WEB PAGE. Same content, minus the Flash.

 

[ryrock77]

You go to CNN on your Windows machine …the CNN web server gives you Flash content.

Someone else goes to CNN on an iPad …the CNN web server sees that you are on an iPad and it gives you a DIFFERENT WEB PAGE. Same content, minus the Flash.

I'm a web designer so I know how it works.

 

[zweigand]

I'm a web designer so I know how it works.

Your comments above make it appear otherwise.

Back when I learned how to create websites we relied on tables and spacers to make everything look right. Not much of what I was taught back then matters anymore. Just like Flash isn't going to matter when it comes to general web design in the future.

Things change. It indeed sucks when people excel at something, yet that skill no longer holds the value it once had.