HTML5 video made easy
All it takes is a single line of code to make HTML5 video and audio tags work in all major browsers.
How to enable video and audio tags in all major browsers
To make HTML5 video and audio tags work in all major browsers, simply add the
following line of code somewhere in the <head> of your document.
<script src="http://api.html5media.info/1.1.8/html5media.min.js"></script>That's it! There is no second step!
How to embed video
You can embed video into your page using the following code.
<video src="video.mp4" width="320" height="200" controls preload></video>For more information and troubleshooting, please visit the video wiki page.
How to embed audio
You can embed audio into your page using the following code.
<audio src="audio.mp3" controls preload></audio>For more information and troubleshooting, please visit the audio wiki page.
Why use html5media?
HTML5 video and audio tags were designed to make embedding a video as easy as embedding an image. They were also designed to give users a faster experience by doing away with browser plugins such as Adobe Flash.
Unfortunately, older browsers don't support HTML5 video and audio tags, and even modern browsers don't support a consistent set of video codecs, making embedding a video rather difficult.
The html5media project makes embedding video or audio as easy as it was meant to be. It's a fire-and-forget solution, and doesn't require installing any files on your server. Unlike many other HTML5 video players, it allows people to use the video controls supplied by their own web browser. It's one of the smallest, fastest solutions available, and as browser technology improves it will become even faster.
More information
The html5media project is open source and can be found on GitHub. You can find out more information on the html5media wiki, or the main html5media project page.
About the author
Dave Hall is a freelance web developer, based in Cambridge, UK. You can usually find him on the Internet in a number of different places:
Extra credits
The html5media project bundles together a number of excellent open-source and creative-commons projects. They are listed below.
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent