Let It Snow... Faster!
In the spirit of the holiday season, we offer a new HTML5 experience that makes the most of your PC hardware and the new touch capabilities in Windows 8.
Check out Let It Snow and get ready for a GPU-powered snow storm. This experience brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, SVG, CSS, and more. On Windows Developer Preview with support for multi-touch in IE10, you can reach out and brush the snow off the sign and reveal a holiday message -or just use your mouse. If you think your browser can keep up, kick it up to 1000 snowflakes. If it's more of a flurry than a blizzard, try it with IE9 (or IE10) using the hardware acceleration built into the browser.
Click the image to Let It Snow
Earlier this year we showed the first look at IE10, which offers more and more of the site ready HTML5 developers are asking for, so they can build beautiful and interactive Web experiences. With the Windows Developer Preview, we introduced more hardware-accelerated HTML5 for building touch friendly applications on the Web. We’re delighted and amazed by what developers are building on HTML5 and excited to be part of it.
Thank you!
Your participation and feedback is an important part of how we build IE. Today we want to say thank you to everyone who browses the Web with IE9, downloads the IE10 previews, runs the test drives, and reports issues on Connect. We also want to thank the people and groups who make the standards process work, the broad community of Web developers, and enthusiastic consumers who work to move the Web forward.
From the entire IE team, we wish you a Happy Hardware-accelerated Holiday Season, and we look forward to another exciting year on the Web in 2012.
—Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer
Comments
Anonymous
December 20, 2011
And a Merry Christmas to you too, IE-team! ;-)Anonymous
December 20, 2011
maximized on a 2560x1600 monitor, set to automatic it rose to 2752 snowflakes, held at around 56fps. fun stuff.Anonymous
December 20, 2011
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December 20, 2011
Good work IE team! This absolutely blows away Chrome on my machine... Chrome runs it very slowly even with 64(!) snowflakes, yet IE9 easily handles 2000!Anonymous
December 20, 2011
Well no luck on Windows Phone 7.5, which as I understand it should be the full version of IE 9. :-(Anonymous
December 20, 2011
Cute, but the significance of the Google Easter Egg was not that it was technically superior but that it was released on their core product for all customers and went (was pushed) viral. You guys do cool stuff but only developers see it. Your marketing people are collecting salaries for nothing.Anonymous
December 20, 2011
It doesn't work on Windows Phone 7.5. Should't IE9 mobile be using the same rendering engine of IE9 desktop?Anonymous
December 20, 2011
@6205 Intel Atom N270 2GB DDR3 NV ION (DX10, 256 MB VRAM) W7, IE9 Resolution, 1920x962 250 flakes = 60 FPS 500 flakes = 39 FPS 1000 flakes = 19 FPS 2000 flakes = 11 FPS 4000 flakes = 6 FPSAnonymous
December 20, 2011
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December 20, 2011
Nifty experiment. Hurrah for standards support! =) Note to Chrome folks: Go to about:flags in the URL bar and enable "GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D". With that turned on, I'm getting 60FPS (the max I can get due to v-sync) at 1920x979 with 250 flakes.Anonymous
December 20, 2011
Enabling GPU acceleration in chrome certain doesn't seem usable, whilst it reports 60fps, it clearly isn't (I doubt its in the 10s) and bizarrely seems to constantly harass the hard drive..Anonymous
December 20, 2011
Thank you very much and Merry Christmas to my favorite browser! ;) (Too bad I can not use Internet Explorer 10, I ♥ Vista) Greetings from Finland!Anonymous
December 20, 2011
Resolution: 1661x887 4000 Snowflakes = 40fps all other 60fpsAnonymous
December 20, 2011
Doesn't work on IE8 (the version installed on my Win7 machine).Anonymous
December 20, 2011
doesn't work form me either (on my IE8) but it moves smooth on firefox 8 :)Anonymous
December 20, 2011
Alex, it won't work in Internet Explorer below version 9.Anonymous
December 20, 2011
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December 20, 2011
Good work IE team!Anonymous
December 20, 2011
@Edward: Yes, we plan to ignore this loaded question forever. Happy Holidays.Anonymous
December 20, 2011
OK, all format politics aside, I love these little snow demos. They're also helpful when I want to set the client area to an exact size (usually 1024*768 for me), since maximizing would make my window so big that websites look weird. :)Anonymous
December 20, 2011
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December 20, 2011
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December 20, 2011
Wow, first link plays music... No warning, no way to turn it off without closing the page.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
Wow this was very well made and it runs really smoothly.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
