Tired of Flash? HTML5 Viewer For YouTube

An anonymous reader writes "Instead of spending the next 10 years trying to find a Flash implementation for Linux or OS X that doesn't drain CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow, NeoSmart Technologies has made an HTML5 viewer for YouTube videos. It loads YouTube videos in an HTML5 video container and streams (with skip/skim/pause/resume) against an MP4 resource, and an (optional) userscript file can update YouTube pages with the HTML5 viewer. The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported. Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."

Comments

Only video sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash

Re:Only video sites?

[causality]

Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash

If Flash goes back to being a niche application for only certain specific types of content that actually require its programming language, such as online games, that would be a tremendous improvement. The issue being addressed here is that Flash is a full-featured system that's being used just to play videos, when there are other non-proprietary ways to deal with content that only needs to play a video. Using an open standard when one is available and could do the job is definitely a step in the right direction even if we know it's not a panacea that can totally replace Flash in every possible scenario. It could even lead to other open systems being designed and implemented that can replace Flash in areas where its featureset is actually needed.

Re:Only video sites?

[mweather]

because nobody uses Flash for navigation

Well, nobody with any sense, anyway.

Re:Only video sites?

[Vyse of Arcadia]

If nothing else, corporations will always be using it for uselessly flashy websites. That alone ensures we'll be dealing with flash for a while to come.

Re:Only video sites?

[1s44c]

Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash

Flash is a security nightmare and anything that reduces the amount of flash in the world can only be a good thing. Flash badly needs to be replaced with a good open standard and wiped out. But if that's not going to happen the next best thing is to reduce the amount of flash in the world.

Less of a bad thing is still an improvement.

Re:Only video sites?

[hedwards]

Precisely, but more than that, most of the time flash is being used where there's a better standard in place and in places where it shouldn't have been used originally. Flash sites aren't ADA compliant without an unreasonable amount of extra work. Mainly unreasonable because if it had been properly done in some other format it wouldn't take much effort at all.

Open is great, but really a secure, stable technology that's accessible to everybody is enough. Realistically that's probably open source.

Re:Only video sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is a tool to convert SWF into HTML. Now we have SVG and a much faster JavaScript in all the good browsers, I think HTML is now as fully capable as Flash. All we need is a tool to convert them.

Re:Only video sites?

[bonch]

With the exception of games, all of that can be handled by HTML5.

Re:Only video sites?

[aliquis]

Just if you want to actually watch those shitty websites.

If say Blizzard would make a Starcraft 2 flash site then the videos on said site would most likely be viewable from other places to so ..

Re:Only video sites?

[Darkness404]

Now we have SVG and a much faster JavaScript in all the good browsers

Good browsers isn't good enough for most sites though. While we can make a lot of "geek-centric" sites be viewable only in a certain handful of browsers, the stupid masses still use IE, from IE 6, 7 and 8. Until IE supports everything that Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, Konqueror, etc. support, expect those features to be under-used. Good luck convincing corporate overlords that you should lock out 65% of possible users by using standards that aren't implemented in IE compared to Flash which is viewable on pretty much everything save for the iPhone, BSD and a few other mobile browsers even though Flash is proprietary.

Re:Only video sites?

[JJJK]

And WebGL seems to be coming along nicely - what we need is a good authoring app that outputs js/webgl. As soon as that is available, I expect flash games to peak within 2-3 years. And then slowly die out.

Re:Only video sites?

[Brian Gordon]

People already install the Flash plugin to get their IE working with YouTube. Why can't they install some HTML5 video support plugin?

Re:Only video sites?

[rvw]

People already install the Flash plugin to get their IE working with YouTube. Why can't they install some HTML5 video support plugin?

Because that makes the whole idea useless. The purpose is to have browsers support this natively without using plugins. HTML5 is a good step in that direction I think, although we have to wait and see how MS implements that video tag.

Re:Only video sites?

[gravos]

Yep. Most of the advantages Flash previously had (animation, real client-side programming) for making rich navigation interfaces are now possible in a more open way with Javascript. The libraries are still a bit of a mess and browser support is always iffy, but dynamic, animated HTML looks amazing in the latest versions of webkit.

Re:Only video sites?

[bhtooefr]

Actually, it doesn't make the whole idea useless, because HTML5 is at least an open standard.

And isn't that what Chrome Frame is for?

Re:Only video sites?

[buchner.johannes]

You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.

Flash was introduced here because it just works.
Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.

Re:Only video sites?

[FlyingBishop]

What the fuck kind of Flash are you using? I'll grant that it might be a little less flaky than integrated video plugins, but it's still a total crapfest next to a local copy.

The difference is that you can't download an flv when it starts skipping or outright freezing (Which happens every day.)

Re:Only video sites?

[amn108]

He was being sarcastic

Re:Only video sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern flash is pretty much a rich graphics API wrapped around a cleaned up Javascript. It's a pretty nice language and environment, actually; but just inappropriately overused in many websites. I'm skeptical that html video extensions will replace it, because I don't think the html encoding will have nearly the versatility of a general purpose programming language. Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.

Posting anonymously because slashdot's javascript is tweaking out, and not letting me log on right now. I get on, but it immediately forgets me.

Re:Only video sites?

[buchner.johannes]

... uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash

Granted, Flash navigation isn't necessary. The effects can be provided by CSS, and search engines like text better.
Google maps street view uses Flash? Can't see it.
I don't mind a dedicated graphical programming environment being used for casual online games,
Now for interactive information displays, you have to realize that some content can not presented in a satisfying way with HTML/JS. You need flash for fancy animations, things flying around. Just look at some artists or movie website.
And the answer 'I don't want that fancy stuff anyway' is not enough. People want fancy.

So I think there will always be a need for a graphical programming environment that has the abilities of Flash (on the programmers side as well as on the users side). JS is not enough. Maybe someone will come up with something open that is equally easy (based on JS or Java(FX)?).
Until then, people will say "Just install Flash."

Re:Only video sites?

[OrangeTide]

The purpose is to have browsers support this natively without using plugins.

That's not the purpose. The purpose is to minimize proprietary plug-ins. Also, as it stands today HTML5 will need codecs for playing videos, and I consider codecs to be a kind of plug-in.

Re:Only video sites?

[buchner.johannes]

Google maps street view uses Flash? Can't see it.

Ooh just saw it. Well, if Google can't live without Flash, it is unlikely there is going to be a web without Flash.

Re:Only video sites?

[Korin43]

The purpose is to have browsers support this natively without using plugins.

No, the purpose is to let people who know what they're doing not use a plugin. The idiot masses are welcome to keep installing a plugin for everything because they're scared of Firefox.

Re:Only video sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Sperging pretty hard, huh.

It's ok, just relax.

Re:Only video sites?

[Pax681]

whooooooooooooooooooooooooosh!

it went with a flaaaaaash!

Re:Only video sites?

[IAmGarethAdams]

As a website developer, what do I now say to my clients when they ask why they can't brand their video player?

Re:Only video sites?

[Darkness404]

Because of a few reasons.

A) The entire point of HTML and HTML5 video tags was to eliminate plugins
B) Plugins are a -bad idea- for most people, for one even if your browser gets updated your plugins might not, leading gaping security flaws in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.
C) A plugin can lead to reliance on the plugin and not spur development in the actual browser

Re:Only video sites?

[obarthelemy]

Honestly, if one such example is your .sig site, that takes a bit to load, and contains essentially nothing (one picture ?), I'm not overly impressed.

Re:Only video sites?

[obarthelemy]

I just hate anything that makes my browser's UI (mouse gestures) not work. the armadamusic.nl one drove me away very quickly

Re:Only video sites?

[buchner.johannes]

On Windows?

Re:Only video sites?

[causality]

You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.

Flash was introduced here because it just works. Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.

It hasn't been my own experience that embedded video is fragile in the browser, though I don't doubt what you are saying of your experience. Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.

Just curious, what OS, browser, and video player are you using? The way you described it as the "system video player" made me think of Windows, as Linux generally doesn't have a particular "system" video player (though I suppose a specific distribution might choose to do things this way). Instead, the user normally installs one or more players of his/her choice but they are just applications like any other and are not built-in OS features. That you had Windows in mind is just a guess, of course. The desktop environment on a Linux system might use file associations to designate a particular video player as the default handler for a certain type of file (I.e. AVI or MPEG) and this could also be called the "system video player." I also wonder if there is a particular file format that seems to give you more problems than others, perhaps because of DRM and requirements imposed by it that are not strictly necessary for playing a video.

It also occurred to me that maybe the problems you are experiencing with standard embedded video is because so many sites use Flash instead. If standard embedded video were more widely used, then problems like that might be more well-known and resolved. It seems to be the exception to the norm right now, and if that changed, I would expect it to improve more rapidly.

Re:Only video sites?

[maxume]

Sure you can download an flv (servers often try to block it outside of a flash client, but what does that matter?).

Re:Only video sites?

[Thinboy00]

Flash was introduced here because it just works.

Come up with something that works for everyone.

Presumably you use Windows. Flash is a clusterfuck on Linux. If you want something that "works for everyone" then Flash isn't it.

If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.

As for the how, I would describe "better" as something that won't crash on Linux while still working on Windows. That would be better. Of course, Adobe won't just take that sitting down. If something better does come out, they will probably pay YouTube/Google/Vimeo/what-have-you to continue using Flash.

Finally, I would argue that <video> and HTML5 are much better than Flash because:
1) It's an open standard; anyone can make an HTML5 renderer, but only Adobe can make a decent Flash viewer (yes other viewers exist, no they're not any good compared to Adobe Flash)
2) Flash has such stupidity that it disables 3d acceleration if your client glx vendor string has "SGI" in it, because Adobe is too stupid to check for whether the card actually supports acceleration (supposedly they experienced crashes when doing a more reasonable test, but that just shows they don't care enough about whether the Linux drivers work well to actually fix or work around bugs). Binary blobs tend to have stupidity like this.

Re:Only video sites?

[maxume]

You politely explain that they can (I am supposing that you are referring to html5 video here).

Re:Only video sites?

[Thinboy00]

Posting anonymously because slashdot's javascript is tweaking out, and not letting me log on right now. I get on, but it immediately forgets me.

Turn cookies on.

Re:Only video sites?

[Thinboy00]

The purpose is to have browsers support this natively without using plugins.

No, the purpose is to let people who know what they're doing not use a plugin. The idiot masses are welcome to keep installing a plugin for everything because they're scared of Firefox.

Firefox (all versions combined) is ahead of IE6 in market share... finally. I think that's a good thing.

Re:Only video sites?

[causality]

Plugins are a -bad idea- for most people, for one even if your browser gets updated your plugins might not, leading gaping security flaws

This is the beauty of package managers. Basic plugins like this can be installed system-wide on Unix-like operating systems and that installation can be maintained by the package manager just like the browser itself and every other application. On Windows they can auto-update themselves though I know this method is less than ideal. The on-screen "traffic" of many individual applications all periodically popping up their own automatic updaters asking you to upgrade is likely to annoy users and may cause them to be clicked away (i.e. cancelled or disabled) just to get rid of them. Perhaps plugins that are important for security reasons can just automatically and non-interactively update themselves when they periodically poll for a new version and find that one is available to reduce this issue on Windows.

in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.

True, but then so could the browser. Yet there really haven't been problems with people going to mozilla.com or getfirefox.com and worrying about whether they are getting the real Firefox and not a trojaned browser, to use Firefox as an example. If the plugin is Open Source (GPL or BSD license or similar) then there's probably no reason that it can't just be included with the browser to eliminate this problem.

Ultimately, however, people need to stop being so mindless ("mindless" as in "autopilot") as to act out the results of "teaching people" by rote. Instead they could learn to judge for themselves what the situation calls for, be it the installation of a plugin or anything else. I think that's what we should be encouraging but we should do so knowing it won't happen overnight. There's no real substitute for understanding, and the attempt to provide substitutes for it is a big reason why there is so much malware in the first place.

A plugin can lead to reliance on the plugin and not spur development in the actual browser

That's potentially true, and quite likely for proprietary plugins. I see that as exactly what happened with Flash. If, however, this is an open standard with an Open Source implementation, then there are no barriers to incorporating the functionality directly into any Open Source browser. Perhaps for IE it can be in the form of a plugin. For that reason, I don't think this is a showstopper though it certainly is a consideration.

Re:Only video sites?

[GoochOwnsYou]

Im actually supprised Google is not defaulting to HTML5 with flash as a backup (detects web browser and makes a decision) as Google seem to be big on HTML5 as they are involved in the process. Considering (newer versions of) Firefox and Chrome support it, its a way Google can get people onto it. Sooner or later IE will be the only one not supporting HTML5 and a move to that technology will proberbly force Microsofts hands to include it, especially considering the rumors the next IE will use Webkit.

Re:Only video sites?

[s0litaire]

I'm on Ubuntu_64 9:10 (on a celeron CPU) & I use Greasemonkey on firefox with the "Youtube Without Flash" Auto and embedded scripts...

