Microsoft's IE: 'Future of the web is HTML5'

After Apple's Steve Jobs recently rejected the use of Flash for online videos, the company has found an unlikely ally in Microsoft during the debate over whether to use HTML5 or Flash for such web applications.

Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, published a blog post touting the benefits of using HTML5's H.264 format for online videos in terms of quality of the clips and decreased memory usage.

Hachamovitch adds that Flash has problems with reliability, security, and performance.

"H.264 is an industry standard, with broad and strong hardware support," says Hachamovitch. "Because of this standardization, you can easily take what you record on a typical consumer video camera, put it on the web, and have it play in a web browser on any operating system of device with H.264 support - example: a PC with Windows 7."

Microsoft recently demonstrated Internet Explorer 9 playing a YouTube video encoded for H.264. The company says that playing HTML5 video reduces processor usage, which in turn decreases the amount of energy the computer needs from its battery supply to play the clip.

The Apple CEO recently said that although his company's mobile devices cannot play Flash games, most online videos - from websites like YouTube, Facebook, ESPN - can play in the H.264 format.