Session 1: Until HTML5 started to become more popular, largely because of Steve Jobs’ criticism of Flash and Apple’s move not to support Flash on iOS devices, listening to audio and viewing video on the web required the use of a browser plugin. Soon after Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash in April, 2010 developers rapidly began to utilize HTML5 media elements for audio and video. The obvious advantage at first was that media could be played on iPhones and iPads were Flash was denied. However, soon it became apparent that many other advantages existed. Today we will cover examples of HTML5 media; from embedding content using APIs to browser-native HTML5 video and audio players.

Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. — Steve Jobs

Relevant Links:
HTML5 Video on W3Schools
HTML5 Audio on W3Schools
MDN: Using HTML5 Audio and Video

Session 2: No class due to holiday.