Flash works fine for me for most stuff. I just use the scripts for video... ^__^

Re:Only video sites?

[eugene2k]

>Flash was introduced here because it just works.
Yes, and having full control of the way the player behaves, such as being able to show ads during playback or having a button for embedding the video along with the player on one's blog has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Re:Only video sites?

[gmagill]

No kidding. Just what I like to happen when I click a link... auto-playing flash video.

Re:Only video sites?

[FlyingBishop]

Yes. It's twice as bad on Linux, on the same hardware, but Windows XP still isn't really that usable. I still get at least two annoying jolts every half hour.

Re:Only video sites?

[FlyingBishop]

By design, they have to directly expose the original file, and it's trivial to download it (just like an embedded jpeg.) There exist mechanisms for doing the same thing with flv, but it's intentionally obfuscated.

Re:Only video sites?

[Scott Wood]

Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.

Sorry, but those site owners can fuck off. If I tell the browser (or component therein) that I want things to stop moving, stop making noise, and stop chewing up CPU cycles and running up my power bill, then I want them to STOP!

Flash is particularly bad in this regard, and this (along with its limited platform availability and general flakiness) is why I'm not a fan of it. When I can get a working, robust flash player that pays attention to *me* more than to the bits coming over the internet, let me know.

Re:Only video sites?

[ultrabot]

Yes, and having full control of the way the player behaves, such as being able to show ads during playback or having a button for embedding the video along with the player on one's blog has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Embedding video with video tag on your blog is trivial.

So that basically just leaves the annoying stuff to flash (ads, custom player on embedded control..).

Re:Only video sites?

[jonbryce]

Before Flash Video came along, playing streaming video used to be a nightmare. Every site required a different plug-in and a different codec. And anyone remember the nightmare that was Real Player? Flash is popular because it works.

In any case I think the chances of an html 5 video implementation that works on all five major browsers is pretty remote.

Re:Only video sites?

[Shark]

I think the sticking point for a closed standard has more to do with drm than practicality. Flash 'just works', and flash lets you do rtmp.

Re:Only video sites?

[supernova_hq]

Meanwhile the same thing could be done using html, css and javascript while using half the code and a thenth of the CPU usage.

Re:Only video sites?

[causality]

Ok, go for it: I use firefox on amd64, and don't have a working flash plugin. Looking forward to your solution.

Your best bet would be Gnash or something similar. That way you can compile it yourself to suit your 64-bit architecture.

Re:Only video sites?

[ottothecow]

You see that little "x" in the corner?

problem solved

Re:Only video sites?

[Scott Wood]

Feel free to do the same to anyone saying "this sucks".

Re:Only video sites?

[larry bagina]

aside from webgl, there's also canvas. Take a look at some of the google chrome canvas demos sometime.

Re:Only video sites?

[Trogre]

because nobody sane uses Flash for navigation,

FTFY

Your other points are valid, but no web site should be designed to rely on Flash for navigation. Ever.

Re:Only video sites?

[SwedishPenguin]

I wouldn't do that specificially, but I can't see how that would be a problem. There is a javascript interface to the video and you can find out if the video has paused, after that you may do whatever you wish, show suggestions of other videos ala youtube, show a video advertisement (if you're bent on driving users away by annoying them when they specifically requested a paused video) or anything else you could do with flash.

Re:Only video sites?

[Keeper Of Keys]

In any case I think the chances of an html 5 video implementation that works on all five major browsers is pretty remote.

If by "remote" you mean a year or two away, then you are correct.

Re:Only video sites?

[CronoCloud]

The latest Gnash release doesn't work with youtube, though it did a few weeks ago. Linux on PPC (Cell) here.

Re:Only video sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call an electrician.

Re:Only video sites?

[mad.frog]

> Flash was introduced here because it just works.

Even MossPuppet agrees with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZctLzH7EptA

Really, HTML5 video is a no-go until the browser vendors can agree on a codec, and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon... Mozilla will never go for H.264 due to licensing concerns, Apple has no incentive to go with anything else (since their hardware supports it directly), Microsoft has its own VC.1 codec they are still vainly pushing...

Re:Only video sites?

[QuoteMstr]

navigation

Use normal links.

casual online games

Flash has a future here.

interactive information displays

canvas and SVG are both better, more accessible options.

google maps street view

canvas is perfect for this.

Re:Only video sites?

[mad.frog]

Buggy drivers tend to have stupidity like this

FTFY

Re:Only video sites?

[mad.frog]

not use a plugin

...except for Chrome Frame. Right? That one's OK, 'cuz it's from Google, and all open-standard-ish.

</sarcasm>

Re:Only video sites?

[Mad Merlin]

Casual online games don't need Flash. Just look at Game! for example.

Re:Only video sites?

[michaelhood]

If you want something that "works for everyone" then Flash isn't it.

I'm familiar with the laughable Flash performance on linux.

That said, it's statistically irrelevant.

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/PC.html

For 1 billion of the 1 billion PCs* on the internet, they have modern Flash that works.

*Rounding intentional.

Re:Only video sites?

[michaelhood]

Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.

Sorry, but those site owners can fuck off. If I tell the browser (or component therein) that I want things to stop moving, stop making noise, and stop chewing up CPU cycles and running up my power bill, then I want them to STOP!

Flash is particularly bad in this regard, and this (along with its limited platform availability and general flakiness) is why I'm not a fan of it. When I can get a working, robust flash player that pays attention to *me* more than to the bits coming over the internet, let me know.

Just like I'm welcome to run obtrusive ads, you're welcome to enjoy my content elsewhere. Piracy is something of an equalizer in that regard.

Re:Only video sites?

[michaelhood]

As soon as that is available, I expect flash games to peak within 2-3 years. And then slowly die out.

I remember thinking that while playing miniature golf shockwave games from CremeSavers a decade ago.

Re:Only video sites?

[TangoMargarine]

DownloadHelper or FlashGot download flvs fine. Although of course if they're big files it takes forever.

Then again, you were probably being sarcastic. I can never tell.

Re:Only video sites?

[tepples]

Sorry, but those site owners can fuck off.

Unless the site owner happens to be the only provider of a given service that operates in your area, such as a public utility or (in some smaller towns) the only bank with free ATMs.

Re:Only video sites?

[Firehed]

Handily, you can embed multiple src files in a video element (hell, you can even embed a flash-based fallback by effectively wrapping the original embed tag in a video tag).

It's not ideal and you shouldn't have to export multiple video types to get cross-browser compatibility, but then again I shouldn't have to hack around the plethora of IE bugs to make my sites usable in IE6/7. Given that the former is fixed with a tiny shell script and the latter takes hours of guesswork and dumb luck, I consider it tolerable enough until one side gives in. Obviously though, that's a lot more practical for sites with one or two videos so storage isn't much of a concern than creating two or three different versions of every video uploaded to Youtube/Vimeo/etc.

Re:Only video sites?

[Darkness404]

This is the beauty of package managers. Basic plugins like this can be installed system-wide on Unix-like operating systems and that installation can be maintained by the package manager just like the browser itself and every other application. On Windows they can auto-update themselves though I know this method is less than ideal. The on-screen "traffic" of many individual applications all periodically popping up their own automatic updaters asking you to upgrade is likely to annoy users and may cause them to be clicked away (i.e. cancelled or disabled) just to get rid of them. Perhaps plugins that are important for security reasons can just automatically and non-interactively update themselves when they periodically poll for a new version and find that one is available to reduce this issue on Windows.

Have you ever seen an auto-updating thing on Windows do it right? The closest thing I have seen is Firefox and even then its a bit annoying because it manages to pop up midway through an interesting article or video usually leaving me to postpone the update. The list of things that don't do it right on Windows is long. Lets see, Apple seems to bundle -everything- in their updates leaving you with about half of OS X with all the default settings, Windows update either manages to never install stuff, or decides to pop up every hour telling you its going to restart, which is a -bad thing- if you ever you know, download something that is large and won't finish in 10 mins and doesn't have a resume download feature, etc.

True, but then so could the browser. Yet there really haven't been problems with people going to mozilla.com or getfirefox.com and worrying about whether they are getting the real Firefox and not a trojaned browser, to use Firefox as an example. If the plugin is Open Source (GPL or BSD license or similar) then there's probably no reason that it can't just be included with the browser to eliminate this problem.

Yes, but those are trusted. One of the main points in educating the masses is to download things only from trusted sources, you download only 1 browser once every year or so from there. When you are downloading things all over the place, that is when problems happen with a Windows user.

And yes, there are good plugins (add-ons) for Firefox that are open source and good and extend the browser in meaningful ways. However, good luck getting MS to support HTML5 in IE anytime soon.

Ultimately, however, people need to stop being so mindless ("mindless" as in "autopilot") as to act out the results of "teaching people" by rote. Instead they could learn to judge for themselves what the situation calls for, be it the installation of a plugin or anything else. I think that's what we should be encouraging but we should do so knowing it won't happen overnight. There's no real substitute for understanding, and the attempt to provide substitutes for it is a big reason why there is so much malware in the first place.

Yeah, but the masses seem to have only 2 settings, paranoia and apathy. Either they think -everything- is a virus (such as iTunes is a virus, Limewire is a virus, Firefox is a virus, and every other thing other than MS Office -must- be a virus) or they simply don't care. I think Eternal September is truly eternal, the masses don't care about thinking, they don't want to think, they want to be reactionary.

Perhaps for IE it can be in the form of a plugin. For that reason, I don't think this is a showstopper though it certainly is a consideration.

MS is really the only browser maker that takes forever and won't develop new things. For example, SVG support was added in most browsers in 2005 or 2006, its 2009 almost 2010 now and still no SVG support. Yeah, there are plugins for SVG support but that shouldn't be MS's excuse.

Re:Only video sites?

[Simon80]

Like other replies have stated, you completely misunderstood the post you replied to. However, what's worse is that the website in your signature is the epitome of what I and most other websurfers hate about flash. The layout is broken (it's a fixed-size rect in the middle of the page), there are no deep URLs into the "site", and the back button is broken because the the navigation is hidden in flash. Instead of posting polemic comments on slashdot, you should just accept that there are reasons why flash is hated and act accordingly.

Re:Only video sites?

[Firehed]

Chrome and Safari use the same rendering engine (Webkit), and both support html5 video (I think Chrome supports H.264 and OGG though I'm having trouble confirming that; Safari is of course H.264 only). Firefox has supported OGG video since 3.5, and at least some versions of Opera do as well (source). As usual, IE is lagging behind here - and Microsoft tends to make the argument - validly so - that they don't want to incorporate new features until the standards are set. As it stands now, I think the only thing NOT decided upon is the codec(s) that must be supported by browsers. If W3 just calls it in favor of OGG, then it's a safe bet Apple will add OGG support in the next version of Safari even if they continue to support H.264 as well (IE9 would likely do the same).

Re:Only video sites?

[bertoelcon]

Really, HTML5 video is a no-go until the browser vendors can agree on a codec, and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon...

Why can't people just download a codec pack of sorts if they don't already have a usable codec? We download Flash if we go to a site that needs it, so what makes downloading the codecs so impossible?

Re:Only video sites?

[radish]

Ummm...Google Maps and Street View are AJAX, not flash. As far as I know Google don't use flash for anything.

Re:Only video sites?

[marcansoft]

Maps is AJAX, Street View is Flash. They also use flash for some graphs in Analytics, at least (last I checked).

Re:Only video sites?

[Galactic Dominator]

galacticdominator% uname -a
FreeBSD galacticdominator.com 8.0-RC2 FreeBSD 8.0-RC2 #2: Sun Nov 1 19:42:17 CST 2009 adam@galacticdominator.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
galacticdominator% nspluginwrapper -l /home/adam/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
    Original plugin: /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
    Wrapper version string: 1.2.2

Re:Only video sites?

[Korin43]

Chrome Frame is just another plugin for the idiot masses to use that makes our lives easier. The more people who install it, the less I'll have to pay attention to IE's horrible rendering. It doesn't mean I'll actually install Chrome Frame myself.

Re:Only video sites?

[rdnetto]

Here's an excellent example of that: http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/
As far as I can tell, it's only being used for (plain text) headings. If it wan't for FlashBlock, I wouldn't even think they'd be Flash. The weird thing is that the page actually loads with those as text, then the javascript kicks in and replaces them with Flash.

Re:Only video sites?

[Bert64]

Perhaps plugins that are important for security reasons can just automatically and non-interactively update themselves when they periodically poll for a new version and find that one is available to reduce this issue on Windows.

TERRIBLE idea...
Having loads of individual applications running a background updater service is ridiculous, and results in your machine slowing to a crawl once you've installed too many programs...

And updating automatically can often results in things breaking, as many vendors like to include additional or changed features instead of just security updates.

Re:Only video sites?

