Trying to find a decent media player for WordPress has always been hassle and the problem was generally swept under the carpet.
For years it has just been easier to just upload your videos to external websites such as YouTube or Vimeo and then embed them into the website.
The only problem with this is that users can click on the video and link externally to the video directly and watch it there, taking traffic from your site into the addictive world of videos.
With the release of WordPress 3.6, codenamed ‘Oscar’, the developers in their infinite wisdom have built in a HTML5 media player into the CMS’ core.
For years, videos across the web have been run using Adobe Flash. Most likely you have had to download the Flash player for your web browser before you can watch videos.
Not only was this annoying, but in recent years Adobe have had a blue with Apple preventing iPhone’s and iPad’s from supporting flash. This meant that anything using Flash on your website including videos, audio, banners etc weren’t viewable on these devices.
HTML5 has come to the rescue by building all this functionality straight into the web browser. HTML5 (should really be called HTML v5) is basically just version 5 of the code that web browsers process to show you a websites content. No more downloading external plugins and no more compatibility issues. It works on all devices that use a normal web browser.
WordPress 3.6 will automatically scan the files upload and allow you to insert them straight into your pages or posts. Simple as that. The web browser does the rest and up comes a nice light audio or video player.