YouTube has been slowly moving to HTML5 and now it has dumped using Flash as default. YouTube hasn’t totally removed flash – it’s still there but, now most of the content will load in HTML5. The HTML5 standard will work in Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8, and in beta versions of Firefox. YouTube engineer Richard Leider said the time had come to ditch the aging Flash in favor of HTML5 as the latter, used in smart TVs and other streaming devices, had benefits that “extend beyond web browsers.” YouTube has been using HTML5 since 2010.
HTML5 allows YouTube to bring it’s videos to mobile devices that don’t support flash like iPhone. HTML 5 did not meet the website’s needs five years ago but now it does. The one major key in this switch is HTML5’s adoption of Adaptive Bitrate (ABR), which lets the site change the bitrate and resolution of the videos based on the viewers internet connection. YouTube says that this will reduce buffering by more than 50% globally, and by as much as 80% on heavily congested networks. HTML5 also supports VP9 codec, which allows higher quality video at a bandwidth reduction of 35%, and APIs let YouTube show fullscreen videos with standard HTML UI.
HTML5 IS NOW YOUTUBE’S DEFAULT ON CHROME, IE 11, SAFARI 8, AND FIREFOX BETAS
Even though Adobe thinks so, Flash is not the vest solution for web video.