[FesterDaFelcher]

and running up my power bill

Seriously? You kind of had me until then. Flash is running up your power bill? Care to quantify that for us? How much has flash cost you in the last year? Ball park it if you need to. I'm going to go with....... 1 cent. One red cent.

Re:Only video sites?

[mrboyd]

Licensing issue.

Re:Only video sites?

[uuddlrlrab]

And let's not forget the degraded quality of something re-encoded for flv encapsulation. Or the security holes found in the proprietary flash client. I think interpreted html5 will be a little easier to screen via things like AdBlock[+], NoScript, and decent av/anti-spyware&phishing/firewall/etc software, rather than hoping Adobe caught most if not all the potential attack vectors.

Besides, I'm sure for the Flash video fanboy- I mean, diehards, websites could make the html an option if flash isn't available. Let's just un-bunch those panties, alrighty?..

Re:Only video sites?

[theshowmecanuck]

but it's intentionally obfuscated

And this is why HTML5 video won't be universally adopted. Some sites don't want it to be easy.

Re:Only video sites?

[clone53421]

That was Shockwave, not Flash. And it did.

Perhaps not as quickly as we'd have liked, but I haven't had Shockwave installed for years now.

Re:Only video sites?

[clone53421]

Surely Google will have the decency to upgrade street view to HTML5 when it becomes practical to actually do so. (I.e. enough people use HTML5-supporting browsers that the ones who don't can get an "upgrade your browser" message without bothering 99% of the visitors by it.)

Re:Only video sites?

[DaVince21]

I've seen uselessly (and sometimes usefully) flashy websites made in JavaScript a bit more, lately. By which I mean flashy effects when mousing over things, or going through one of those rotation-picture-viewer things. JavaScript can definitely replace Flash when it comes to flashiness, especially because it's getting faster in modern browsers.

Re:Only video sites?

[DaVince21]

With the exception of games

Interactive SVG.

Re:Only video sites?

[stewbacca]

And the entire Defense Industry doesn't use Flash for software simulation training...oh wait...

Re:Only video sites?

[fimbulvetr]

Microsoft tends to make the argument - validly so - that they don't want to incorporate new features until the standards are set.

I saw you try to sneak that one in there. Haha, nice try!

Re:Only video sites?

[Scott Wood]

Let's say my CPU draws on average 10W more than it needs to when some flash is running in the background (I frequently find firefox taking 100% of my CPU, and it's almost always a window with some flash advertisement whose closure makes it go away -- except when nothing but killing firefox will do it).

Suppose my computer is in this state an average of four hours per day.

Suppose I pay 10 cents per kWh. .01 kW * $.10/kWh * 4 hours * 365 days = $1.46

Not exactly breaking the bank (and I did hesitate to include it because I figured I'd get a response like this) but more than "one red cent", and it adds up to a small but non-trivial amount of waste when you multiply it by all users.

Plus, I've heard some people (on Windows, IIRC) claim that having flash running inhibits auto-suspend, which would make the waste significantly higher -- though to be fair, my experience with Windows auto-suspend is that breathing too heavily in the room could inhibit auto-suspend.

And then there's battery life for laptops and other portables...

Re:Only video sites?

[Simetrical]

Why can't people just download a codec pack of sorts if they don't already have a usable codec? We download Flash if we go to a site that needs it, so what makes downloading the codecs so impossible?

The point is to have it work out of the box, precisely to avoid the post-install "let this program that claims to be from Corporation X execute arbitrary code on my machine as root" clickthroughs. Why should you have to download codecs to view videos, when you don't have to to view images or use JavaScript or almost anything else? <video> should have been part of HTML long ago, just like <img>.

Also, Mozilla and Opera want to discourage the use of proprietary codecs as a matter of principle, for the health of the web. AFAIK, at least Firefox doesn't let you use anything other than Theora at all.

Re:Only video sites?

[Simetrical]

You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.

No one says browsers will use the system video player. In fact, they pretty much can't launch a separate app to play the video, because they have to expose a sophisticated JavaScript API that requires them to know exactly how the video is playing. (Of course, you could always manually open the video in a separate app if you like, just like an image.)

View this in Firefox 3.5 and tell me how smoothly it works for you: <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/video/>. In my experience, <video> is as smooth and hitch-free as you could ask for, although I've run into some teething troubles (like a Theora video from Mozilla having desynced sound on Chrome).

Re:Only video sites?

[ConceptJunkie]

It may not be easy, but it's always possible. It's sad that everyone suffers because too many people think security through obscurity trumps functionality and flexibility. The incompetent ruin it for everyone in order to punish the lazy and stupid. Sounds like Congress.

Re:Only video sites?

[Simetrical]

Modern flash is pretty much a rich graphics API wrapped around a cleaned up Javascript. It's a pretty nice language and environment, actually; but just inappropriately overused in many websites. I'm skeptical that html video extensions will replace it, because I don't think the html encoding will have nearly the versatility of a general purpose programming language. Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.

Of course, using JavaScript. Events are fired whenever anything interesting happens to the video (like pausing or resuming). You can create <video> elements in JavaScript just like any HTML elements. JavaScript can be used to pause, resume, seek, or anything else you might like. You can look through the whole API in the HTML5 spec. You can overlay things on top of <video> using regular old CSS, unlike plugins. Etc., etc.

<video> lets you use the full power of a general programming language, namely JavaScript. Unlike Flash videos, however, you can interact with HTML5 videos using JavaScript and CSS – the same technologies you need to know anyway to create the whole rest of your page. Not having to learn Flash is a big long-term advantage as long as authors need to know CSS and JS anyway.

To anyone who thinks that sites will inevitably use Flash instead of <video> for obfuscation, tell me: why does almost no one use Flash instead of <img> for obfuscation today? You could do it – but you could also do obfuscation using straight HTML+CSS+JS, and that's a lot easier than bothering to load up Flash.

Re:Only video sites?

[ultranova]

The difference is that you can't download an flv when it starts skipping or outright freezing (Which happens every day.)

Of course you can, just install DownloadHelper addon for Firefox.

But the thing about Flash being a crapfest is spot on.

Re:Only video sites?

[HalAtWork]

Out of all the things you listed, "casual online games" seems to be the only valid application for Flash. Interactive information displays are best left to javascript applets. Navigation is handled by browser controls and links. If you use flash for navigation and interactive displays, it makes it impossible for the disabled to use it properly, and for the content to be handled properly by the browser (i.e. give proper right-click menus, etc).

Re:Only video sites?

[TheReal_sabret00the]

This is exactly what I thought, not exactly hard to do.

Re:Only video sites?

[bug1]

Flash was introduced here because it just works.

Nothing "just works", there always hidden complexity.

What you mean when you say "it just works" is that it allows you to be ignorant of how it works.

Just think, one day we might be so advanced that everybody can be ignorant about everything !

Re:Only video sites?

[duguk]

Can the poster of this article code? "Because nobody uses Flash for navigation"? What BS is that? Flash navigation no sweat. I can code great usable navigation that is SEO friendly using SWF Object. This also means providing ways for people with iPhones and what not. All completely user managed and dynamic and updatable through XML or a CMS. I can also deep link any site so that custom URLs all work within it it, and Google will wonderfully grab all of the content. I can make full screen Flash, hybrid Ajax/Flash, simple Flash components. I can make a Flash site that runs perfectly in all browser for all dimensions.

Your website implies otherwise. Especially in eLinks.

Re:Only video sites?

[duguk]

Of course you can, just install DownloadHelper addon for Firefox. But the thing about Flash being a crapfest is spot on.

Agreed, though this doesn't work with BBC iPlayer, shamefully. Which just won't run very well on a Netbook at 800mhz (which is normal speed on battery). Surprisingly, this is one time I've seen where Flash under Linux does it a lot better than Windows!

Re:Only video sites?

[mweather]

Well flash is basically just bitmaps and vector graphics scripted with javascript with some video streaming thrown in. It's no surprise you can do much the same thing with bitmaps and vector graphics scripted with javascript and using the video tag.

Re:Only video sites?

[rinoid]

Troll my ass -- life without Flash for navigation and setting type on pages is GOOD. The web is NOT ACCESSIBLE WHEN BUILT IN FLASH because most people building with flash don't care to use tools Adobe built for accessibility. The web !== flash.

Re:Only video sites?

[erikina]

Here's an excellent example of that: http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/ As far as I can tell, it's only being used for (plain text) headings. If it wan't for FlashBlock, I wouldn't even think they'd be Flash. The weird thing is that the page actually loads with those as text, then the javascript kicks in and replaces them with Flash.

Are we looking at the same page? Or am I somehow getting served a flash-free page? The only flash I can find is in the rotate-360 degrees (where it shows an interactive 3D model). Even the image gallery supports smooth animation with flash..

Re:Only video sites?

[erikina]

Correction for the last line: without* flash

Re:Only video sites?

[rdnetto]

Have you got NoScript enabled? When the page loads all the text-based headings get replaced with Flash - it's really obvious to me because I have FlashBlock, so all the headings disappear. This happens in IE8 and Chrome.

Re:Only video sites?

[erikina]

I do not have NoScript, have javascript enabled and also am using FlashBlock. The only thing that gets blocked for me is the 3D model. Everything else is just javascript / html. FWIW I'm using Fedora 12 / Firefox 3.5

ClickToFlash

[orta]

On OS X this has been available for ages, switchs all youtube videos to HTML5 and is extensible for other placse like Dailymotion. http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

Re:ClickToFlash

[orta]

That's because in Safari it uses quicktime to render the video element

Re:ClickToFlash

[laddiebuck]

NoScript also blocks flash, and has done for years, without needing to block javascript as well. As to playing youtube videos, I already play them in mplayer, which gives me all the benefits of a real video player -- fullscreen, speedup/slowdown, pause, etc:

mplayer `youtube-dl -g <youtube-video-url>`

HTML5 video

[KangKong]

The biggest problem isn't support for , but common support for major video formats. Seems there's no codec supported by all browsers anytime soon.

Re:HTML5 video

[shentino]

Thanks very much in whole to a political squabble about whose format would reign supreme.

I HATE it when politics get in the way of a standard.

Re:HTML5 video

[xaxa]

The biggest problem isn't support for <video>, but common support for major video formats. Seems there's no codec supported by all browsers anytime soon.

That's not a huge problem -- the video element supports having multiple source elements, each can use different codecs.

For instance, I found this video earlier. It's available as OGG or MP4, and the browser will choose automatically.

Re:HTML5 video

[RiotingPacifist]

tbf do you want an inferior standard
or do you want an open standard that you need to pay royalties to implement?

It's not a simple problem (well IMO it is), but there is clearly a need for politics here, if you want to hate anything hate software patents.

Re:HTML5 video

[KangKong]

Except with user uploaded material where the user either have no clue about multiple formats or is using tools that don't support the multiple browser friendly formats.
I foresee a future of IE only videos.

Re:HTML5 video

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

do you want an inferior standard
or do you want an open standard that you need to pay royalties to implement?

I would rather have a superior open standard because if there is a standard, that is a goal to work to. But without the standard, it is an excuse to avoid implementation. After all, software patents aren't enforceable in all countries - some browsers would be able to implement everything without paying royalties, might even draw attention to how software patents suck.

Meanwhile, we've gone years, probably decades now, with various flavors of the HTML and javascript standards that have almost never been 100% implemented in any one browser, much less all browsers. I don't see why the video tag should have to be any different.

Re:HTML5 video

[rhizome]

There's no reason why the server side can't convert to the alternative formats.

Re:HTML5 video

[lukas84]

There is: Cost.

Especially if Flash exists and works the same on all browser. Noone is going to switch to something that now requires multiple video formats.

Re:HTML5 video

[KangKong]

And obviously the reduction in quality by encoding the clip again

Re:HTML5 video

[Kjella]

Yes, because the big hosting providers with deep pockets that would risk being sued are so much less afraid of patent lawsuits than the big client providers with deep pockets.

Wait, no they're not. So they have to both pay for H.264 which is definitely patented and run the risk of being sued over hidden Theora patents, that's not a good sales pitch.

Honestly, I would prefer the browser to not be the media player. Just use whatever backend is available on the client, be it DirectShow, Quicktime, GStreamer, xine or whatever else. That way you can choose to use things like multithreading, hardware acceleration on dedicated units or shaders or any other settings which will work equally in all applications. I think the only one I've seen trying is Phonon. I'm hoping there'll eventually be a phonon-plugin and this whole "what can we include in firefox/safari/whatever discussion will become meaningless.

Re:HTML5 video

[funkatron]

Why not have both?

Re:HTML5 video

[RiotingPacifist]

Worst of both worlds, All browsers must implement an inferior standard AND pay royalties.

Re:HTML5 video

[zach_the_lizard]

Google transcodes all video you upload to YouTube into mp4, IIRC. Flash is merely the engine used to stream the video. I would much rather Theora or some sort of open codec, but hey, I can still view the videos.

