Is Javascript needed to play HTML 5 Videos in recent browsers? - javascript

Based on this page on w3schools I don't see any mention of Javascript being needed to play HTML5 videos on recent browsers.
https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp
Yet, when I disable Javascript on Safari, I can no longer play Videos embedded on my webpage via Tag. I even disabled lazy loading on a test page to see if that helped, but it didn't.
My primary concern is visitors on Mobile devices so falling back to flash is not an option.
hence the question, Is Javascript needed on fairly recent browsers ? what are best fallback options without requiring any plugins ?
like, using to provide direct download of Video, etc ?

javascript is absolutely not required to play the video in html5
the w3 video is not playing because it is rendering that part of the dom using js and also video is not local it is brought by anchor tag

Related

How to enable the swf file autoplay on the mobile version of wordpress

I embedded the swf file on my wp page.(https://www.pacifictintlv.com/mobile).
But when viewing on mobile, it doesn`t work.
Can we just fix it so that it will automatically forward them to the Flash download link in case they don't have Flash enabled/installed or is there another fix for this?
There is no Flash download link. Flash hasn't been supported on Android for over five years and has famously never been supported on iPhone. Flash itself will reach end of life in 2020. There are ways for users to run Flash if they really want to, but it's too much to expect the average visitor to jump through those hoops.
Why are you using Flash at all? That page could easily be implemented with Javascript, and be far more accessible in the process.

Detect if the UIWebView can play video inline on iPhone ( allowsInlineMediaPlayback )

I am trying to tell if my video is going to play inline once the user starts the video (as apposed to fullscreen/in the native video player) on an iPhone in a UIWebView before the video has started. I have no way of knowing if the UIWebView has the setting allowsInlineMediaPlayback = YES as i do not know in what app or on what page my video is being displayed.
My goal is to only show the video if it can be played inline.
Is there any way to read the allowsInlineMediaPlayback setting from javascript, or detect if my video will play inline or not?
Everything I have read on the apple developers website seems to suggest that it will automatically play in full screen mode in safari. Now if they are using another app, as far as I know you do not have access to that apps UIWebViews properties. However, in an attempt to not be totally useless, here is a link to all of the methods you can query and you might find some useful information in there.
https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/AudioVideo/Reference/HTMLMediaElementClassReference/HTMLMediaElement/HTMLMediaElement.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009355-CH18-SW27
Some more information that may be useful to you.
https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/Using_HTML5_Audio_Video/AudioandVideoTagBasics/AudioandVideoTagBasics.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009523-CH2-SW1

Is it possible to get firefox to play MP4s in the html5 video tag?

I know it is not right out of the box, but is there a hack anywhere that uses javascript, php, or even flash to play the MP4s if the html5 video tag isn't supported?
Yes, there are several frameworks / plugins.
http://videojs.com/ for example provides good fallback.
It basically detects if HTML5 video is available and if not, it uses a provided flash player automatically. To change the order of used engines, you can set the option:
_V_.options.techOrder = ["swfH5"];
which will use swf before HTML5
The compatibility chart has a list of all browsers/technologies available for playback.

JavaScript - shuffling audio

I am creating a webpage that uses JavaScript to shuffle a series of audio file questions and their matching drag-and-drop answers. I have successfully implemented this using the native HTML5 audio tags but also have a fallback section for IE 7/8 since these browsers cannot read the audio tag. This fallback section uses conditional comments around object and param tags as demonstrated at the end of this article here.
It works in that it does shuffle in IE, but breaks in that it displays the ugly Media Player-style controls that I had specifically hidden, as this activity uses "play sound" buttons instead of audio player controls.
If anyone needs to see specific parts of code, just let me know.
Many thanks in advance!
Two thoughts (sorry, I'm on a mac at the moment so testing in IE isn't a great option):
I see the parameters where you're trying to hide the controls, but have you also tried applying css to the object tag or to a container wrapped around it? It might be as simple as giving a wrapper div a style of display: none or visibility: hidden.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but have you investigated any plugins such as SoundManager 2? It uses HTML5 audio with a Flash fallback; I've used it before and had success. Obviously it requires Flash on older browsers, but if that's not an issue it could be easier than trying to figure out how to hide the controls.
It's a nice little page by the way. Good luck!
To address your second question/comment: using an object/embed tag means that you're relying on the browser/OS deciding on what plugin it will use to play audio. Some Googling turns up issues with IE and quicktime, and one possible solution:
Jan 2009 Microsoft update breaks mp3 sound objects in IE7
IE issues with quicktime
Hope it helps. SoundManager 2 might be worth trying if you keep hitting walls, just be aware that using SM2 will mandate that users with older browsers have Flash installed and unblocked.
I’ve managed to out the second issue with the audio in IE – for the shuffle script to work with the audio in IE, you have to call the shuffle BEFORE the audio code – in my case I moved all the conditional comments below the .shuffle(); stuff and it works no worries!

Does JavaScript have to be enabled to play embedded video?

In order to view an embedded video on a web-page, is it absolutely necessary to have javascript
enabled - assuming the web page is not in the latest HTML5 format and hence has none of
the newer type tags?
I have noticed that YouTube does not work with JS disabled and I was wondering
whether it was a conscious decision on YouTube's part to work only with JS enabled or
did they really have no choice.
The embed code for YouTube is basically an iframe that links to a normal HTML page that uses JavaScript to load in the video you want to see.
In general, you can view video without JavaScript enabled. Most videos are played through Flash, which you can include directly into your page with either an object tag or an embed tag.
There are libraries, such as SWFObject that will put those players into your page for you, but do so through the use of JavaScript. If you want to use a library like that, you will need JavaScript enabled.
Also, if your browser does support HTML5, you can load video directly into the page with the video tag, without the need of JavaScript.
Youtube wants you to have Javascript enabled to deliver advertising.
The player you want to use to embedd the video will tell you if Javascript has to be enabled or not.
Most of the Flash based players work without Javascript enabled, some other don't.
If you are going to embedd a QuickTime video, you don't need to have Javascript enabled to play it

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