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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Mad Merlin]

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

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/

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

[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.

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: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.

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: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.

Impressive

[skirmish666]

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

Re:Here's a hint

[mcrbids]

Personally, I find comments like yours annoying.

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.

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.

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.

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.