Re:HTML5 video

[iLogiK]

another problem is that browsers don't currently support full screen with the video tag, which is the main reason I won't bu using this to watch youtube

Re:HTML5 video

[norpy]

Honestly, I would prefer the browser to not be the media player. Just use whatever backend is available on the client, be it DirectShow, Quicktime, GStreamer, xine or whatever else.

Just FYI, this is exactly the reasoning behind the <video> tag. The browser developers won't (or at least shouldn't) be re-rolling the whole decoding stack.

Re:HTML5 video

[lennier]

"do you want an inferior standard or do you want an open standard that you need to pay royalties to implement?

Is this a trick question or something?

Inferior and open (or owned by your company) beats superior and closed every time.

Inferior can always be improved by throwing technical manpower at it.

Closed (and not owned by you) can't be. You might make out fine to start with, but you're completely at the mercy of the IP owner, and if they one day decide they just don't like you... wham, you're stuffed.

Re:HTML5 video

[lennier]

Except that when it comes to superior but 'reasonable and non-discriminatory' patents - you're stuffed right from the start if you're making open source. Because RAND isn't GPL compliant and can't be. So it's illegal to ship that code at all, end of game, thank you for not even getting to play.

So inferior it has to be if you don't want to be arrested. Don't like that? Lobby for patent law reform.

Re:HTML5 video

[marcansoft]

In the case of Theora, inferior and open can't necessarily be improved. Last I checked, the Theora bitstream format was frozen, which means the encoder will only be able to improve to some extent. I'm pretty sure h.264 is quite a bit more advanced than Theora, as a format.

Re:HTML5 video

[eihab]

I HATE it when politics get in the way of a standard.

But aren't standards really about politics?

I mean, a standard is usually picked out of multiple ways to do one thing that all achieve the same results (to varying degrees of quality and with different short-comings).

Having a standard become a "standard" means having all hands on deck, we all agree that X is the right way to do Y.

Making something a standard though, well, it's probably about who has the biggest market share, budget or lawyers... but what do I know.

Re:HTML5 video

[TheTurtlesMoves]

It's not a simple problem (well IMO it is), but there is clearly a need for politics here, if you want to hate anything hate software patents.

QFT

Re:HTML5 video

[clone53421]

Hm. A combination of "fill browser window" (which you could do, with HTML5) and F11 should do the trick.

Re:HTML5 video

[iLogiK]

Agreed, I've actually tried to make a RSS reader for video podcasts using html5 and ran into this problem, and that's the solution I found.
But we still need browser support for full screen videos.

Re:HTML5 video

[clone53421]

You could probably trap the F11 key, and make the video expand automatically when it's pressed.

Re:HTML5 video

[iLogiK]

sorry about that, accidentally posted as AC

Re:HTML5 video

[clone53421]

Hmm, I don't know, trap the onresize event and assume you're full-screen if the browser window is "big enough"? You could also detect a leap in the window size (not a smooth increase) and perhaps check the resolution to see if it's some typical display size.

I agree, there should be a browser implementation to solve this whole mish-mash, but all in all I think you could make a hack that works most all the time, without doing weird stuff most of the rest of the time.

Re:HTML5 video

[rhizome]

Especially if Flash exists and works the same on all browser.

Flash does not work the same on all browsers, not by a long shot.

I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[asdf7890]

I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock" to go along with FlashBlock, because it won't take long for irritating adverts to start using the option. To be honest, I'm surprised it hasn't started already...

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[Miffe]

It allready exists, it's called Noscript...

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[Zantetsuken]

No, one of the points of HTML5 is that it is controlled by the browser without plugins - the same way you've been able to choose to load images since almost forever...

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[asdf7890]

I find that to be generally useful NoScript has to be used in its more paranoid settings, which makes it a bit too much of a blunt implement for my current needs.

Also, and I may be wrong here to please correct me if I am, I was under the impression that some video/audio content delivered via the new HTML5 facilities would be presented without the need for any scripting support?

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[chonglibloodsport]

Just use a style sheet. In HTML5 the video tag is no different from any other tag.

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[truedfx]

Also, and I may be wrong here to please correct me if I am, I was under the impression that some video/audio content delivered via the new HTML5 facilities would be presented without the need for any scripting support?

You're correct, but NoScript doesn't block only scripts. It includes the option to block <video> content, and some other non-scripted annoyances.

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[Miffe]

For my gf i configured noscript to allow all script as default, but to forbid java/flash//, so it essentially acts as flashblock but for java and too. And Yes, html5 video doen't require scripting, but NoScript can block them anyway.

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[onefriedrice]

But Noscript can block video tags, so what's your point?

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[Zantetsuken]

that while I love NoScript, my point is that it isn't even needed to achieve the effect...

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[Miffe]

That should be java/flash//

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[clone53421]

Block the <video> element using AdBlock Plus.

Don't take my word for it... try it. Once the page loads, add a #video element hiding rule and apply.

Re:I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock"

[clone53421]

AdBlock Plus can block video elements. Just add an element hiding rule for the tag.

Sort of like my goatse.cx#html element hiding rule. Or my #a(href*=goatse.cx) rule.

Here's a hint

[Improv]

Anytime you submit a story and one of your sentences starts with "Personally,", leave it out. We don't care.

Re:Here's a hint

[Virak]

We don't care.

I think you mean to say "Personally, I don't care."

And personally, I think you should definitely follow your own advice with that.

Re:Here's a hint

[rolfwind]

"Personally" is a redundant word anyway and such useless clutter infects most writing today, usually in direct proportion to the person's education level, unfortunately.

http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sources/zinsser.htm

Re:Here's a hint

[mcrbids]

Personally, I find comments like yours annoying.

Re:Here's a hint

[Gothmolly]

Look at the "editor". 'nuff said.

Re:Here's a hint

[Improv]

I will, next time I submit a story.

Re:Here's a hint

[4D6963]

Oh noes, someone doesn't care that someone else doesn't care! You gave him a dose of his own medicine right there! lolers!

Re:Here's a hint

[noidentity]

Is it OK if I start them with "Honestly" instead?

Re:Here's a hint

[clone53421]

Personally, I think sentences beginning with "personally" belong in the comments section, not the summary.

Hardware acceleration

[Zantetsuken]

Now will we be able to get hardware video acceleration through VDPAU, etc so that I can play it on my Zotac ION media center or low power laptop?

Re:Hardware acceleration

[netsharc]

In-window browser based video will never be hardware accelerated on desktops.

O RLY? AFAIK VLC and Windows Media Player are HW-accelerated, I've made a GreaseMonkey script that replaces the YouTube player with the VLC plugin so that it plays on my 1 GHz PC (it's ridiculous that a 1 GHz hardware couldn't play 320x200 video smoothly, it's a testament to how ugly the software is), and the smoothness makes me believe it's HW-accelerated.

Say goodbye to Flash?

[anomnomnomymous]

As some of the above posters mentioned: There is still a lot of Flash use on stuff besides videos on the Net.

Also, I think that Adobe is definitely going to give Google a call one of these days (if they haven't already), and offer something to keep the default to Flash for some time being: I would not believe that they will let this one slide so easily.

Other than that, I can't really understand the hate for Flash(players), besides maybe OS incompatibilities.
I'm on WinXP myself, so I would not know anything about that, but for me Flashplayers are one of the better alternatives around for playing video content on the web: Quicktime, Realplayer and Windows Media plugins all suck monkeyballs.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[moosesocks]

It's not so much the incompatibilities (although support for non x86-32 platforms has always been very poor on Linux), but the inefficiencies. There's *no* reason for a 320x240 web video to bring a modern system to its knees (GPU acceleration or not).

Even VLC's somewhat buggy FLV implementation plays flash videos with 1/10 the CPU cycles that the flash player does.

Flash's performance is borderline acceptable on Windows, although the mac version (PPC especially!) is appallingly bad.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[richlv]

Other than that, I can't really understand the hate for Flash(players), besides maybe OS incompatibilities.

I'm on WinXP myself, so I would not know anything about that

eheh. were you aiming for the funny mod ? :)
of course, if you are not affected by the problems, you would not understand them.

i could come up with many analogies, referencing historical atrocities, but i'll leave that to badanalogyguy.
no, wait, i'll try one, and it's even car related !

"i don't understand why all the hype about toyotas accelerating on their own, well, maybe for some increase in crash possibility.

not that i own or have owned a toyota ever. i haven't even ever been near public roads they drive on !"

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[anomnomnomymous]

of course, if you are not affected by the problems, you would not understand them.

Hence why I said I don't understand it, besides the OS incompatibilities.

"i don't understand why all the hype about toyotas accelerating on their own, well, maybe for some increase in crash possibility.
not that i own or have owned a toyota ever. i haven't even ever been near public roads they drive on !"

I've played around with various Linux distros, but found it unsuitable for most tasks (read: compatibility with my software). So yes, I -have- been near the roads, and even driven various Toyotas, but they just seem to fulfill my needs.

Happy now?

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[lordtoran]

You could try minitube, a native Youtube client. You don't even need to have the stupid Flash Player installed to use it, so it doesn't eat more CPU than any other video player.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[Bengie]

HD flash videos use about 3-4% of my CPU. corei7 920. Talking about full screen video streams that eat up 700KB(bytes)/sec and look pixel perfect on my 1920x1080 screen. The biggest issues I have with flash are crappy adds that peg one of my logical CPUs.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[the_enigma_1983]

What OS is this on? I've had similar results under Windows, but under Linux it's quite common for flash to completely lock up my browser, about once a day.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[tomhudson]

HD flash videos use about 3-4% of my CPU. corei7 920. Talking about full screen video streams that eat up 700KB(bytes)/sec and look pixel perfect on my 1920x1080 screen.

700kb/sec video streams that "look pixel perfect on my 1920x1080 screen"? You either have:

1. A screen whose native resolution is far below 1920x1080, so it down-converts higher-resolution formats
2. Poor eyesight

BTW - Youtube's idea of "hi def video" is 720p - that's not going to be "pixel perfect" scaled out to 1920x1080, because the scaling factor is 1.5, and there's no such thing as a half-pixel.

700kb/sec is (lossy) compressed as all hell for a 1920x1080 screen. No pixel perfection there ...

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[black3d]

I have encountered many, many people who think that anything running at HD resolutions is HD. Even in the geek community. And it seems very difficult to convince them otherwise. Many seem convinced that any video that is playing back at 1080 lines is utilising "full HD resolution", even if the source is a 360x240 video that's been maximised. Even Youtube's "720p" video is so compressed the artifacts are plainly visible, yet because it's 720 lines and is activated by clicking an "HD" button, pundits seem to think that it's high definition video.

As for whether he is blind or mistaken, realise - most people with HD res screens still have never seen HD video up close and personal, thus it's easy to understand why a scaled, interlaced, lossy video might look "pixel perfect" to them compared to other traditional sources like XVID dvd rips or even DVDs. For instance, most people with an HD screen don't actually have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive. And even of those with a Blu-ray drive (its coming standard more frequently thesedays) many have never actually gone out and bought a Bluray title and chucked it in.

If any of you readers fall into this category (not actually having seen real HD video playback up close), don't worry - you're not at all alone. There's an easy solution:
1. Head over to trailers.apple.com and download a decent 1080p HD trailer. Here's a nice one: http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/2012/hd/
2. Start saving for the Bluray drive you now simply MUST have.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[atheistmonk]

Not until you try to use the cruise control. When it explodes as a result or causes you to lose control and run off the road, then we'll be happy. (I know cruise control isn't actually the malfunctioning feature)

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[atheistmonk]

Hm. To clarify, I don't mean we'll be happy about you being run off the road or exploding. I meant just trying out the feature :P

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[Bengie]

actually, it was downloading ~730KB/sec and still had to buffer because my download was capped. I would assume it was actually an 800KB/sec stream because of the pauses which puts it at 6400kb/sec, assume 320kb/sec for audio, so ~6000kb/sec. That's higher than required for blueray divx encode

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[tomhudson]

They can also go out and spend $50 for a pair of rabbit-ears and look at an OTA (Over-the-Air) 1080 hi-def signal, and compare it to the crappy compressed signal their cable or satellite provider sends them.

They should check, as you said, to make sure the original source was also hi-def and hasn't been up-scaled. As an example, try David Letterman on CBS - it's 1080i in many areas, and it looks SO different from older canned stuff, etc.

Then there are all the people who bought HD TVs that can't do more than 720 lines, but they're "1080p compatible" - because they downsample.

And then you have the problem of LCDs suffering from uneven luminance along the vertical axis because of the way that the crystals block the backlight, with more light leaking around pixels that are below eye level.

Or the suckers who bought 120hz or 240hz LCDs - not realizing that the picture is interpolated between 60hz source frames, and HAS to be distorted. They're convinced by the in-store demo disk. They'd be much better off buying a 600hz plasma TV (it doesn't interpolate between source frames - just refreshes the screen 600x a second. The entire frame is updated in 1/600 of a second, as opposed to 1/60 (or 1/30) of a second for conventional systems).