@ffffuuuuuuu 21 Dec 2011 6:19 AM It(apparent movement / eyes) can be quite misleading - FRAPS should be able (after enabling benchmarking DWM) to show any difference. (So far no śignificant difference on my machine)Anonymous
December 21, 2011
I wonder what the F1 and F3 keys do on that page.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
Thanks! As a developer it is important to know in which areas the performace varies the most amongst different user agents. Basically, such demos highlight what we have to avoid, such that our products do not confuse our users (and our support team). We cannot tell them 'best viewed in browser X' as no browser is available for all devices, and more important, we are not in a situation where we have to like or dislike our customers based on the choice of their browser. There are even scenarios where the customer cannot choose at all, and increasingly even that the user does not want, or is not able, to modify his running system. And certainly such tech demos are a great way of letting competitors know where they can pump some extra size out of their apparat. Once these performance gaps have vanished, it will be great to work with Canvas2D, but for now, it appears as if a use in production would result in 'same markup for less than half of the web' (or poor performance for all). Keep it up, and tutti l'Albero di Natale! [reposted, as the msdn blog system failed or succeded silently. I wonder if this is something I will ever get used to]Anonymous
December 21, 2011
Wow @ieblog - seriously UNIMPRESSED with that comment above. I actually had faith that Microsoft would pull through and take Web Standards seriously. Thanks for showing your true stripes. Guess its time for developers to start actively protesting by blocking Internet Explorer from accessing sites. I'd start by blocking Windows Phone 7 devices but blocking less than 1/3 of 1% of our mobile access seems like it won't be very effective. Guess we'll have to start with blocking IE10 and IE9.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
Lets rephrase that question just so we're clear on Microsoft's stance. e.g. "load" removed. ==================================================================================================================================== Q.) Is Microsoft is fully committed to natively supporting an open video format for HTML5 Video playback AND the Media Capture APIs? [] Yes [] No ===================================================================================Anonymous
December 21, 2011
Q.) Are web developers such as @Andrew and @Edward [] Complete ignoramus's [] Incapable of any intelligent discourse on any and all subjectsAnonymous
December 21, 2011
@miffed It is not hard to make people hurt themselves. All you have to do is make them think they are doing the right thing. Politics and religion come to mind.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
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December 21, 2011
Nice Easter Egg inside ! :) LOL!Anonymous
December 21, 2011
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December 21, 2011
Developers caught using non-free, non-open Audio and Video formats are in for a world of hurt and licensing costs: For starters, if you are using IE's HTML5 Audio tag with MP3 content - watch out! www.scirra.com/.../even-more-about-audio-licenses-on-the-web you likely need to pay a $2,500 MP3 license fee. If you stuck with OGG like other browsers support, you don't need to pay this ransom fee. On a similar note, don't get fooled into using h.264 for HTML5 Video - not only will it only work in IE but you are walking blind into a world of DRM encumbered formats, and totally missing the point of the Open Web. Open Standards - once again, the only way the Open Web works. @Microsoft - when are you going to join the Open Web so that your statements about "Same Markup" for cross browser consistency actually ring true? Currently IE is the only browser not supporting Open Standard formats for HTML5 Audio and HTML5 Video.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
Carlos: How can they support something which has no standard, because W3C dropped the ball? VIDEO and AUDIO tags are left to browser vendors with no directive what to support. They didn't learn from nineties still... (Don't forget patent situation - currently no format beside h264 is cleared of patents - submarines like to lurk)Anonymous
December 21, 2011
@Klimax - the WHATWG originally required Ogg in the spec, but pressure from some companies made them remove it: en.wikipedia.org/.../Use_of_Ogg_formats_in_HTML5 - I don't think W3C dropped the ball, they knew it was best, it's other companies who forced the current situation (wikipedia seems to blame Apple and Nokia).Anonymous
December 21, 2011
I like this demo. It's much better than the "Let it Snow" easter egg on Google's search engine. Where did you get the song that plays in the background?Anonymous
December 21, 2011
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December 21, 2011
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December 21, 2011
