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Facebook Replaces Flash With HTML5 For Videos (facebook.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the flash-in-the-dust-pan dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook announced that it officially replaced Flash with HTML5 for its video player. They made the change because of security reasons, but developers also found it easier to work with — it led to quicker turnarounds for site-wide changes, and had better integration with code testing platforms. Facebook reports that user engagement has gone up since the switch was made.

76 comments

  1. What About Farmville by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    From what I recall, the whole point in joining Facebook is to play Farmville. Have they come out with an HTML5 version of Farmville yet?

    1. Re:What About Farmville by simcop2387 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, https://www.zynga.com/blogs/ca...

  2. Die flash, die! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    Still a long way to go before we can be rid of the horrid thing, but this is one step closer.

    1. Re:Die flash, die! by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Funny

      Same with facebook.

    2. Re:Die flash, die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're German?

    3. Re:Die flash, die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe the people running flashdot will read their own stuff and figure out that maybe they should remove flash from this site as well? Well, I can dream....

    4. Re:Die flash, die! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      And slashdot is different how?

      The only people that are to be blamed for privacy violations on Facebook, are the posters themselves. They continually post inaine amount of shit, such as when they're taking a dump and picking their nose etc. Or posting pics of their meals.

      If you don't know the difference between FB and Slashdot, Like this post to 100 others, and you'll recieve free money and blessings direct from God.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    5. Re:Die flash, die! by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      The only people that are to be blamed [...] are the posters themselves. They continually post inaine amount of shit, such as when they're taking a dump [...], etc. Or posting pics of their meals.

      I post a single picture with the caption "After and before".

    6. Re:Die flash, die! by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Facebook is the new AOL?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    7. Re:Die flash, die! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Facebook is the new AOL?

      Very much so. I don't use it, but my wife does, ,and the chain letterish crap is just annoying .

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    8. Re:Die flash, die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thought part of way people left AOL. Was cause there is a whole lot more out there then AOL could provide. But for some reason lots of people want to go back to a single corner of the internet.

    9. Re:Die flash, die! by Tsingi · · Score: 1

      Still a long way to go before we can be rid of the horrid thing, but this is one step closer.

      I haven't used it in ages. When I come to a site like the BBC that says something like "Your technology is out of date." If I feel charitable I write them and tell them to get their shit together. Regardless of whether I write them or not, I close the site.

    10. Re:Die flash, die! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Whilst there are vast differences between Facebook and Slashdot, it would not be remiss to refer to Slashdot as "social media." We even have friends and foes, a journal, and a couple of ways to submit content. We've user generated content with comments that include personal information. I've organized a couple of meet-ups on here over the years.

      It's more social media than we might like to admit. So isn't a forum... I dare say, "social media" is a stupid and vague term but I do believe Slashdot fits the definition well enough. Albeit in clunky ways... Then again, much of Slashdot is clunky. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Hell, I share all sorts of inane shit about the pointless goings on in my life. Others do too.

      For instance, your wife uses a laptop with Linux Mint on it and I seem to recall you live in PA. ;-)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    11. Re:Die flash, die! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Thought part of way people left AOL. Was cause there is a whole lot more out there then AOL could provide. But for some reason lots of people want to go back to a single corner of the internet.

      The folks who call their Browser "My Facebook" - Oh who am I kidding, they call their computer My Facebook..

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    12. Re:Die flash, die! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Whilst there are vast differences between Facebook and Slashdot, it would not be remiss to refer to Slashdot as "social media."

      Yes, although with a different outlook. I'm on here enough that for better or worse, it is a part of my social life. But for all the warts, its an intellectual mecca by comparison.

      I knew enough about Facebook to avoid it, but after my sisters husband passed away, she moved to Florida and suggested that we sign up for Facebook. I passed on it, but signed the wife up. She mostly reads, and her and friends share the pet pix and videos, but the intellectual level is pretty low.

      Here at least, we can have spirited discussions, and I get something from most of them.

      Hell, I share all sorts of inane shit about the pointless goings on in my life. Others do too.

      For instance, your wife uses a laptop with Linux Mint on it and I seem to recall you live in PA. ;-)

      Good memory!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    13. Re:Die flash, die! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Oh, there's probably a couple of kernel updates that you might want to do on her laptop. They're security related. You have to change the notice level to show things rated 5 (potentially unstable, evil, and dangerous!!! - they're harmless but she will need to reboot to load the kernel into memory until 4.4 is released). ;-)

      The sad part is, I have a terrible memory. It's just some things stick and it's usually not the useful stuff that sticks. I too have no Facebook account even though my children nag me. I'm obviously not worried about what people know about me, at least to some extent, I just don't want another inane platform to inflate my ego. I don't want the hassle. I don't want the mindless blather that most people copy and paste.

      I like spirited discussions where I learn things, challenge my held views, and see things from different perspectives. Also tech... So, yeah, here we are. It's funny how some of us will complain about social media, and this is where I think I was going but got lost, and then make those complaints right here in the comments section of a user submitted story with the content provided by us, the commentators.

      It's like the guy who says he hates squash as he begs for a second helping. Ah well... Now I want squash.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    14. Re:Die flash, die! by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      Facebook is the new AOL?

      Very much so. I don't use it, but my wife does, ,and the chain letterish crap is just annoying .

      However, that's just a function of her friends and will be with her on the internet no matter which service she uses.

    15. Re: Die flash, die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +1 insightful

  3. Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Facebook and Google are organs of US intelligence and nobody should be using them.

    As a matter of fact, both of these firms probably save the NSA millions of dollars a year in intelligence analysis. Before FB and Google, link analysis was traditionally a very labor intensive, manual process performed by some snot-nosed twenty-something fresh out of Yale.

    1. Re: Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what? Look I've got 500 shiny friends. How cool!!

    2. Re:Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It does not matter because GCHQ does it as well.

    3. Re:Facebook by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      AC is right, this was even on the news.

    4. Re: Facebook by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      This is Slashdot. You should have 512 friends.

    5. Re:Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is an affiliation between US Intel and American academia, no question about this. That should be *****crystal clear***** after the Tor vs. Carnegie Mellon incident.

      The real question is, what would motivate a millennial to succumb to a CIA/NSA recruitment attempt by US intelligence?

      Really, it comes down to two things --

      1. Money.

      2. Presitge (inflating their "hacker" bona-fides -- ie. Lizard Squad, etc).

    6. Re:Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're a professor under NDA @ an American public University administered by the NSA --

      Ask yourself --

      Are you behaving ethically? Really? Are you?

      I don't think you are.

  4. Really? by ledow · · Score: 1

    Where? When?

    Because my Facebook account still requires me to click-to-enable-plugin to view the videos.

    1. Re:Really? by bug1 · · Score: 1

      It happened about 2 weeks ago for me.

    2. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      does that work for html5 video as well? or does html5 video simply start playing?

      Is this why their 'engagement' numbers are up?

  5. finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    About damn time!

  6. "user engagement has gone up" by ls671 · · Score: 1

    "user engagement has gone up"

    I searched the link for the word "engagement" to no avail. I still don't get it. Users are getting married more or they engage further in Facebook but how?

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re: "user engagement has gone up" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It means more users are watching videos now. Of course the reason is that flash block is useless against html5 videos, so you have to expect that people will be "watching" more video ads, until a critical mass of them figures out a replacement blocker. Should fix itself within 3 months I'd say.

    2. Re:"user engagement has gone up" by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      The real question is - has Facebook EVER made a change where they subsequently didn't claim that "user engagement has gone up"?

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    3. Re:"user engagement has gone up" by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Facebook is heavily into A/B testing, so I imagine they've made many hundreds of changes by now where they didn't make that claim. For the changes that didn't pan out, they quietly roll them back and never mention them at all.

    4. Re: "user engagement has gone up" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pseudo psychology strikes again.

    5. Re: "user engagement has gone up" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Err, my version of Flashblock blocks HTML5 video.