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[tomhudson]

Sorry, but your ignorance is showing. Your divx format is NOT anywhere near true HD. It has less than 2% of the bandwidth of a true HD signal (and that true HD signal is also compressed - uncompressed the bandwidth requirement would be MUCH higher).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_video

1080i/p requires 356 Mbps for the compressed data stream, not the measly 7Mbps you're looking at.

If you have a friend who has a proper setup (600hz plasma tv with PC video/audio in and a real HD source to compare with, not an LCD or DLP tv), go and look at the difference. If you can't see the difference, go visit your eye doctor.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[Bengie]

ok.. had to go add flashgot and download the video to get it's stats

Length 2:03
h-res 890
v-res 502
datarate 5494kbits
total bitrate 5619kbits
59fps
audio 125kbits
audio sample 48khz

downloaded MP4 file size 82.5MB

ok. so it's not a 19x10 res, but it looks quite nice even at 8x5 when at 5500kbits

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[Bengie]

Thanks for pointing out my ignorance. Since my original post was about how I saw stating that a modern system doesn't actually have a hard time displaying "HD" flash videos. So I went and downloaded my "pixel perfect" video, and it was ~800x~500 with 5600kbit/sec encoding. Yes, this does look very nice even with not really "pixel perfect"

Anyway, you came along and somehow completely missed the context of my post of CPU usage. Your eye sight may be good but your reading comprehension is not something to be impressed with.

And to go along with how a modern system runs just fine on HD, my comp displayed that 2012 1080p video at only 9-10% cpu.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[black3d]

I did think of adding after my post "BTW, even QuickTime is compressed and not a true representation, but a good indication of HD if your previous experience is DVDs or YouTube HD videos." but didn't want to confuse the issue any further.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[marcansoft]

Sorry, you're completely wrong. 1080p 60Hz 24bpp uncompressed video (this is the stuff going through your DVI cable) requires 356 MB/s of bandwidth (I just fixed the Wikipedia article). That is a completely unrealistic metric. 1080p 30Hz 4:2:0 video (half the X and Y chroma resolution, which for all intents and purposes is indistinguishable to the eye) is 88 MB/s, which is a reasonable baseline for an uncompressed HD signal of the kind you might actually watch.

Compressed, using decent codecs (h.264), anywhere from 10-30mbps (that's 1.25MB/s-3.75MB/s) is perfectly reasonable for great 1080p HD quality (depending on how complicated the video is). In fact, HD-DVD's maximum bitrate is 30mbps, and Blu-Ray's is 40mbps, about 6% of the uncompressed signal. Video signals have a huge amount of redundancy, and video codecs these days (especially x264) are very good.

7mbps "divx" (MPEG-4 ASP) is not adequate for 1080p material, but the real bitrates aren't nearly as far off as you say if you switch to a modern codec (h.264).

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[tomhudson]

Poster trying to worm their way out of saying they were wrong:

Thanks for pointing out my ignorance. Since my original post was about how I saw stating that a modern system doesn't actually have a hard time displaying "HD" flash videos. So I went and downloaded my "pixel perfect" video, and it was ~800x~500 with 5600kbit/sec encoding. Yes, this does look very nice even with not really "pixel perfect"

Anyway, you came along and somehow completely missed the context of my post of CPU usage. Your eye sight may be good but your reading comprehension is not something to be impressed with.

And to go along with how a modern system runs just fine on HD, my comp displayed that 2012 1080p video at only 9-10% cpu.

And I never said modern systems can't decode 1080) This is the part of what you wrote that I took exception to, which is just plain wrong:

Talking about full screen video streams that eat up 700KB(bytes)/sec and look pixel perfect on my 1920x1080 screen.

It's not "hi def", it's not "pixel perfect". No video encoder today does lossless compression. Even blu-ray, which is much higher bandwidth, is lossy. Stop the video of your "picture perfect" 800x500 and look at the picture, and you'll see artifacts from the compression, blurriness in details and sections that are in motion, etc.

500 lines of vertical resolution is nowhere near HD - it has fewer than 50% of the pixel count of even the lower, 720 line, wide-screen resolution. Also, since you're looking at it full-screen on an 1920x1080 display, either you have black bands, or you're scaling is not 1:1 in both dimensions. Also, there's no way to get perfect scaling from 800x500 to 1920x1080 - 1920/800 = 2.4, 800/500-2.16. Neither is an even multiple, so you can't just pixel double - you have to interpolate, which introduces artifacts.

What I'm saying is that my point stands - you were not watching a hi-def video, and if you think it looks all that great, you really need to see what a nice big display and sound system with a proper hi-def source can do. Just make sure you're not wearing your shoes, because it's gonna knock your socks off. You'll never want to settle for anything less afterwards :-) Yes, there are upscaling receiver/players, and upscaling tvs - I have both - but it's not as good as a true HD source. It makes everything else seem like you've been looking at the world through smudged glasses.

Re:Say goodbye to Flash?

[tomhudson]

Thanks for fixing it. I had done the bandwidth calculations manually a few months ago (for other reasons), and the 356 looked familiar.

However, I had to work with h264 codecs years ago (before Apple got into it), and there's a lot of variability in the quality of the image, depending on the h264 implementation, the compression level, etc. We were compressing the crap out of video streams (a terabyte of hd space was more than 20x the cost it is today, and we were doing 25 video and audio streams at a time on one machine ... lots of fancy custom chips with 4 compressors per card, each capable of simultaneously compressing two dvd-res feeds) and 98% savings was common - but you could see artifacts in the results.

Obviously, better codecs have come along, and they're certainly "good enough" nowadays, but, as you point ut, 7mbps divx is not going to give satisfactory 1080p or even 1080i.

nobody uses Flash for navigation

[japa]

http://astral.armadamusic.nl/
(Terrible) example of full flash website...

Re:nobody uses Flash for navigation

[jer2eydevil88]

I have a better example, the load speed is the same even on a 100mbit connection. http://www.tunnel1.com/

Re:nobody uses Flash for navigation

[PerfectionLost]

CTO: Hey Bob, I have a great idea. Let's call our cutting edge and forward looking company Tunnel Vision, so they know what they are getting into when they need out of the box solutions. CEO aka Bob: Great idea, make it so. But we are too broke for the domain www.tunnelvision.com. Lets make another URL with a random number tagged on the end. CTO: That's thinking out of the box!

Re:nobody uses Flash for navigation

[PerfectionLost]

CTO: Hey Bob, I have a great idea. Let's call our cutting edge and forward looking company Tunnel Vision, so they know what they are getting into when they need out of the box solutions.

CEO aka Bob: Great idea, make it so. But we are too broke for the domain www.tunnelvision.com. Lets make another URL with a random number tagged on the end.

CTO: That's thinking out of the box!

edit: for legibility.

ClickToFlash for Safari/Mac already does this

[s.o.terica]

ClickToFlash for Safari (similar to the FlashBlock plugin for Firefox) already does this, letting you load the H.264 video with QuickTime inline where the Flash video would normally go

Re:ClickToFlash for Safari/Mac already does this

[Phroggy]

Yep, I recently discovered this myself. Unfortunately (as with this clever HTML5 hack), it only supports YouTube, so videos on other sites still require Flash.

Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[jonaskoelker]

because nobody uses Flash for [list of uses of flash]

By way of anal extraction, I arrive at the conclusion that 90% of the eyeball wall time spent looking at flash is spent looking at videos.

(89% of those 90% being youtube + google video, another 0.5% being redtube).

Once we get to HTML5 video being popular, flash will become much more a niche thing. There's a long way between "niche" and "dead", but I don't know that we need to cross that gap. Heck, I still see Java applets around (for Rubik's Cube animations; I think that's one niche where they're used well).

On the other hand, if we RTFS:

The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported

Note that IE is not on the list. Make an educated guess about the implications for the penetration of the video tag.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[bhtooefr]

IE is supported by way of Chrome Frame...

Granted, that's like saying "Windows apps that are incompatible with WINE are supported on Linux by way of running Windows in a VM," but slightly more valid than that. ;)

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[stephanruby]

IE is supported by way of Chrome Frame...

Actually, another work around is that Flash in IE will start supporting HTML5. Thought, I'm not sure how long that's going to be needed, a Microsoft employee told me that Microsoft has decided to finally support HTML5 (not supporting HTML5 was just creating too much trouble).

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[Narpak]

By way of anal extraction, I arrive at the conclusion that 90% of the eyeball wall time spent looking at flash is spent looking at videos. (89% of those 90% being youtube + google video, another 0.5% being redtube).

Probably underestimating the share of videos being from various pornsites, but in general I think you might be correct.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[TerranFury]

Unfortunately, anybody savvy enough to know about and install Google Frame isn't running IE anyway...

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[Dahamma]

By way of anal extraction, I arrive at the conclusion that 90% of the eyeball wall time spent looking at flash is spent looking at videos.

Maybe, but 90% of the CPU cycles of most home computers is spent animating embedded Flash ads...

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[noundi]

Unfortunately, anybody savvy enough to know about and install Google Frame isn't running IE anyway...

Google wave will change that. When people start migrating from Facebook (already a privacy scare for many, not to mention the "help" the media is giving), and even email, to wave -- Google will slap up some nice "propositions", such as "Oops! You're not running the Google frame. Click here to see how you can improve your wave experience!", or better yet "Oops! You're not using Google Chrome! ..." -- click, smack, and done. Shortly thereafter netbook manufacturers will start shipping their hardware with Chrome OS, which fits like a glove to wave, youtube -- you name it. It doesn't take a genious to see how Google will make all this fit together. You might be wondering "why Google frame and not Chrome right away?" -- easy, it's their wave... wave (hah)... to surf on that is. You see if wave is slow, it won't catch on, but with the Google frame it won't be, and people don't need to leave their comfortable IE environment at all. Hence Google frame is just a stepping stone towards promoting wave, and it will be abandoned in due time. Basically: anybody who ever visits a Google owned page with IE will have a very, very easy way of installing the Google frame. Most people will probably not even know what hit them -- and they wouldn't even care if they did.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[SwedishPenguin]

If they're savvy enough to get flash installed they should be savvy enough to get google frame installed, or is it that hard? (speaking as a Linux user who hasn't used IE in 10 years)

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[Simetrical]

On the other hand, if we RTFS:

The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported

Note that IE is not on the list. Make an educated guess about the implications for the penetration of the video tag.

Microsoft has committed to supporting <video> and <audio>. When, heaven only knows, but <video> will win eventually. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[tepples]

If they're savvy enough to get flash installed they should be savvy enough to get google frame installed

Flash Player requests installation when the user visits a web site that specifies the Flash Player control for viewing a .swf. Likewise, Chrome Frame requests installation when the user visits a web site that specifies the Chrome Frame control for viewing a web page.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[tepples]

Granted, that's like saying "Windows apps that are incompatible with WINE are supported on Linux by way of running Windows in a VM," but slightly more valid than that. ;)

And here's why it's more valid: Chrome Frame is available at no charge, unlike a copy of Windows.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[JeffSchwab]

Heck, I still see Java applets around

Java applets are indispensable for some things. Web-based VNC cilents are a good example.

It would be nice to have a truly portable, general-purpose programming environment for web-based applications. Unless the browser providers get their collective act together (especially MS), I don't think AJAX is the answer. What bug me the most are the gratuitous differences in DOMs and CSS interpretation.

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[street struttin']

Hm, I bet that .5% is probably much higher...

Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash

[KayakFun]

I support the intranet for a 7000 person company, and put up a help page telling them to use OGV (for Firefox on Windows. Linux and Solaris) and WMV (for IE).

<video src="filename.ogv" autoplay="true" controls="true">
...code for IE7 users...
<video>

Firefox reads the video tag and ignores the inside of the video container, and IE7 ignores the video tag and reads the 10 lines of WMV code.

Voila, no more flash.

flashdotted

[Froze]

Cool, all of the youtube videos have been replaced with

"Connection Interrupted
The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again."

What an improvement in load time too!

Silverlight

[wile_e8]

Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash.

Yeah, except for all the major sites that will continue to use Silverlight since Microsoft is paying them to annoy OS X and Linux users even more than using Flash.

Webconverger 5.7 features HTML5 video support

[DraQ]

Today Webconverger released with an HTML5 video enabled build today: http://webconverger.org/blog/entry/5.7_with_Firefox_3.5/

The plan is once HTML5 video becomes prevalent, the integrated proprietary flash player will be dropped. http://webconverger.org/adobe/

Link doesn't work for me

[blakedev]

Also, does anyone know how well this works for FreeBSD?

Does this actually work?

[MikeUW]

I just tried it with FF 3.5.5 (on Linux), and got nothing but a non-working clone of the YouTube player. It's been the same story with YouTube's HTML5 demo for some time as well.

If it's a windows-only thing, or Chrome-only, then it's not good enough to replace Flash yet.

Re:Does this actually work?