@Everyone complaining about Microsoft's format choices Why is it such a big deal if Microsoft's format choices aren't completely free and open? Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with h.264 and MP3. Besides, look at what other companies are doing. Google likes to add features to its products that only work in Chrome, and Apple has "HTML5 demos" on its site that only work in Safari because of a browser protection routine. There's nothing wrong with requiring the use of common formats that just happen to not be completely free and open.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
@WindowsVista567 - the reason why it is a big deal is that HTML5 Audio and Video should enable us to use audio and video in our HTML5 websites and applications and it will work everywhere! Unfortunately because Microsoft is not using appropriate formats for the open web... we can't. HTML5 Audio and Video is currently a failure because Microsoft will not play fair and support an open format that is supported across all browsers. On one hand they say use the same markup everywhere - on the other hand they don't support the same markup, on purpose no less. So yeah we're ticked that Microsoft claims they support web standards when in fact they clearly have shown otherwise.Anonymous
December 21, 2011
@WindowsVista567 - actually you said it best. "There's nothing wrong with requiring the use of common formats" exactly! all other browsers support a common format... IE was the last browser to the table with support for Audio and Video and they specifically chose to use a DIFFERENT format than what all other browsers supported - that's the flipping issue.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
@Luke Jones False. h264 will remain royalty free. Microsoft will continue to provide h264. Thus h264 is free. False. IE9 doesn't support WebM, it supports a WebM addon. False. MP3 is an open, well documented format that everyone uses. It is also free and supported by everyone. It will continue be supported by Microsoft and music will continue to be in MP3. I can't tell if you are making a case for h264 by pretending to be an open standards troll, or if you actually believe what you say. If you want 'open', destroy all your BDs, DVDs, Music Collection, stop using Dish Network / Netflix, stop using Apple and Microsoft products, etc. Otherwise you are a Hypocrite. @Vic There is nothing stopping h264 and MP3 support for all other browsers. They simply refuse - your beef should be with them and their ideals. Web browsers shouldn't even be bundles with codecs - it is bloatware. Besides, there would be less resistance if the 'open' codec rivaled h264 in terms of performance/quality/compression. Right now WebM can be looked at another XVID wannabe, not anywhere near h264.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
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December 22, 2011
MP3 is not a free format! It costs $2500 to use in games! www.scirra.com/.../why-you-shouldnt-use-mp3-in-your-html5-gamesAnonymous
December 22, 2011
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December 22, 2011
@Vic: "IE was the last browser to the table with support for Audio and Video and they specifically chose to use a DIFFERENT format than what all other browsers supported - that's the flipping issue." Actually, Google Chrome and Safari both supported H.264 at the time, did they not? Only Firefox and Opera supported Ogg Theora.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
All this arguing doesn't solve the problem. Developers need a single format that is royalty free on all platforms. PERIOD. Currently there is no such format. Therefore until the vendors get together and agree on a single royalty free format for audio, and a single royalty free format for video - HTML5 Audio and HTML5 Video will both continue to be a complete failure. @msfanboys - We can argue till we're blue in the face about what Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, & Opera are doing... but so far they are the only vendors willing to step up to the table to discuss the issue. Microsoft is the only one unwilling to even discuss the problem they are perpetuating.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
MP3 is not free for HTML5 webapps/games: $2,500 USD license per title! (for distribution of any quantity over 5,000 copies) www.mp3licensing.com/.../games.html MP3 is patented technology (see above) and the owners can set the conditions they want on when/where/why/how it can be used. Dear Microsoft - please support OGG or AAC in IE10+ please.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
I didn't really intend for my file format comment to turn into this. I was really getting tired of seeing complaints about h.264 and MP3 in the posts I looked at, and I disagreed with the overall opinion that I was seeing.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
Does pretty well in my Chrome dev build w/integrated laptop graphics -- stays above 24FPS (film) up to 1000, and 18-20FPS and 4K flakes. On some loads I get a DOM INVALID_STATE_ERR and no snowflakes fall.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
