Content-Type: RST

Many people have been passing around the fact that HTML5_ is "awesome"
or "has a ton of features", etc. It's going to revolutionize the web!
... Right. It indeed has a ton of improvements, but I doubt ye olde
regular intarwubs coder is going to even be aware of them. I mean,
seriously: `<time>` tags for denoting time/date? What the heck?

.. _HTML5: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/html5.asp

   HTML 5 improves interoperability and reduces development costs by
   making precise rules on how to handle all HTML elements, and how to
   recover from errors. 

Right, because being able to clarify to the browser if a certain thing
is an article is useful in the end. To some style development or niche
features (a Firefox plugin to generate citations, anyone?) this might
be useful, but for a general coder: who cares?

However, there are a few things that I do think people need to be
aware of. To be specific, these 4 tags: `<audio>`, `<video>`,
`<embed>`, and `<canvas>`. Canvas will be a separate entry, just
because it is insane.

Now...

<embed>
=======

Let's start simply. This tag gives you a much simpler interface than
`<object>` or other old ways of embedding plugins into a page. Those
usually required Javascript, and were really just workarounds. Lately,
the `<embed>` tag has emerged as the central element in these tag
messes, so W3C is going to standard-ify it. Now, web developers can
embed anything into a webpage, and given that their viewers
have the proper plugin to view the embedded item, they will be able to
see it. For example:

.. raw :: html

   <div class="figure">
   <embed class="centered"
   src="http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/ohai-i-upgraded-your-ram"
   />	
   </div>

.. sourcecode :: html
   
   <embed class="centered"
   src="http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/ohai-i-upgraded-your-ram"
   />

Apologies to those of you who are not using a competent browser, you
don't get to see the kitty. (That means you, IE users.) Now,
that embed was just a JPEG file, but if it were SWF, MP3, etc. it
would still appear just fine, in whatever plugin your browser chose:
for Windows people, it's usually QuickTime; for Linux, it varies (totem, mplayer, etc). 
But,
it works.

Now, what people mostly embed into webpages is audio and (especially)
video. So, let's look at those:

<video>
=======

I started with this one first just because it's pretty friggin
awesome. With the code:

.. sourcecode :: html
   
   <video class="centered"
   src="http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/dramatic-look"
   controls="true"> Your browser doesn't support the video tag. </video> 

... I can get this:

.. raw :: html

   <div class="figure">
   <video class="centered"
   src="http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/dramatic-look"
   controls="true"> Your browser doesn't support the video tag. </video> 
   </div>

And guess what? No. Flash. Involved. Adobe can go flash-play with
itself, because I'm not using its  product to view a video! Hah!

Seriously though, this is a big development. It might only support
Theora and Ogg Vorbis in Firefox (both open formats) for now,  but
it's a step in 
the right direction: open and free ways to share information. No
depending on a proprietary 3rd party middleman to interpret and
present your information. No vendor lock-in. Woot.

Also, it includes `useful options`_ such as "autoplay", resizing via
"height" and "width", looping, "poster" to show an image while it's
loading, etc. And it makes me happy.

.. _`useful options`: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/html5_video.asp

<audio>
=======

Audio_ functions much like video does, with its own set of neat options
(a little more limited than the video's, for obvious reasons), but is
pretty much the same thing. For example, to play the Ubuntu login
sound:

.. _Audio: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/html5_audio.asp

.. sourcecode :: html
   
   <audio class="centered"
   src="http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/ubuntu-login-sound"
   controls="true"> Your browser doesn't support the audio tag. </audio> 

.. raw :: html

   <div class="figure">
   <audio class="centered"
   src="http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/ubuntu-login-sound"
   controls="true"> Your browser doesn't support the audio tag. </audio>  
   </div>

Much fun. 

Anyway, again, apologies to those of you who could not see this. The
samples above were tested in Windows Vista Ultimate with Firefox 3.5.3
and in Ubuntu 9.04 "Shiretoko" 3.5.3 (actually Firefox 3.5.3, but
Jaunty sucks.) If it doesn't work for you, you're probably using
another browser.  Or you're clearly not awesome enough.

The point that I'm trying to get across, though, is that Firefox is
leading a movement toward a new intorwab that does not lock you down
to some dominating companies' products to view it. Especially when
those products are closed-source and could be doing anything without
your knowledge. Paranoia aside, even if you're using closed-source
Chrome, Safari or (shudder) Internet Explorer, you don't have to
install Adobe's jewel of a product just to get Rickroll'd.

*Irrelevant note:* I'm writing this on using *Emacs* on *Vista*
because my laptop with Ubuntu is currently busy screwing itself over
because of trying to compile Chromium.