Table of Contents for
The Modern Web

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition The Modern Web by Peter Gasston Published by No Starch Press, 2013
  1. The Modern Web
  2. Cover
  3. The Modern Web
  4. Advance Praise for
  5. Praise for Peter Gasston’s
  6. Dedication
  7. About the Author
  8. About the Technical Reviewer
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. Introduction
  11. The Device Landscape
  12. The Multi-screen World
  13. Context: What We Don’t Know
  14. What You’ll Learn
  15. A. Further Reading
  16. 1. The Web Platform
  17. A Quick Note About Terminology
  18. Who You Are and What You Need to Know
  19. Getting Our Terms Straight
  20. The Real HTML5
  21. CSS3 and Beyond
  22. Browser Support
  23. Test and Test and Test Some More
  24. Summary
  25. B. Further Reading
  26. 2. Structure and Semantics
  27. New Elements in HTML5
  28. WAI-ARIA
  29. The Importance of Semantic Markup
  30. Microformats
  31. RDFa
  32. Microdata
  33. Data Attributes
  34. Web Components: The Future of Markup?
  35. Summary
  36. C. Further Reading
  37. 3. Device-Responsive CSS
  38. Media Queries
  39. Media Queries in JavaScript
  40. Adaptive vs. Responsive Web Design
  41. Viewport-Relative Length Units
  42. Responsive Design and Replaced Objects
  43. Summary
  44. D. Further Reading
  45. 4. New Approaches to CSS Layouts
  46. Multi-columns
  47. Flexbox
  48. Grid Layout
  49. The Further Future
  50. Summary
  51. E. Further Reading
  52. 5. Modern JavaScript
  53. New in JavaScript
  54. JavaScript Libraries
  55. Polyfills and Shims
  56. Testing and Debugging
  57. Summary
  58. F. Further Reading
  59. 6. Device Apis
  60. Geolocation
  61. Orientation
  62. Fullscreen
  63. Vibration
  64. Battery Status
  65. Network Information
  66. Camera and Microphone
  67. Web Storage
  68. Drag and Drop
  69. Interacting with Files
  70. Mozilla’s Firefox OS and WebAPIs
  71. PhoneGap and Native Wrappers
  72. Summary
  73. G. Further Reading
  74. 7. Images and Graphics
  75. Comparing Vectors and Bitmaps
  76. Scalable Vector Graphics
  77. The canvas Element
  78. When to Choose SVG or Canvas
  79. Summary
  80. H. Further Reading
  81. 8. New Forms
  82. New Input Types
  83. New Attributes
  84. Datalists
  85. On-Screen Controls and Widgets
  86. Displaying Information to the User
  87. Client-side Form Validation
  88. The Constraint Validation API
  89. Forms and CSS
  90. Summary
  91. I. Further Reading
  92. 9. Multimedia
  93. The Media Elements
  94. Media Fragments
  95. The Media API
  96. Media Events
  97. Advanced Media Interaction
  98. Summary
  99. J. Further Reading
  100. 10. Web Apps
  101. Web Apps
  102. Hybrid Apps
  103. TV Apps
  104. Webinos
  105. Application Cache
  106. Summary
  107. K. Further Reading
  108. 11. The Future
  109. Web Components
  110. The Future of CSS
  111. Summary
  112. L. Further Reading
  113. M. Browser Support as of March 2013
  114. The Browsers in Question
  115. Enabling Experimental Features
  116. Chapter 1: The Web Platform
  117. Chapter 2: Structure and Semantics
  118. Chapter 3: Device-Responsive CSS
  119. Chapter 4: New Approaches to CSS Layouts
  120. Chapter 5: Modern JavaScript
  121. Chapter 6: Device APIs
  122. Chapter 7: Images and Graphics
  123. Chapter 8: New Forms
  124. Chapter 9: Multimedia
  125. Chapter 10: Web Apps
  126. Chapter 11: The Future
  127. N. Further Reading
  128. Introduction
  129. Chapter 1: The Web Platform
  130. Chapter 2: Structure and Semantics
  131. Chapter 3: Device-Responsive CSS
  132. Chapter 4: New Approaches to CSS Layouts
  133. Chapter 5: Modern JavaScript
  134. Chapter 6: Device APIs
  135. Chapter 7: Images and Graphics
  136. Chapter 8: New Forms
  137. Chapter 9: Multimedia
  138. Chapter 10: Web Apps
  139. Chapter 11: The Future
  140. Index
  141. About the Author
  142. Copyright

Chapter 9. Multimedia

Although audio and video have been a popular part of the Web for many years on sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, and SoundCloud, they’ve always been second-class citizens, relying on third-party plug-ins (especially Flash) to operate. A reliance on plug-ins isn’t a good long-term plan for website owners or browser makers, not least because the user is responsible for keeping them up-to-date. Surely, updating audio and media capabilities along with the browser is best, especially since most browsers have a frequent update cycle nowadays.

Plug-ins can also cause stability issues, as Steve Jobs famously noted when detailing the reasons for not supporting Flash on iOS:

We also know firsthand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods, and iPads by adding Flash.

For these reasons, having audio and video natively in the browser is extremely important, and one of the big pushes in HTML5 has been toward making this happen in the form of a pair of media elements that are widely implemented in browsers today. These elements control playback of audio and video from multiple sources, and in addition to robust HTML implementation, they also have an extensive API and set of events, giving developers granular control over what they can do. Being part of the web platform, they interact well with other content—far beyond what was possible with sand-boxed plug-ins—making the new media elements true first-class web citizens.

After exploring the media elements, I’ll take a brief look at the future of multimedia on the Web, from audio mixing and effects APIs to the future (or at least a possible future) of real-time voice, video, and data communication—the WebRTC project.