@Anon: Okay, now I can tell. It's that you don't understand the issues. There's not much I can do here to help you. I encourage you to research the licensing for H.264 and MP3 to come to your own understanding of the problems with these formats as they relate to the Web.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
@Luke You say I am wrong, yet you do not correct me. Can it be the case then that there is nothing to correct? Is it not the case that h264 is royalty free? Is it not the case that h264 is de-facto in compression to quality ratio? Is it not the case that Microsoft and Apple supply h264 support? You cannot disprove factual information - h264 is royalty free, h264 is the best media format available, h264 will be provided by Microsoft and Apple. All you have to do is prove the above wrong. On the other hand, I do not care about MP3 as FLAC is superior. It is due to its populairty, MP3 support is a must for any multimedia device.Anonymous
December 22, 2011
Default settings in browsers = different performance values. Well why then Chrome does not have enabled GPU Accelerated Canvas, when it can improve the performance? I made some tests on my machines and the results are really amazing and interesting. blog.goyello.com/.../merry-christmas-web-browser-testAnonymous
December 22, 2011
we must dowload all windows complite and open online games plug n playAnonymous
December 22, 2011
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December 22, 2011
PS your comment form is STILL BROKEN!Anonymous
December 23, 2011
It's an expensive demo for Microsoft to show, MP3 license is $2,500 for each title individually.Anonymous
December 23, 2011
@Igor Microsoft already has a licensing agreement, they don't need to pay the fee because they already have.Anonymous
December 23, 2011
msft has paid a license fee for encoding in mp3 format on windows for sure, but i don't recall seeing an exemption from game distribution on the web that would enable them to evade this fee. i can send an email directly to them for clarification of course.Anonymous
December 23, 2011
@stig yes do send them an email and keep us updated!Anonymous
December 23, 2011
I think I can safely say that this is one of the best demos you have ever put on the site. It fits in perfectly with the Christmas season and is much better than Google's version. I'm beginning to wish there were more songs on the page. My only real complaint is that it seems odd to "brush" the snow away with a mouse - it's another case of designing something for touch and converting it to work with mice. Sadly, I can't test this demo with a touch screen.Anonymous
December 25, 2011
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December 25, 2011
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December 25, 2011
Resulting to personal attacks is all you can do when you know you are wrong. "ROYALTIES per browser shipped" is true and Microsoft pays royalties allowing FREE H264 FOR ALL BROWSERS AND USERS. Stay Classy WebM Troll.Anonymous
December 25, 2011
Also before claiming things make sure you research it first, http://bit.ly/uIQY2O :)Anonymous
December 25, 2011
I like the HTML5-powered snowstorm . =) Is there any chance of SVG SMIL animation support for IE 10?Anonymous
December 25, 2011
@Alec SMIL animation will not likely ever be supported since that can be achieved already beter by using javascript. No use in supporting that. The relevant SMIL elements were also recently removed from the ACID3 tests as even standards supporters have taken the view that Ecmascript emthod of animating SVG is the interoperabel way forward. So forget about SMIL animations. It is dead.Anonymous
December 25, 2011
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December 26, 2011
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December 26, 2011
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December 26, 2011
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December 26, 2011
@Sunil: Mostly it is about ideology and "politics"...Anonymous
December 26, 2011
@Klimax: Hmmm.. now that I've come to know that my processor is the problem, I can actually calm down :-D Upgrading is not a problem, I'm going to do it anyway in the near future. It's funny how some processors before it and all processors after it are supported and I bought just that one in the middle! Thanks for all the info :)Anonymous
December 26, 2011
@Sunil Browsers can indeed use the existing codecs on your system. The Firefox code repository for instance even has code added to it years ago to use existing h.264 Windows codecs for HTML5 video support but that code was never added to the browser because of political reasons/choices. So Firefox could easily use the existing h.264 codec that are present on almost every system already but Moxilla blatantly refuses to do so. But I guess that is why Mozilla is getting the 300 million dollars a year from Google who is the propriatary owner of the VP8 codec in WebM.Anonymous
December 27, 2011