[Tapewolf]

I get this result on MacOS also. By the looks of it they're trying to play the MP4 files directly, which will not work because AFAIK Firefox only plays OGV format. They claim it works on the latest firefox - I don't know if they're thinking of the 3.6 series or something...

Re:Does this actually work?

[Hatta]

Same here, it didn't work. HTML5 videos work fine on other sites though.

Re:Does this actually work?

[PhrstBrn]

Doesn't work in FF 3.5.5 (WinXP) either. I think it just doesn't work in Firefox.

Re:Does this actually work?

[Tony Hoyle]

That page is a bit of an epic fail really. Flash has nothing to worry about if you have to download Chrome to view the page.

Re:Does this actually work?

[Homburg]

No, it doesn't work on Firefox, as an update to the blog post points out. Youtube won't supply video in a format Firefox supports (and it only supports one - Theora). I believe there is work being done to allow Firefox to use other codecs if you have them installed (as Webkit does - it works for me using Epiphany), at which point this could potentially work on Firefox.

Re:Does this actually work?

[Sir_Lewk]

It is shit like this that just strengthens my believe that web browsers have no business being media player. Particularly when perfectly good media players that don't have this issue already exist for every platform in existance...

Flash is Pseudo-DRM

[rayharris]

If video content is served directly in a video tag, it will be just as easy to download as images on a web page. Content providers know this and won't use the video tag.

One reason content providers use Flash instead of just letting you download the video file is that Flash (ostensibly) prevents you from downloading the video. While it's true that there are plug-ins for Firefox to let you download Flash videos, the people who use them are a small minority. Even with the video tag, Flash will still be widely used to "protect" the content.

Re:Flash is Pseudo-DRM

[ThePengwin]

It takes me a grand total of 15 seconds to get a flash movie. its as easy as typing into google "download youtube videos", copy and paste a link and then click a button.

I haven't seen a HTML 5 page with a video i want to keep to try pulling it out, but I believe someone will come along and make a one click solution to this, and fill it with ads.

Re:Flash is Pseudo-DRM

[BZ]

> I haven't seen a HTML 5 page with a video i want to keep to try pulling it out, but I
> believe someone will come along and make a one click solution to this

You mean like the "save video" option in the Firefox context menu for tags?

Re:Flash is Pseudo-DRM

[SheeEttin]

On my system, 99% of videos in Flash are downloaded to /tmp as long as the page is open, regardless of any controls. They can be copied out freely.
(This is Kubuntu 9.10, Firefox 3.5, and Flash 10.0 r32, by the way.)

Impressive

[skirmish666]

Only uses ~8% CPU on safari vs ~30% for the same video through the safari flash plugin.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Only uses ~8% CPU on safari vs ~30% for the same video through the safari flash plugin.

I don't get it. All you guys are whining about how CPU intensive Flash is. A HQ Youtube video on my Windows 7 system (IE 8) causes a 2% CPU load.

There may well be some good reasons to look at other video delivery systems than Flash but CPU load just isn't one of them. And there might be some problems with the Flash plugin in non-Windows environments but that seem like sloppy implementation rather than anything fundamental to Flash.

cpu usage.

[mathfeel]

On Chrome, works fine but no visible CPU usage improvement.

Firefox 3.5 proprietary video format patch?

[Hurricane78]

Has anyone got a patch to make (Linux) Firefox play all formats natively, that e.g. ffmpeg plays? (It could use that exact library.) I don't care for any stupid imaginary "IP" laws and shit like that. I want all formats to work. No matter if the FF team lives in the real world or not. ^^

Anyone?

Re:Firefox 3.5 proprietary video format patch?

[Homburg]

There's ongoing work to add gstreamer backend support to Firefox, which (if you have gstreamer-ffmpeg installed) would let you use ffmpeg codecs. I'm not sure how well it's working; the bug is marked as blocking Gecko 1.9.2, which is going to be the rendering engine of 3.6, so maybe we'll see this in 3.6 when it comes out.

Re:Firefox 3.5 proprietary video format patch?

[doublec]

It is not blocking 1.9.2 and will not be in Firefox 3.6, sorry. Unless FF 3.6 is delayed significantly.

Why is Flash so bad?

[nashv]

Is it just me or does the Neosmart website have a terrible time pulling the videos from YouTube. The player interface seems to load but no video. A lot of people seem to have problems with Flash. I really don't understand what the issues are, and would like to know. I've been using Flash on Firefox/Windows for years and it has done its job so well that I've forgotten its there - which is exactly what I expect from something like Flash.

Re:Why is Flash so bad?

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

Flash is "ok" on a windows platform, though it's still too resource intensive.

The biggest issues are on other operating systems.

While *nix implementations have improved, they still bork on a frequent basis.

Availability on OS's designed for smartphones and "net devices" remains a serious issue.

If a company does significant business online, there is a good chance than many of it's customers are early adopters of mobile tech.

My employer had to do a fairly expensive web site redesign to eliminate flash entirely, as the inability of many of our customers to navigate the flash version was depressing our sales.

Re:Why is Flash so bad?

[dingen]

I really don't understand what the issues are, and would like to know.

A good web page holds two important properties: it uses open standards and it provides semantic information about itself. Flash provides neither.

The first one is pretty straight forward. Flash is not open. The content of a Flash file is known only by Adobe. Only Adobe can reliably produce an application to write and play Flash files. This is in contrast with the openness of the web. This is important to ensure that web content will work on every platform. Flash content will not work on platforms not supported by Adobe, instead of not supported by any community. A good example of how bad this is, is that most Flash objects won't play on mobile devices, since Adobe has yet to produce proper Flash plugins for those platforms.

Secondly, the semantics. Instead of neatly fitting into the DOM and providing sementaic information about it's content like every other proper element, a Flash object is simply a blob of binary data. It's impossible for an automated system to find out what the object is about, thus providing difficulties with indexability, making it hard to find out information about the object using search engines.

That is why Flash is bad.

Re:Why is Flash so bad?

[dingen]

The problem is not that Flash is inefficient or unavailable on other platforms than Windows. The problem is that Flash technology is not open, so nobody except Adobe can do something about it.

Re:Why is Flash so bad?

[trouser]

The Flash plugin is closed source but Adobe has published the SWF specification. There are third party tools which produce SWF output which will run in the Flash plugin. My favourite is haXe, a Java like language which compiles to a number of targets including SWF.

Re:False choice

[FlyingBishop]

Problem is it's pretty much useless unless support is universal. No one wants to hold multiple formats for the same video, much less on-the-fly transcoding by sniffing browser agent strings or whatever.

A clever solution to a stupid problem

[TeknoHog]

Why do we want to watch videos inside a web page? This is something I've never understood, and the first time I saw YouTube it looked like an extremely dumb idea. There must be better ways of distributing video on the Internet. I always use clive when somebody sends me a youtube/vimeo link, but I'd much rather get a link to the actual file.

I'm probably just an old-fashioned geek, but I like to focus on whatever I'm doing. When I'm watching a video, I'd rather not watch any extraneous crap around it. It's an issue of both screen real estate and attention. Now get off my lawn!

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[Aldenissin]

Why do we want to watch videos inside a web page? ... Now get off my lawn!

I don't think that many of us actually "want" to watch video in a browser. I think many of us would agree with you. While Youtube (as far as I am aware) still loses lots of money everyday, it is a vehicle to distribute content to the masses. The pros just can't be denied. Over time I think that we will begin to watch video in different ways as other options become viable and popular.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[Dachannien]

Same here. I use Unplug (Firefox plugin) to download the video, and then I use VLC to watch it.

Unplug doesn't work with some of the less popular video sites, but it does work with YouTube. If somebody thinks they're being clever by letting someone other than YouTube host their video, then I probably didn't want to watch it anyway.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[petrus4]

Why do we want to watch videos inside a web page? This is something I've never understood, and the first time I saw YouTube it looked like an extremely dumb idea.

Because it's convenient. The world is a lot worse off in a lot of different ways, because of the craving for convenience.

If people didn't crave the convenience of GUIs, and operating systems could be CLI only, they'd be vastly more stable and secure than they are. Why do you think Ubuntu is such a mess?

If people didn't crave the convenience of McDonald's, they'd probably be a lot healthier. There'd also be far less environmental damage, due to land needing to be cleared for raising cattle.

If people didn't crave the convenience of mobile phones, we'd still have a lot more privacy. We'd also be without one more source of cancer, not to mention one more reason for landfills and oceans to continue filling up with plastic junk that nobody will depolymerise or recycle, because the lack of profit doesn't justify the inconvenience.

If people didn't crave the convenience of cars, and their additional speed, we could have a scenario where electrical forms of transportation were a lot more prevalent, which could be a lot less polluting.

If people didn't crave the convenience of the Web, and no-brainer user interfaces, we could still have things like the old private DCC networks, which used the IRC nets as purely a jumping off point. Those nets were lagless, completely private, and untraceable. People could host whatever type of content within them that they wanted; warez and anything else, and not get caught.

If people didn't crave the convenience of the Web being a single interface to *everything,* we could have files of all kinds (including videos which we now use YouTube for) travelling via bit torrent, or the abovementioned dcc chat nets. Because everything would be constantly distributed and decentralised, scenarios like the end of GeoCities would not result in massive data loss when static web hosting was shut down, as long as the system still had the rest of the network; so piracy would also be completely unstoppable. People don't do that, however, because setting up bit torrent daemons or said dcc nets is more complicated, and a lot less...you guessed it...convenient.

The world would be an unimaginably better place, if it wasn't for the craving for convenience.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[dingen]

The world wouldn't be better off without inventions like the car, mobile phones, the graphical user interface or fast food. The world was a terrible place before we started to invent those things.

I think the real reason people innovate is not because of convenience, but out of efficiency. You can easily confuse the two, but the real reason anything useful is invented is so we can spend less time on doing things we don't like and thus are not useful and spending more time on things we do like and are more useful, thus spending our time more efficiently.

Our entire civilization is built upon this principle and you should embrace it because it's great. The drive for efficiency made nomads into villagers. They made gatherers into farmers. We built cities, bridges and roads out of efficiency, as well as all forms of travel, mass media, computers and the internet.

Every time we convert a mundaine and time consuming task into something more efficient by creating an invention, we progress onto taking away the next mundaine and time consuming task until eventually every single useless task is taken care of and we can all finally relax and read Slashdot all day.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[ClosedSource]

"If people didn't crave the convenience of GUIs, and operating systems could be CLI only, they'd be vastly more stable and secure than they are."

There's nothing about a CLI interface that makes an OS more stable or secure than a GUI-based one.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[petrus4]

Every time we convert a mundaine and time consuming task into something more efficient by creating an invention, we progress onto taking away the next mundaine and time consuming task until eventually every single useless task is taken care of and we can all finally relax and read Slashdot all day.

I know that's how it is supposed to work, yes. Inventions are supposed to save labour.

The only problem is, the suits make sure that the system remains based on money. Because of that, labour saving machinery doesn't mean that you get more time to do nothing in comfort. It simply makes it more difficult for you to earn money, and hence avoid starving to death.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[skeeto]

Graphics cards are complex beasts whose drivers sit in the kernel where they could make mistakes. X has had it's various information leaks due to its complexity (keystroke leaking, etc). You know how when the Vista UAC pops up the screen does that blink? That's to deal with stuff like API driven clicks from real ones, operating at a different driver permission level or something. When installing a Firefox extension you have to wait for that 3 second pause so you can't accidentally strike enter for it, partly to mitigate problems with flawed windowing systems. The list goes on and on.

Graphics add a lot of complexity to the system, and increased system complexity introduces a lot of inevitable security and stability problems.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[ClosedSource]

Well, if you're going to reduce functionality of the CLI interface, you're no longer comparing apples with apples.

Yes, a dumb terminal is more secure and stable than a PC.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid problem

[clone53421]

Out of curiosity, were you unfamiliar with Video DownloadHelper, or do you prefer Unplug, and if so, why?

RTFP...as it says Firefox doesn't support mp4

[MoFoQ]

the page itself says that firefox doesn't support mp4 videos in HTML5 due to some license restrictions.

I'll stick with Flash for my laptop...

[dFaust]

Instead of spending the next 10 years trying to find a Flash implementation for Linux or OS X that doesn't drain CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow

I just did a purely unscientific comparison of CPU usage comparing the native YouTube page and NeoSmart's HTML5 viewer. I tested a couple of different videos and did each one multiple times. I'm running Safari 4.0.3 and Flash 10.0.32.18 on OSX 10.4.11. I was consistently seeing 15-20% more CPU usage with the HTML5 viewer than with YouTube's Flash viewer.

Of course, when I downloaded the MP4 and played it in Quicktime it was much nicer to my CPU (but obviously not nearly as convenient).

What's even more problematic for all of those who want to see Flash die in a fire - Flash Player 10.1 should see performance improvements for playing video if I'm not mistaken (as well as in a number of other areas in regards to performance and resource usage). Meaning the HTML5 implementations will have that much more catching up to do from a performance perspective. (This has nothing to do with other concerns regarding Flash, like openness, security, etc. but the summary specifically called out performance)

You mileage certainly may vary (and please feel free to chime in with your results), but being that my laptop is my main machine - for my battery's sake, I'll stick with watching videos via Flash for now.

