Submitted by “Internet streaming music service Pandora announced on Tuesday that it is phasing out Flash in favor of HTML 5. The change means users won’t have to rely on the Flash plug-in in their Web browser to listen to the service’s music offerings, and the company claims switching to HTML 5 has improved overall performance, too. ‘The front-end technology has been rebuilt in HTML 5 and together with a host of other improvements results in a much faster experience,’ the Pandora Web site stated.”
Woot!
It doesn’t need to die – it just shouldn’t be used in the wrong places. Like this one.
So yay Pandora.
I disagree. Any web formats displaying content under the control of a single company ought to die.
Proof in the pudding and all that, wait til it launches, it could be a turd.
They themselfs on their site say, loading of the page/content took 10 seconds with Flash only 2 with HTML5.
So that sounds pretty darn good.
Load times don’t interest me if it doesn’t work in my browser… plenty of sites claim HTML5 while not working in Opera or Firefox.
That would be bad.
Probably a mistake of the people that created the website.
In this case it wouldn’t matter to me at all, because all I get at pandora.com is “We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S.”
:-/
My own limited experience with implementing HTML5 vs loading an applet (Flash, Java, whatever) to display or play back media has shown a definite and consistent improvement in load times under HTML5. I’ve also seen a lot less CPU utilization. This is both in Windows 7 and Slackware Linux, on the same machine: Core2Duo, Nvidia Quadro graphics (using the proprietary driver in Linux; I should test Nouveau too).
Of course, Flash is much faster in Windows so the difference is less marked there, but Flash is a proprietary closed system and Adobe has no real interest in giving GNU/Linux the same amount of development effort.
It doesn’t mention the codec. If it’s h264 then it’s not that exciting.
Why is it that h.264 is bad in your opinion?
It has the best compression to quality ratio of any codec on the market. That is exciting as it says that the best standard got adopted.
Edited 2011-07-12 23:14 UTC
Isn’t Pandora a music streaming service? So they are probably using MP3.
Do you really have to ask?
h.264’s problems are not technical, they are political. If h264 was just a codec with a difficult to calculate royalty system, I’d be sort of cool with it. Its patented theoretically licensed. But, the crazy intimidation and FUDing when it comes to WebM is just too much. I’d rather not support them, if I have a choice.
Again with the patents.
They’ve already assured everyone in contract form that there would be no license fees and thereby lawsuits resulting from non payment of perceived license fees for use of the codec.
This is just another example of the competition getting butt-hurt that they cant blatantly copy another group’s superior product.
Edited 2011-07-13 00:20 UTC
Which was only done as a desperation move after they where completely trumped by the WebM license banning anyone thaty brought frivolous suit against Google for it, which meant that the MPEG-LA’s appeal to it’s partners for any patents that could be used against WebM would go nowhere.
Itwas a high stakes game of chicken, and the MPEG-LA lost.
Perhaps but it all of it was based on the assumption that they would hold the world’s content hostage. They clarified that stance to shut the haters up but they still exist and apparently congregate here.
I can’t even begin to see where you perceive that they lost… unless you assume that the lost the ability to hold the world’s content hostage.
Sigh… ya sure… they lost that. [roll eyes]
Edited 2011-07-13 01:28 UTC
Apple fanboy alert.
Using the word “haters” on a tech site is a dead giveaway that you’re a Apple fanboy… seriously, it makes you sound like a preteen Justin Beiber fangirl.
What does this have to do with Apple????
If only he knew he was up against an old school Mac lover lol…
Those of us that have been around long enough to know that Jobs isn’t always right, in fact he’s wrong more often then not and has only been lucky with a few products that he managed to convince te world where the best you could get, while those of us with actual things to do are going nuts that they where lagging so far behind the industry in areas that mattered to their core users.
There are allot of us that still want o b able to get an upgradeable Mac tower that can fit a full length GPU that doesn’t require server grade CPUs and ram or even at least an iMac upgradeable with off the shelf MXM GPUs with the option for Crossfire/ SLI graphics… If they can fit 2x HD6970m or GTX580m and an i7 mobile quad extreme edition into a 17″ laptop, they can fit it into a 20″+ iMac.
That is a gross over simplification of the licensing situation of *h264*. Its crazy, I don’t like it. I won’t use it. Not a problem. I should be able to choose products and services of my choosing, right?
What I said is that I do not appreciate them asking companies for patents they think may be related to a web M which was not created by any of their members and was not intentionally created to infringe on any. They are threatening people before they have any proof at all at any infringement of any patent. If they are correct, then I really do believe that any non trivial piece of code infringes. The whole purpose of it is to stifle competition and scare people into licensing h264.
WebM does not seek to copy any project. There is not a line of code in there from anything else. There are not any alleged infringements. Only Their competitors are trying to find something that it infringes upon, to stifle competition. It is MEPG that is “getting but hurt” over a free codec because it threatens their business.
Ever heard of mpegla? You don’t use the mafia they use you.
As others have said, why would they bother with h.264 or WebM? Those are video codecs and Pandora only serves up audio.
I give them about a 95% probability of using a standard .m3u stream to deliver .mp3 audio just like every other radio server does.
“Coming soon to all listeners!”
So they are dropping the fcking US only?
I used to use pandora until they gave the middle finger to the whole world but US.
I haven’t used Pandora because I’m not from the US, but I’ve used Grooveshark a lot. GS made the switch about 6 month ago and that was when I stopped using the service. Everything is slower and flickers as images load. It’s really a horrible experience. Ah, and they still use Flash for the actual streaming.