Microsoft Please review all the deleted posts and restore all the ones that are not spam. It's majorly frustrating to see stuff on this blog one minute then deleted the next. The mp3 licensing stuff is critically important at the moment considering IE is holding back HTML5 again!!!!Anonymous
December 29, 2011
Did Rob Mauceri confirm that they paid the $2,500 licensing fee per mp3 title used in the HTML5 demos? I'm thinking that maybe Microsoft would be willing to pay the licensing fee for all of our HTML5 apps and games to use the mp3 format for audio since they refuse to support OGG formats natively? There's also no update from Microsoft on natively supporting a free and open video format in IE. We need support for this in order for IE to be able to support HTML5. Currently Microsoft is the only vendor with a browser that doesn't fully support HTML5, which is pretty sad considering. IE10 is really close now that it properly supports innerHTML, now it only needs to support free and open Audio/Video formats to make IE HTML5 capable. Keeping fingers crossed that the next IE10 beta will be HTML5 ready! :-DAnonymous
December 29, 2011
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December 29, 2011
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December 29, 2011
@A_Zune I don't think anyone is suggesting MPEG1. We are suggesting using a format that is appropriate for the web - which means a format that is free and open, and yes ideally with decent compression etc. The only thing that has been determined so far in the past 2 years regarding HTML5 Video is that there is 1 format that absolutely can not be used... and that is h.264. However Microsoft has gone ahead and made this their default which means IE is the only browser that doesn't properly support HTML5 Video at the moment. We're hoping that the people at Microsoft are finally getting this and working on supporting a free and open format so that HTML5 can be a success. We've already encountered financial drawbacks to using mp3s for audio as even the Let it Snow demo has/had to pay $2,500+ in licensing fees for using a non-free, non-open format. Rumor has it that Microsoft has already learned this lesson and that internal releases of IE10 do support OGG audio natively but my sources have been very tight lipped about this as once again, Microsoft hates to admit that they were wrong about anything. like say... cough cough the Zune.Anonymous
December 30, 2011
@evan Read my posts above where I prove that h264 is "a free and open format so that HTML5 can be a success."Anonymous
December 30, 2011
@Anon - how can a format with a patent pool to collect royalties on a propriatary format ever be considered either free or open?! Stop drinking the MSFT koolaid and read up on licensing and open formats. We've been complaining about this on every forum on the Internet for several years trying to find a usable solution and you somehow think that the one format already ruled out can somehow fill the gap!?!? Yikes dude you're about 3 months behind in your research reading on the matter.Anonymous
December 30, 2011
@evan We missing one point here as every movie/songs site today plays so called h264 formats and millions and millions of songs/movies are in h264 format with a very good hardware support for them and none in ogg format. therefore, even if browsers support ogg format. I do not see this as a viable option to convert them all in different format. But going forward, working on do not repeat policy in development. Browsers should not take this responsibility of supporting or non-supporting a codec as this is already baked in underlying system. They can read from system. If , I my site support some format, I can distribute the codec for that. Once that is installed on that system. the Video/audio shoud work fine in all browsers.This will also be useful in implementing DRM in HTML5 with properitory codecs.Anonymous
December 30, 2011
@Frank No one cares. No one. Not a single end user. Nill. Nada. None. All that matters is that h264 is free for end users. That is all that matters. h264 is royalty free and will be provided and supported by Apple and Microsoft. I could not care less about MSFT. Look I compared XVID, h264, and WebM. h264 is the clear winner in hardware suppot, quality, performance, compression, 3D, etc. This is the reson why I defend it.Anonymous
December 30, 2011
@Edward @Andrew @Steve @Luke Jones etc. Web is not detached from the rest of the world, so to promote a "Free and Open" codec, you need to get people in real world use it first. When almost every video capture/recording device including camcorders, cellphones, portable media players, etc. etc. produces H.264 encoded video and MP3 encoded audio. Even Android based phones like Samsung Galaxy S2 produces mp4 video files instead of webm. So for the common people it's simply much easier to share mp4 video and mp3 audio instead of transcoding into webm and ogg vorbis. I think you people should first try convince all those hardware manufacturers to adopt your "Free and Open" codec instead of trying to force web browsers to do so. The Web is a part of the real world, it won't work without being easily interoperable with the rest of the world. The Web serves the World, the World doesn't serve the Web.Anonymous
