Multimedia: Video, Audio, and Embedded Media

Abstract

Long gone are the days when websites were only lists of bulleted text, without any form of imagery. But if you think about it, HTML has never been really multimedia-savvy. Images appeared early on, and there were gimmicky elements like (the now defunct) bgsound, but the interactive experiences, the web applications, the video players—each has been provided by some form of plug-in for the most part that extended the capabilities of HTML. In this regard, enhanced multimedia capability in HTML5 is a very apparent coming of age for HTML to the end user. For instance, the video and audio elements offer a standardized way to handle video and audio media, respectively. That sounds like a huge advancement in web media, and it is, but it’s not all smooth sailing. Although the elements are standardized as part of the HTML5 specification, the file formats used in these media elements are not, which leads to some verbose solutions for providing alternative content. But fear not, this by no means makes these implementations unusable, and in this chapter you will see that a consistent best-practice approach toward handling fallback content is possible.