Works great on iPhone

[shellac]

There are a good number of youtube videos that fail to load on the iphone, saying something like the format is not supported. I tested this script on some of these videos, and they all work.

This script definitely earns a link on my home screen. Now if they would only write similar scripts for the other video sharing sites.

<Video> vs. <Embed>

[evilviper]

By all means, someone explain to me why the <Video> tag is in any way better than the <Embed> tag that's existed for 1.4.5 years now, and why it's going to rescue the world from Flash, which took over because people decided they didn't want to use <Embed> anymore...

I'll just hold my breath...

It works?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I can't get it to work at all on my Vista Business laptop if FF or IE. Not even the Google Labs version works. I'm more looking forward to the next version of Flash that I think is supposed to offload to GPU.

Re: vs.

[evilviper]

That's 14.5 years now... June 1995.

View flash videos with VLC.

[miknix]

View flash videos on VLC.

Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.

Then you will love this. Let the flash video load and pause it at the beginning. Then fire up the terminal and type:

vlc /tmp/Flash*

It works with at least vimeo and youtube.

Re:View flash videos with VLC.

[miknix]

Been doing that for quite a while, but I've seen a few videos that seem to be encrypted when playing.

Never noticed that. Maybe because I only see vimeo and youtube videos.
This is particular useful for seeing 720p videos on vimeo, otherwise they are a pain in the ass to see with 100% CPU usage. With mplayer or VLC a 720p video doesn't even move the CPU from IDLE (1~5% CPU usage).

In fact, you arent restricted to VLC. My GNOME plays it everywere. I've also seen some of those videos on my EeePC 700 2G Surf with the stock MPlayer, albeit with some delay on audio.

Indeed, I also use mplayer. Just referenced vlc because people might be more familiar with it (specially the Mac crowd).

I wonder if adobe wont stop us doing this - thats why I've never spread this piece of information before, but since you disclosed it...

TBH, I thought it was the way youtube programmed the video player. Like retrieving the stream to /tmp/ and play it from there. But I know nothing about flash, so.. Sorry.

If this ever stops working, I think I'll stop going to vimeo because HD playback on a flash container is just impossible on Linux. At least on my desktop where I always have some work being processing and I can't afford a crazy video container stealing CPU time like there wasn't tomorrow.

Re:View flash videos with VLC.

[clone53421]

Indeed, I also use mplayer. Just referenced vlc because people might be more familiar with it (specially the Mac crowd).

I use VLC, MPlayer Classic, and SMPlayer.

VLC is the classic, stand-by media player in my book. Plays anything, just about, and the interface is relatively slim and unobtrusive.

MPlayer Classic has a god-awful ugly interface, but it does have the handy video thumbnail feature that creates tiled snapshots taken at regular intervals through a video.

SMPlayer will play anything that VLC won't, in my experience. Furthermore, it has much nicer subtitles than VLC does. It can be configured to run really fast on older equipment. I had a computer that played DivX dvd-rip movies as slideshows in everything else. In SMPlayer, with all the settings set to as fast as they could be, the movies actually played at tolerable framerates, most of the time. The only downside is that the interface is large and rather unwieldy – although this is of no concern when you're viewing movies full-screen.

All in all: Video clips, in a window? VLC. Need to make a preview image of a movie? MPlayer Classic. Full-screen? SMPlayer.

Almost Where We Should Have Been

[RAMMS EIN]

``I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash.''

and then we will finally be where we could have been, had people just used HTML4's object element.

Re:Almost Where We Should Have Been

[dingen]

Actually, the video element contains more semantic information than the object element. You can put anything into an object and no automated system would be the wiser as to what you're trying to show on your page.

With the video and audio elements, multimedia finally becomes as common and straight forward on the web as images have been for a long, long time.

Bookmarklet Goodness!

[pinchies]

Here's a bookmarklet :-) javascript:void(location.href=%22http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/index.php?url=%22+location.href)

agreed.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."

Same here. I hate Flash. It's pointless. Between AJAX, PHP, and CSS, there's very little Flash offers beyond video provision.

Yes, Flash does animation. As long as it does animation, Fine. When they began expanding ActionScript because all the Lingo programmers needed a home, that's when it went off the rails, and that was a long time ago.

Re:agreed.

[Draugo]

Have you ever tried to program a complex web application (with heavy amounts of data displaying and processing going on) with AJAX/PHP and then do a similar type of application with Flex/Flash, because I have and I'd sooner hack my arms off than do it again with AJAX/PHP.

Re:agreed.

[foniksonik]

My big love for Flash is sockets. I can push data to the client. Comet is okay but still not as easy to implement. What is your answer to this?

My other big love is being able attach sound objects to visual objects and have visual object properties (like x/y/z coordinates) impact sound object properties (like volume per channel, the waveform's amplitude ie: distorting the sound, etc.

Any idea on whether HTML 5 is going to offer this level of integration between audio and video/animation?

Finally the fact that Actionscript is dynamic object oriented makes it a pure joy to program in - need a new attribute, just create a new child object and add your key/value pair... makes creating Object Factories dirt simple and that allows for a lovely MVC pattern even when developing games or anything else that needs dynamically generated objects born with builtin behaviors... ie: particle engines, interactive painting simulation, etc.

Re:agreed.

[Tanaric]

Except that Flash can't handle animation. Toss a few animated clips on the stage, move 'em around a little bit, and watch your performance tank. The biggest deal since Flash 8 (for anybody who cares about performance, anyway) is that it allows you direct access to underlying bitmap data, so those who apply some programmatic effort can get around Flash player's shitty vector implementation and make something that performs reasonably well.

Re: vs.

[dingen]

Embed is not a standard element. It's not part of the W3C spec at all, but instead a proprietary element created by Netscape.

Besides that, it's totally unsemantic. What kind of file is being embedded? No automated system can tell, so no search for you.

Why on earth would anyone in their right mind create a website using this element in this day and age?

I would love nothing more

[TxRv]

than to see a free, open replacement for Flash (okay, that might be an exaggeration). This isn't even close though.

Re: I would love nothing more

[dingen]

How is JavaScript + the canvas element not a free, open replacement for Flash?

Re: I would love nothing more

[TxRv]

Canvas is definitely a step in the right direction, but it's nowhere near a full replacement. Canvas won't really help either unless people *use it*. The only way to replace Flash is to make its use so rare that there's no need to even have the plugin installed.

Re: I would love nothing more

[Anonymous Coward]

Tool support.

Flash's biggest bonus is that it is one big lump you can just stick on a webpage and it'll run. Adobe's Flash creation tools are basically a standard vector graphics package with animation support — hell canvas doesn't even have builtin tweening as far as I'm aware.

Someone really needs to cook up a JS package for canvas [Basically equivalent to the flash standard library] then write a tool to allow easy production of a canvas based animation without needing to do much manual JS coding.

Re: I would love nothing more

[dingen]

Well that's the beauty of open standards. If someone decides to create something like this, nothing is stopping him. Or her.

Re:False choice

[RiotingPacifist]

The only option that can get universal support is Theora,

No one wants to hold multiple formats for the same video,

Many sites already hold 2/3 versions of a video at different qualities (they often also have an iphone version in a different format), so I don't think that is true at all. IMO the best option is a Theora baseline, browsers can buy patent licenses if they want more, but the baseline has to be patent free.

Hmmm

[delta419]

Looks vaguely similar to http://www.youtube.com/html5

This is a poor solution

[CSMatt]

The way to view the video is to use an external site (NeoSmart's site to be precise) to find the MP4 on Google's servers and display it using the video tag. All the script does is add a link to the YouTube page that redirects you to NeoSmart's viewer.

A far better solution would be something like YouTube Without Flash Auto or YouTube Perfect, both of which (among other features) locate the MP4 client-side and present the video right in the YouTube page using whatever plugin you assigned to play MP4 files. If this can be pulled off without involving any external sites, I see no reason that a conversion to HTML5 video tags can't be done the same way.

Disclaimer: using those scripts to view YouTube outside of the Flash player violates the ToS.

Re: vs.

[Spy Hunter]

You asked for it...

Playing video in an embed tag requires the user to have a platform-specific plugin installed. The user interface you get depends on the specific plugin used and can only be customized in a plugin-specific way. The Javascript API offered by the player is also plugin-specific and probably not as useful as the standard API provided by the video tag. Loading the plugin will often freeze the user's browser for several seconds and/or cause crashes. Plugins don't play nice with CSS opacity and z-order and are often buggy with respect to positioning, resizing, full-page zoom, and DOM manipulation. New advanced CSS features like transforms and animation are not likely to play nice with plugins either.

Flash took over from embed because it provided a customizable UI, consistent API, workable fullscreen mode, and reliable codec support. The video tag has the first two of these and is likely to get fullscreen support soon. Unfortunately codec support is a sticking point...

Sell your shares of Adobe

[cm613]

With video specs in HTML5 and banishment from iPhone, Adobe is fighting an uphill battle to stay in the mix.

Re:Sell your shares of Adobe

[imakemusic]

I can't see them sinking any time soon. Flash is a free plugin so it's not like they get revenue from selling it. They've still got Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere, Dreamweaver etc to bring the cash in.

Re:Sell your shares of Adobe

[True Grit]

With video specs in HTML5

But the codec to be used isn't in the spec since the main players couldn't agree on a default/baseline codec, so the actual usefulness of HTML5 is unfortunately still questionable, and without the ability to 'just work' for nearly everyone, everywhere, its chances of actually 'killing' Flash are, for the moment at least, nonexistent.

banishment from iPhone

Outside of the US the iphone is not significant (Apple is only a bit player in the global cell phone market). I doubt that they (nor anyone else) who is operating on a global scale is really that concerned about the iphone.

Adobe is fighting an uphill battle to stay in the mix.

I don't have a horse in this race, but I'd say its HTML5 that has the uphill battle, not Adobe. Flash is here now, its real & ubiquitous, whereas HTML5 is, for the moment, just a promise... and without a common/default codec, it will probably always just be a promise/wish/hope, rather than a reality.

Huh?

[GameboyRMH]

http://html5doctor.com/native-audio-in-the-browser/

First page:

http://www.google.com/search?q=html5+audio

OpenBSD

[CrAlt]

Could this mean someday I might be able to watch youtube on my OpenBSD system? IIRC there is no native FLASH support on any *BSD.

Re:OpenBSD

[hyc]

http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/

works great, covers a ton of sites already, and is easily extensible to add support for any new sites.

And yes, I agree with several of the posters above - I don't want to watch videos inside my browser; I don't want the distraction of multiple animated ads on the borders of the page etc...

Re:OpenBSD

[cpghost]

Interesting. Looks like good ole www/youtube-dl port on FreeBSD... just for a lot more sites.

IE and how to work around it

[tepples]

dynamic, animated HTML looks amazing in the latest versions of webkit.

And even if you anticipate a lot of traffic from users of Internet Explorer, which has tended to lag severely in its implementation of web technologies, you can always have your users open the site in a Chrome Frame.

Proprietary plug-ins like H.264 players

[tepples]

The purpose is to minimize proprietary plug-ins. Also, as it stands today HTML5 will need codecs for playing videos, and I consider codecs to be a kind of plug-in.

YouTube uses H.263 for low quality and H.264 for high quality and high definition. But in the United States, home of YouTube, the H.264 codec is a proprietary plug-in because even though H.264 is a published international standard, the H.264 patent license isn't very compatible with free software licensing practices. Unfortunately, due to YouTube's existing investment in H.263 and H.264, I don't see Google switching to Theora any time soon even though Theora is way ahead of H.263 (the current codec for low quality on YouTube) in quality per kbps, with the 1.1 series nearing parity with MPEG-4 ASP codecs like Xvid.

Xiph.Org needs more brand awareness

[tepples]

in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.

True, but then so could the browser. Yet there really haven't been problems with people going to mozilla.com or getfirefox.com and worrying about whether they are getting the real Firefox and not a trojaned browser

Because Firefox is a well-known brand, people know that the software from getfirefox.com is trustworthy. The Ogg brands are not as famous, and people won't be able to tell the page hosting the official Theora installer for Windows from an equally polished site carrying a trojaned codec.

If the plugin is Open Source (GPL or BSD license or similar) then there's probably no reason that it can't just be included with the browser to eliminate this problem.

YouTube, a U.S. based web site, uses H.264 video. The standard patent license for H.264 in the United States is incompatible with licenses meeting the Open Source Definition.

Re: vs.

[BZ]

Given that most of the time Flash _is_ embedded using (typically inside an IE-only ), I can't figure our what the second part of your question is asking.

The tag is better than for video purposes because it gives both the website author and the browser more flexibility (telling the browser this is a video, allowing the author to easily provide the video in multiple codecs, etc). All of this _could_ be done via and a sufficiently good video-playing plug-in, but that just brings us back to Flash.