December 30, 2011
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December 31, 2011
@evan The only thing that is certain is that nearly everybody already has h.264 support on their devices. That proves that it no only can be used but in fact is already used more widely that any other format ever before. Your claims that it can not be used has already been flawed before you uttered it. Same for MP3. It is by far the most widely used format and everybody uses it. It has already been proven that formats that have some limited patent licensing around them can be extremely succesfull. A new format can only be succesfull if it proves to be better than those existing formats. So eventually mp3 might be succeeded by AAC or ogg vorbis. That could mean some minor savings in bandwidth and storage For h.264 no replacement is available that would not cost more bandwidth and more storage. Replacing h.264 would cost a lot more than a few licenses and is much more expensive in the long run.Anonymous
December 31, 2011
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December 31, 2011
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December 31, 2011
@Aaron "MPEG LA has announced that H.264 will be royalty-free forever so long as video encoded with the standard is free to end user. Even if you are not offering free media, you should still appeal to the consumer and not to your pocket.Anonymous
December 31, 2011
nice posttAnonymous
December 31, 2011
MPEG-4 AAC support doesn't need to be dropped. If hardware decoders work well with it, great. We'd just like free formats available in addition to the patented ones, so everyone can use whichever is best for their job.Anonymous
December 31, 2011
@Aaron Ditching users will work fine. I already ignore sites that refuse to provide me with h.264 video. Sites delivering ineffienct video are clearly environmentally unfriendly and should be avoided by everybody. Video makes up more than half the internet traffic. Using even a slightly less efficient codec would in the long run cost hunderds of millions or even billions in bandwith investment. Also it would cost more running costs and use a lot more energy in transport network and computer clients. Using a codec that is not widely hardware supported by GPU's will cost even more energy. If for instance Youtube would serve all video's in VP8 (where h.264 can deliver the same quality using 20% less data) than it might mean an estimated 1 Wh extra traffic cost and 1Wh extra cost to play the non hardware accellerated video for every hour of video. With Youtube serving 10 billion minutes of video a day or 160 million hours that would mean 320 MWh of extra energy wasted every day for using an inferior video solution for just Youtube alone. Bad for the environment and bad for overall costs as well. Using Youtube on HTML5 with a WebM capable browser will actually costing users money and make them contribute to global warming.Anonymous
December 31, 2011
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December 31, 2011
@Aaron, So you want your customers to pay you bucks while you don't want to pay anything to someone else? Excuse me but that sounds quite a moronic way of thinking. @Vic, Then I think you should try push those Android phone makers to make their phones produce webm videos instead of mp4 videos before trying to tell IE to support webm. When even phones based on Google's own mobile OS produces mp4 videos, you don't have much of a case for pushing others for webm support. Like I said before, the Web serves the World, the World doesn't serve the Web. If you want videos in non-mp4 format on the Web, you first should push those video-producing device makers to produce videos in non-mp4 format. Especially those Google Android-based phones. If those Android devices produce webm videos by default, then there may be some incentive for Microsoft to support webm natively in IE.Anonymous
January 01, 2012
@Vic Actually the royalty situation fo h.264 is pretty clear in that the royalties in the patentpool can only be increased by a maximum of 10% every 5 years (last 5 year extension was without any increase) and that royalties end in about ten years (except on some newer feature additions like multiview which other codecs mostly do not even have). Royalties could actually get lower easily because less patents will apply in future years. To abide by the FRAND promise individual patent holders cannot increase their patent royalties so when more and more patents disappear from the pool the royalties need to get lower.Anonymous
January 01, 2012
@A_Zune - please provide a direct link to the URL that explains that publishing h.264 format video on a website, webapp, or mobile/tablet app is 100% free for the developer creating the app and can never be charged in the future even if the developer changes their business model. (e.g. free to paid service) If you can't provide a link to such info, then you've just discovered the issue. Thus we need to find another format that IS FREE and IS OPEN because that is what matters most on the open Web.Anonymous