    6. Re:"user engagement has gone up" by budgenator · · Score: 2

      "user engagement has gone up" really means because flashblock doesn't work in HTML5, your data-plan gets hammered harder and our ad revenue has gone up.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    7. Re: "user engagement has gone up" by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      I knew that Marvel and DC had run out of vilains, but this is getting ridiculous.

    8. Re:"user engagement has gone up" by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1
      That's what you get for not paying attention to the privacy-policy changes.

      You had 24 hours to uncheck "Will you marry Facebook, inc.?" in your settings. If you failed to do so, you're engaged to it. I think they'll be doing a mass wedding next year.

      Your only hope now is to hurry up and pre-emptively start divorce proceedings before the prenuptial agreement gets added to the terms of service...

      --
      Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
    9. Re: "user engagement has gone up" by DanJ_UK · · Score: 1

      lolirl

      --
      - Dan
  7. IN YOUR FACE FLASH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I care deeply.

    1. Re:IN YOUR FACE FLASH! by antdude · · Score: 1

      You forgot a word: "I care NOT deeply." ;)

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  8. I sense a great disturbance in the force by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Funny

    As in a million grandmas and diehards still running XP thinking E stands for Internet noticed in terror their facebooks stopped playing videos and were silenced.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget it may stop people from third world countries from viewing said videos. Although, I don't have any proof.

    2. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Considering that Vista is 9 years old now, it's not that surprising that the remaining 8% of users aren't well supported. But in any case, IE8 supports XP and HTML 5 video.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last time I used facebook javascript+flash+autoplaying videos were a massive resource hog, I don't think those old systems can handle it.

    4. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by Merk42 · · Score: 1

      Considering that Vista is 9 years old now, it's not that surprising that the remaining 8% of users aren't well supported. But in any case, IE8 supports XP and HTML 5 video.

      XP does (if using Firefox/Chrome), IE8 does not

    5. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like a good thing, then. I doubt anyone with very little money has enough bandwidth to be willing to waste it on cat/dog videos.

    6. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by malditaenvidia · · Score: 1

      They can if you use an old version of Opera.

    7. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the force by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      VIsta has IE 9. It was the 1st browser with HTML 5 support outside of Chrome. Still limited with many things like WebGL and CSS 3.1 compared to Edge/IE 11, but it does support mpeg4 and HTML 5 canvas for videos in IE 9. Nothing much else

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  9. engagement by darkain · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Facebook reports that user engagement has gone up since the switch was made."

    No, this is absolutely total fucking bullshit. Engagement isn't "up" because of the switch from Flash to HTML5. Average end users wouldn't even know the difference. Why is engagement really "up"? Because they changed the god damn controls around. When playing a video, clicking on it no longer stops the fucking video, but instead takes over the whole god damn browser window with some video player playlist bullshit that nobody asked for. To stop a video now, you have to find the small pause button in the corner, rather than just being able to click anywhere. Give it a couple weeks for people to get pissed off enough to remember this, and their video player usage will tank again.

    1. Re:engagement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is facebook we're talking about. The next step is a "game" called "click the moving pause button admidst all the on-screen advertisement icons" that replaces your default HTML5 player. Then when you successfully punch the monkey, you'll get an option to forward the new video player app to all of your friends. Some asshat^H^H^H^H^H^Hbrilliant programmer is going to make millions, and facebook is going to laugh all the way to the bank.

    2. Re:engagement by Nutria · · Score: 1

      Is that inherent to HTML5, or programmer-controlled?

      I ask because both YT and FB use HTML5, but YT is "auto-play and click anywhere to pause", but FB is "click-to-play and click-the-pause-button"

      Anyway, standalone media players are click-the-pause-button, so it won't be that difficult to adjust.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    3. Re:engagement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Facebook reports that user engagement has gone up since the switch was made."

      I really wish that developers would stop using telemetry as their only feedback. It never tells the real story about what's actually going on.

    4. Re:engagement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But look how popular Windows 10 is thanks to all that telemetry! People are all getting in their cars and speeding to stores to make a conscious decision to buy!!

