Windows Phone 8.1 has been released, at least in its Developer Preview form, for several months now, but we are still learning about what Microsoft has put into the OS. Late on Friday, the company offered some information on the HTML5 video and audio changes and improvements it has made for the version of Internet Explorer 11 that was made for Windows Phone 8.1.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated:
"Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8.1 now provides full support for HTML5 media. Videos can play natively in the browser without plug-ins, and HTML5 media element events, attributes and properties are fully supported as well. Multiple audio elements can play simultaneously on a single page, making it possible to use HTML5 audio with games or interactive Web apps. And video playback works on a 512MB device. This is a mobile browser, after all!"
Videos that play in IE11 do so by default inside the webpage they are hosted on, but website coders also have the option to have the clip play in full screen mode using the FullScreen API. The popular video site Vimeo is an example of a service that chooses that option. IE11 with Windows Phone 8.1 also supports Media Source Extensions to offer users solid audio and video streaming without the use of plug-ins. Finally, it offers closed captioning of videos in the same way as the IE11 version of Windows 8.1 does.
What has your HTML5 video and audio experience been like when using IE11 for Windows Phone 8.1?
Source: IEBlog