January 01, 2012
@Thomas, Since the open Web needs to serve the World, and the World does not serve the open Web, so the first priority for the requirement of a format for the Web is not whether it is open, but that it works for the World. What matters most is if its works best for the real World, not some "Free and Open" ideals. If those ideals really matter most, why Google doesn't push webm for all android devices?Anonymous
January 01, 2012
@Thomas Just look at one of my comment above , you will get a link there.Anonymous
January 02, 2012
@Sunil @Thomas - Sunil you didn't read your own link... the article clearly states what we've been stating all along: "while H.264 was currently royalty-free (and would remain so until 2015), there was no guarantee that MPEG LA wouldn't start charging licensing fees later on" --------- THIS IS THE ISSUE!!!!!! THIS IS WHY YOU CAN'T USE NON-OPEN FORMATS on the Mother Trucking OPEN WEB!!!!! how many Mother Trucking times must we state this!!!!! HTML5 Video MUST use a FREE and OPEN Video format!... any browser that doesn't implement their HTML5 Video with native support for a video format that isn't open and free... has FAILED to implement HTML5 Video! Internet Explorer has NOT implemented HTML5 Video properly... thus IE does not yet fully support HTML5!!!Anonymous
January 02, 2012
Yes I know that further in the article it talks about the free-forever announcement... but that is only when the video content for the end user is free. If your site or app is a paid site/app... and it just happens to include some video content (regardless how much)... YOU HAVE TO PAY LICENSING FEEs for something that you should not have to. WEB = Free HTML = Free CSS = Free PNG = Free JavaScript = Free Canvas = Free SVG = Free HTML5 Audio = Free (Except In IE you must use AAC format to qualify) HTML5 Video = Free (Except in IE) Internet Explorer is once again! the browser holding back the Web... its like the IE6 disaster all over again!... I'm not looking forward to 2015 and having to deal with old versions of IE that don't support open formats!Anonymous
January 02, 2012
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January 02, 2012
@tammy ================================================================================ ---- It does not rule out the possibility, however, that some other patent holder outside the MPEG-LA will come calling.---- ================================================================================ How is that different from any other one?Anonymous
January 02, 2012
@George I think you did not read my comments properly, what I am saying why we need to have a codec in a browser why cam't browser read it from onderlying OS. Then , as a Web Developer I will not have to worry about different browsers.if you want to support a particular codec you can distribut te codec and It will run fine across all browsers after first install. over 95% of the devices can read and produce H264 codec, hence It would very easy for end users and easier for developers if browsers use the codec to the underlying system.Anonymous
January 02, 2012
@sunil - as soon as MPEG-LA and all other patent holders on the h.264 agree to sign a "free forever", "will never start charging", & a "can be used freely to serve up 'free' content on a 'paid' app/site/game" the h.264 will be the way to go! Until then, it simply can't be used on the free Web.Anonymous
January 02, 2012
At least, the MPEG-LA will defend you if you are attacked by a patent troll. Does WebM have the same support?Anonymous
January 02, 2012
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January 02, 2012
@Rob Mauceri, @Microsoft, @A_Zune - so I've made a webapp / mobile app that serves up video as part of its content (say 5-15%)... users need to pay to access the site, but once a member (e.g. once they are in)... do I as a developer have to pay MPEG-LA royalties if the format used is h.264? If the answer is yes, or maybe... then I want no part of this video format and I'll stick to WebM and Ogg (which I currently use). If however the answer is no (and it is 100% free for me to publish the video content in h.264 now, and forever) then I'll consider switching for bandwidth/compatibility reasons. If the answer is foggy/unknown... you can see why web developers are reluctant to embrace h.264 in any way.Anonymous
January 02, 2012
@George, "WEB = Free" huh, so Web is Free and you still want to charge people for accessing your website? What hypocrisy is that? In one sentence you say Web is Free, in another sentence you say you want to charge people for accessing your website, then in yet another sentence you say you don't want to pay others for what you use on the web to gain money. If you think WEB = Free, then you should not charge people for accessing your website. If you charge people for your website, then you are making the Web non-Free yourself.