Otaku no Podcast now supports HTML5

The world is increasingly moving toward mobile devices to consume content with. Whether it be an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android based smartphone or tablet, Palm webOS device, BlackBerry, or what have you, we are increasingly turning to these mobile companions to get our fix of news and entertainment while out and about.

Now, we’re not the type to shy away from a trend; and so we here at Otaku no Podcast are taking steps to make ourselves available on these mobile devices. Right now, if you browse to otakunopodcast.com on most mobile devices, you should be presented with a mobile-optimized version of our website, perfect for smaller-screened devices such as your smartphone.

Unfortunately that leaves the problem of actually playing back our media content (i.e. the podcasts themselves). Many devices out there do not support Adobe Flash, which is what we (as well as pretty much every other website out there) use for our web-based audio/video player widgets. The good news is that there is a new standard gaining widespread adoption to fix this. HTML 5 adds built-in support for audio and video playback, doing away with the need for Flash or Silverlight or any other such plugin. Most of the latest web browsers, including the latest versions of Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer for both Mac and Windows support this standard. Most mobile phone and tablets support this as well. And now so does Otaku no Podcast. When you browse to any audio or video podcast episode, you will now be able to play said episode on any HTML 5 compliant browser or device. (If your browser isn’t fully HTML 5 compliant, the site will automatically fall back to the traditional Flash-based audio/video player.)

Of course if you have any questions or (we hope not!) problems with this player, please do let us know about it.

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