Right now Yahoo engineer Jeremy Johnstone is my hero. Frustrated with with Flickr’s lack of HTML5 support on the web, Johnstone — whose position is currently “Technical Yahoo!” on the Yahoo For Good team — has decided to take his employer to task, where else? In his Flickr stream.
Earlier today Johnstone posted the above image, with the following barb.
“No Flickr, you have it wrong. I don’t need to install anything. I just need to use a different site to host my video which properly supports modern web technologies.”
Right now Flickr video does support HTML5, but apparently only if it detects you have an iPad. And while the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and even IE9 are compatible with HTML5 (which does not require you to install a plugin to view video), people who want to watch Flickr videos without having to download Flash are out of luck. It’s enough to make a Technical Yahoo! go to Vimeo!
And yes I’m pretty sure this outburst is out of pure passion for innovation on Johnstone’s part, as his loyalty to Yahoo (which owns Flickr) is clear — At least judging from what he did to his car.