    5. Re:engagement by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Errr. Is this something related to your browser because I haven't experience this at all. And I have friend shitposting videos of their worthless pets all the time.

    6. Re:engagement by AchilleTalon · · Score: 1

      The HTML5 player's behavior is configurable.

      --
      Achille Talon
      Hop!
    7. Re:engagement by sinij · · Score: 1

      "Facebook reports that user engagement has gone up since the switch was made."

      No, this is absolutely total fucking bullshit.

      With Flash, it was easy to block it wholesale. With HTML5? Not so much.

      Welcome back to punching monkeys.

    8. Re:engagement by nine-times · · Score: 1

      In general, I wish people would be much more careful about how they use any metrics. The problem is, if you're lazy and/or stupid, you're just going to pick a readily available metric that sounds like it measures what you want to know, and then you're going to run with it. If I want to know what people want and like, I measure what they click on. If I want to know if a programmer is good, I measure how many lines of code he writes. If I want to know what the best political decision would be, I look at the polls.

    9. Re:engagement by KGIII · · Score: 1

      If you measured the number of lines of code that I have written then you'd assume I was a good programmer and you'd be wrong. I know this because I hired good programmers who cleaned up my work and eventually rewrote the entire thing. I did, however, have *many* lines of code.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  10. Remind me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If my enemy's enemy is my friend, do I need to 'friend' Flash or Facebook now? I loathe them both pretty much equally...

  11. Old news by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is this crusty rubbish? Facebook has been using HTML5 videos for months already.

  12. looking up mystery meat on alphabet.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    guess your best digestables continues.... http://news.yahoo.com/goodbye-cool-congress-repeals-country-origin-meat-labeling-220326905.html

    1. Re: looking up mystery meat on alphabet.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The folks in DC have proved to not be useful anymore.

    2. Re: looking up mystery meat on alphabet.com by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      They've been replaced by the folks in Marvel.

  13. Does this mean they've fixed the "black screen"? by Kazoo+the+Clown · · Score: 1

    FB video comes up black much of the time, any chance the switch to HTML5 fixed that issue?

  14. Another small step to kill Flash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seems Flash is dying in small incremental steps but at least it is. Was glad to see Firefox finally adopt DRM for HTML5 native playback for Netflix. But now it needs to step it up and support everything else, including Amazon which has now finally moved on to html5. I'm sure more of this will occur now that Microsoft is dropping support for all IE browser versions except for IE 11 and I think IE 10 on Vista. But both support HTML5 and so their is no reason to keep Flash around for video anymore.

  15. Wow by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    I would care deeply about this, if only I had a Facebook account.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  16. Re:How to root your linux installation by malditaenvidia · · Score: 2

    Lennart Poettering must be rolling in his grave.

  17. one feature missing by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    Now if only they would join the 20th century and let people upload animated GIFs to their posts!

    1. Re:one feature missing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why would you want that?

      Why would _anyone_ want that?

  18. Acceleration by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

    As long as it doesn't require any special hardware acceleration like Netflix does.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  19. Google, could you please be next? by GeRM_007 · · Score: 2

    Google Finance, for whatever reason, uses Flash for their financial charts. The non-flash version are a throwback to the mid 90's.

  20. Now ripping off youtube videos will be way faster! by Hohlraum · · Score: 1

    Imagine all the money they'll save in processing power no longer having to convert videos people have ripped off from Youtube into flash video formats. :D

  21. Re:How to root your linux installation by KGIII · · Score: 1

    You do realize that that only gets you past GRUB in unpatched systems, right? There are all sorts of ways to compromise the system without that if you've already got physical access to it. I'm sure you can find a contrived situation where it's a locked room, controlled situation, and an armed guard is right outside the door so you need to act quickly to do... What?

    It doesn't mean you've decrypted the drive, the /home partition, the /data partition, or whatnot. Just insert a damned Live USB, boot to disk, and mount the drives or delete and replace GRUB entirely. You've got physical access to the box. It's not much different then picking the lock on someone's luggage to get to the safe inside. It's really rather trivial and has been patched for some time now. If this is a problem then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."