HTML 5 Video Annoying, Usable Today
Gruber suggests that HTML 5 video is "effectively unusable" for the following two reasons:
- It doesn't allow poster images.
- Both audio and video always auto-buffer instead of waiting for a click.
Our hero gets past the first issue with some Javascript hackery, which also fixes the second issue. So, completely usable before (with a few issues), 100% usable afterwards.
There is the ever-present IE issue -- no version of Internet Explorer as of this writing supports <video> or <audio> -- but this isn't at all an issue for Gruber.
The effective conclusion to Gruber's "effectively unusable" piece is "I used it for my PastryKit video page but I had to use Javascript and create two versions of each video and I don't like that."
Which seems, y'know, usable to me.