Arcade Fire teams with Google on HTML5 video

Google on Monday partnered with the Canadian indie rock music band Arcade Fire to produce the first HTML5-based music video. The project, called The Wilderness Downtown, was overseen by writer and director Chris Milk. It's set to the band's "We Used to Wait" song and uses the standard to show Google Maps, a drawing tool and multiple windows that move around the screen.

The band, Google and Milk built the video to work best in Chrome, but anyone with an updated HTML5-compliant browser like Safari can see the same content. It may work in limited form with Android and iOS devices, although without a true windowed system they will likely miss some components.

Google's project is a minor wound to its recent partner Adobe, as a similar feature isn't likely to be feasible with Flash.

By Electronista Staff