Note that Flash has lower platform penetration (in the sense of platforms that it's available on) than -supporting browsers do, last I checked.

YouTube is subject to U.S. patent law

[tepples]

After all, software patents aren't enforceable in all countries

The article is about YouTube. The laws of any country where YouTube operates matter, and that includes the United States. Other companies with a stake in this debate are also headquartered in the United States: Adobe (maker of Flash Player), Mozilla Corp (maker of Firefox browser, which supports HTML5 video with Theora codec), and Apple (maker of Safari browser, which supports HTML5 video with H.264 codec).

some browsers would be able to implement everything without paying royalties

But they might have to use geolocation to exclude some major countries in the developed world. If a browser doesn't catch on in the United States or those European countries that recognize patents on signal processing methods, it will never gain enough of the global browser market even for web sites not to discriminate against its User-agent string.

Re:YouTube is subject to U.S. patent law

[QuoteMstr]

Why would it be YouTube's job to enforce a patent license for the browser?

Re:YouTube is subject to U.S. patent law

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

some browsers would be able to implement everything without paying royalties

But they might have to use geolocation to exclude some major countries in the developed world.

And they might have to restrict users who believe in the flying spaghetti monster too.
Both are red herrings.

SWEEET

[JimboFBX]

works on my iphone, high quality video finally.

Still cost.

[tepples]

Google transcodes all video you upload to YouTube into mp4, IIRC.

Which doesn't change lukas84's conclusion in the slightest. How much does Google, the U.S. based parent of YouTube, pay for 1. the rights under patent law to do this and 2. the extra hard drive space needed to store copies of the video transcoded into multiple codecs? And how much would it cost a company smaller than Google?

Laches

[tepples]

So they have to both pay for H.264 which is definitely patented and run the risk of being sued over hidden Theora patents, that's not a good sales pitch.

As opposed to the risk of being sued over hidden H.264 patents? Theora's decoder has been frozen since 2004; any remaining patent claims are likely estopped by laches.

Re: vs.

[evilviper]

Embed is not a standard element. It's not part of the W3C spec at all, but instead a proprietary element created by Netscape.

And?

I do like how you ignore OBJECT as well.

Besides that, it's totally unsemantic. What kind of file is being embedded? No automated system can tell, so no search for you.

Look at the file extension, or read the mime type.. Just like EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE WEB.

If "no automated system can tell" then how could browser plugins possibly work?

Why on earth would anyone in their right mind create a website using this element in this day and age?

Because it doesn't require proprietary software, works on every browser, is much more flexible, and performs extremely well.

YouTube's parent company distributes Chrome

[tepples]

Why would it be YouTube's job to enforce a patent license for the browser?

YouTube must license the H.264 encoder in order to transcode uploaded videos to H.264 for streaming. In addition, YouTube's parent company has its fingers in just about every web browser pie: it distributes the Chrome browser and Chrome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer, and it pays Mozilla a commission for text advertisements on search result pages from the Firefox browser's search bar.

Re:YouTube's parent company distributes Chrome

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

YouTube must license the H.264 encoder in order to transcode uploaded videos to H.264 for streaming.

So? YouTube ALREADY uses h264 video all over.

YouTube's parent company has its fingers in just about every web browser pie

Yeah... that's a ridiculous stretch of the imagination and if you don't know it, you aren't playing with a full deck.

Re:YouTube's parent company distributes Chrome

[tepples]

YouTube ALREADY uses h264 video all over.

And because YouTube already pays these royalties for the right to stream video to the users of its Flash Player and iPhone OS frontends, there isn't much incentive for YouTube to add Theora. This means there isn't much incentive for publishers of non-free web browsers bundled with non-free operating systems, such as Safari and IE, to pay their developers to add Theora support because the bulk of existing online video is H.263 and H.264.

Re:YouTube's parent company distributes Chrome

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So, what happened to google being responsible for what browser makers do?

Re:YouTube's parent company distributes Chrome

[tepples]

So, what happened to google being responsible for what browser makers do?

Google isn't responsible for what Microsoft, Apple, and Opera do, but apart from Opera, the other well-known browser makers are also in the United States and subject to United States law. I was using Google primarily as a nexus to bring United States law into the discussion, in order to rule out "I'm not in the United States; sucks to be you" responses.

Re: vs.

[evilviper]

Playing video in an embed tag requires the user to have a platform-specific plugin installed.

In what way is Quicktime et al. "platform specific" while Flash is not?

The user interface you get depends on the specific plugin used and can only be customized in a plugin-specific way.

The interface of every web-page is browser and user-specific. I don't see the problem. In fact, it seems a huge advantage that users can choose their own interface. I have yet to see a single case where some Flash video player had any positive site-specific customizations.

Loading the plugin will often freeze the user's browser for several seconds and/or cause crashes

A) Baseless nonsense.
B) Flash is an embedded plugin. It certainly can certainly do all of the above things.
C) There's no reason to assume the video tag can't an wont do the above.
D) Even if you get rid of plugins for video, you'll still have plugins for other file types.

Plugins don't play nice with CSS opacity and z-order

That's a nice checklist of worthless features that nobody will ever actually use.

Fullscreen and positioning have always worked fine with plugins.

Flash took over from embed because it provided a customizable UI, consistent API, workable fullscreen mode, and reliable codec support.

Sites built custom UI's on top of embedded media players long before flash got video support. They also pretty much all had fullscreen support, and great performance to boot.

The installed-base for Windows Media playback was 93%+... Flash started getting a foothold long before it even came close to rivaling that, so that's certainly no explanation. And now, you have 3 different versions of the flash player, with 3 different supported codecs to deal with... Wonderfully inconsistent.

youtube.com/html5

[Celestialwolf]

Pasting "http://www.youtube.com/html5" in the HTML5 Viewer gave me the message "Unauthorized URL!" ?

Re: vs.

[Jesus_666]

In fact, it seems a huge advantage that users can choose their own interface.

Which would be more possible with <video>. I have yet to see a Flash/WMP/QuickTime plugin that allows you to mess with the UI in any way. Flash allows the site to code their own video player UI but that's it.

D) Even if you get rid of plugins for video, you'll still have plugins for other file types.

Such as? Except for Flash and video (via Flash) <embed> and &ltobject> aren't used for much.

That's a nice checklist of worthless features that nobody will ever actually use.

Newsflash: Firefox has a nonzero market share. The Flash z-order bug has plagued Fx for quite some time as Firefox uses its rendering engine to display the browser GUI - including context menus. Until the problem was finally fixed, Flash videos displayed in front of any context menus (or even regular menus) you opened if they happened to overlap.

Plus, even as a non-professional web designer: Shut up if you don't know what you're talking about. Control over the z-order of elements can be important and CSS opacity is only not used widely* yet because the browsers are dragging their heels getting there. Yes, the internet worked in 1998. Still doesn't mean that CSS1 and HTML4 are the alpha and omega of content presentation.


* Excepting, of course, any website that uses a framework like script.aculo.us, which allows its use for some transition effects.

Re: vs.

[imakemusic]

Because it doesn't require proprietary software

Apart from the fact that it IS proprietary software.

semi-OT: convert video2CD

[muckracer]

The SO happens to love Youtube for finding songs she can use with her music students. So she downloads them and then converts/burns the audio tracks to CD. So far only on Windows with some Youtube video downloader&converter program. Anyone have suggestions how she can do this process under Linux (Ubuntu)? Difficulty: It should preferably be a GUI-solution...she's willing to try, but not that technically inclined. I'll help her get set up though if needed.

Re:semi-OT: convert video2CD

[narcc]

Here's a novel idea: She could try paying for music. (A radical idea, I know.)

You can buy DRM free MP3s from Amazon.com -- Yes, it works with linux.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/help/amd.html

Find what you want on youtube, then go buy it. (Isn't this what all the pro-pirates claim they do anyhow?)

If you're too poor to afford the 89 cents, you could have her dig through some indie music instead.

I don't get it, fanboys...

[uuddlrlrab]

I'm sorry, I just don't. I know there were flamewars when the stories hit the front page about security issues in Adobe's myriad softwares, including Flash. I'm sure some tried to defend them. But no one can deny that even if they are making a valiant, and quite possibly successful, effort to wipe out the bugs and vulnerabilities, there were flaws in the software. Why should there be a big hullabaloo about a html5 alt for this that would alleviate the problems some people are obviously having? If it's a standard built on sound design and it, as some are fond of saying in order to put Flash on pedestal, just works, it's not like it's going to be mandatory under threat of arrest and prosecution... "As per Intarwebs Content Statute BS-666, sec. 867, para. 5309-blah-blah-blah, 'NO FLASH CONTENT IS ALLOWED. VIOLATORS WILL BE EXECUTED SUMMARY TO ARREST AND TRIAL; ALL HARDWARE AND DIGITAL CONTENT THEREON BECOMES PROPERTY OF THE STATE...etc...'"... Grow up. If there's a site that makes a unilateral decision to go solely one way or the other, and this renders it unusable for you, your beef is with that site. Get over it. Competition is good; who knows, perhaps Adobe might work even harder to make Flash the optimum choice, thereby improving user experience across the board.

Re:A clever solution to a stupid tangent

[uuddlrlrab]

Well, really that's socioeconomic-debate fodder, rather than a question of technology, now isn't it? Off-topic much?

Very nice...

[DaVince21]

...but it doesn't work. Video doesn't play and the link to the MP4 version of any video is broken. Is this the Slashdot effect? The site itself does work, just not the video...

And yes, I have chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-nonfree installed.

Re: vs.

[skeeto]

It's useful for the same reasons we have an tag instead of for images.

example of how bad Flash is...

[proto]

Have you ever tried the Flash10 based online Audiotool http://www.hobnox.com/audiotool/. It will only load on a system with 1GB or more of Ram and a CPU of 2Ghz minimum. Try it on a system with less and watch your system slow to a crawl. Its a great tool and a haven for old school DJs who dreamed of using that equipment back in the day. If audiotool could be re-worked using HTML5, that would the ultimate hack that deserves an award!

Re: vs.

[Spy Hunter]

In what way is Quicktime et al. "platform specific" while Flash is not?

Quicktime runs on two platforms: OS X and Windows, and many Windows machines don't have it. It sorta runs on iPhone but the codec support and user interface is completely different. Flash runs on four platforms: OS X, Windows, Linux, and Solaris, and is commonly installed on all of them. Flash isn't as cross-platform as the web itself, but it's better than any other video plugin.

As for your "et al." Windows Media player is obviously platform specific, and there are no other widely-deployed video plugins. Also, the WMP plugin for non-IE browsers is no longer shipped with Windows as of Vista.

The interface of every web-page is browser and user-specific. I don't see the problem.

Not sure what you mean by that. Sure, there are differences between browsers, but they're nothing like the differences between Quicktime and Windows Media Player.

In fact, it seems a huge advantage that users can choose their own interface.

So you're seriously suggesting that instead of the video tag we should have many competing video plugins with different UIs, APIs, and supported codecs, which users should choose and install based on their preference, and then every website should support all of them to enable user choice? Now that I think about it, I guess that's actually a pretty accurate description of the way things worked before Flash video. Minus the "every website should support all of them" because that never happened.

A) Baseless nonsense.
B) Flash is an embedded plugin. It certainly can certainly do all of the above things.
C) There's no reason to assume the video tag can't an wont do the above.
D) Even if you get rid of plugins for video, you'll still have plugins for other file types.

A) You're entitled to your opinion, but you're wrong.
B) Flash can and does do all of these things; that's why the video tag is better than Flash. However, Flash does have the advantage over other video plugins because it's so widely used it's almost always already in RAM before the user visits your page, so you don't get the loading delay.
C) The reason to believe it won't is that it doesn't. Have you even tried it?
D) Complete non sequitur. I'm sorry, but the video tag doesn't feed the hungry or bring world peace either.

That's a nice checklist of worthless features that nobody will ever actually use. Fullscreen and positioning have always worked fine with plugins.

A quick Google search for "flash z-index" will prove you wrong. I can only assume you've never written a lot of code dealing with plugins because frustrations and limitations are everywhere. Also, the Quicktime plugin doesn't support fullscreen at all. Never has. The WMP plugin does, but the default UI doesn't even provide a button for it. You just have to know to double-click or right-click.

And now, you have 3 different versions of the flash player, with 3 different supported codecs to deal with.

According to Adobe, >90% of browsers have Flash 10 with H.264 installed. >99% of browsers have Flash 9 with at least VP6, and some number in between (likely on the high end) have Flash 9 with H.264. That's only 2 codecs you need to worry about, and in reality likely only one.

Can't wait to be able to say good riddance.

[Criton]

Yah I'm sick of flash it seems Adobe's flash dev team only get worse at writing stable and efficient code over time. The OSX flash plugin for both X86 and PPC is crap and the linux version a crashing boar.

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