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Chrome 54 Arrives With YouTube Flash Embed Rewriting To HTML5 (venturebeat.com)

Krystalo quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 54 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This release is mainly focused on developers, but the improvements to how the browser handles YouTube embeds is also noteworthy. You can update to the latest version now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome. Chrome 54 rewrites YouTube Flash players to use the YouTube HTML5 embed style. YouTube ditched Flash for HTML5 by default in January 2015, but the old embeds still exist all over the web. Google says the change improves both performance and security for its desktop browser. The report adds that "Chrome also now provides support for the custom elements V1 spec," which allows "developers to create custom HTML tags as well as define their API and behavior in JavaScript." BroadcastChannel API will also be implemented "to allow one-to-many messaging between windows, tabs, iframes, web workers, and service workers." You can read more about Chrome 54 on Google's blog post.

76 comments

  1. Can you turn autostart off by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can you turn autostart off?

    That's the one biggest factor that should be decided for any web-browser. You should be able to prevent autostart video with the native settings without add-ins or extensions.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:Can you turn autostart off by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      Why would you want to have to click a button to start a video advertisement when it can play automatically? Truly puzzling.

      Signed,
      Google Director of Advertisements (and Advertisement Directors of Twitter and Yahoo and Microsoft and...)

    2. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't think you can, but this add-on works really well

      https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-autoplay/efdhoaajjjgckpbkoglidkeendpkolai

    3. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yah. Just disable Javascript.

      Pity that this got less convenient in "modern browsers". The answer from Mozilla folks is "telemetry has proven that our users are too fucking stupid to handle that".

      I really feel insulted and wish less and less to be a Mozilla user. But there are (still?) ways of castrating your browser with the help of about:config ("yes, I'm over eighteen. Promised"). I keep around a "full javascript" profile, which I use once, twice a week (and which reminds me of how bad that is).

    4. Re:Can you turn autostart off by slack_justyb · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I know off-topic, but you can do this in Firefox via an about:config setting called media.autoplay.enabled. Setting the value to false kills auto-play for everything.

      What would be great is if website's allowed a white list for auto-play and banned everything else from auto-playing. And I mean it in the sense that "by default" or at the very least "built in", yes extensions are great but a browser packing something in indicates that they actually care about whatever it is they are packing in. Mozilla brought us pop-up blocker packed into the browser and eventually pop-ups died off because everyone hated them greatly. I would argue that video auto-play is the modern pop-up. Browsers should have "built in" methods to stop it. Browsers should indicated that they care about their users by listening to one of the biggest pain points about being on the web.

    5. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      That's a down side with this before I had disabled the flash plugin so if I wanted to watch/listen I had to enable it so I had a way of stopping autoplay for flash. Now it will convert them and play them anyway :|

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    6. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The media.autoplay.enabled setting causes quite a bit of trouble. Some of it is a minor inconvenience, like on youtube you have to press pause then play to get the video to play. With other players you have to drag the playback slider along slight to get the video to start. Other players simply won't start at all.

      I find it's best to have two Firefox profiles - a general one with autoplay disabled and another one with autoplay enabled for watching videos. This is a bit of a hassle but it's worth it to avoid autoplaying videos.

    7. Re:Can you turn autostart off by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 1

      Can you turn autostart off?

      They're an advertising firm: what do you think?

    8. Re:Can you turn autostart off by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The answer from Mozilla folks is "telemetry has proven that our users are too fucking stupid to handle that".

      How could it ever be otherwise? The smart users turn off telemetry!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    9. Re:Can you turn autostart off by houghi · · Score: 1

      So JavaScript blocking will prevent HTML5 from playing? Nope, not the case.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    10. Re:Can you turn autostart off by houghi · · Score: 1

      I often open 30 or so tabs for videos I want to watch. I see something, click on related videos and open e.g. 5 of them.Those 5 will have links to another 2 each and then another 1 or 2 of the ones I see. I then start to watch the tabs one by one and close them when I saw them.

      If I have to open, go to that tab, stop playing, go back to the original tab, open the next one and so on, I will be less willing to watch that many if any at all.

      They have the ability to turn off autoplay for the next in line. It should not be that hard to have a button for autoplay on/off as well. (and have it on by default)

      And if I open the 30 at the same time I will not be able to hear anything anyway, so there's that.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    11. Re:Can you turn autostart off by cjjjer · · Score: 1

      "modern ad-browsers"

      Fixed that for you.

    12. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I often open 30 or so tabs for videos I want to watch. I see something, click on related videos and open e.g. 5 of them.Those 5 will have links to another 2 each and then another 1 or 2 of the ones I see. I then start to watch the tabs one by one and close them when I saw them.

      If I have to open, go to that tab, stop playing, go back to the original tab, open the next one and so on, I will be less willing to watch that many if any at all.

      They have the ability to turn off autoplay for the next in line. It should not be that hard to have a button for autoplay on/off as well. (and have it on by default)

      And if I open the 30 at the same time I will not be able to hear anything anyway, so there's that.

      That is exactly my surfing habits.
      You must watch a lot of Pr0n, too.

    13. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does this change also make all the Firefox flash video downloader add-ons useless? Can HTML5 video be downloaded?

    14. Re:Can you turn autostart off by PingSpike · · Score: 1

      Man, you guys. I just install the FlashControl (don't let the name fool you, it works on HTML5 as well) add-on and then temporarily disable it in the rare, rare case click to play doesn't cooperate and I really want to see that element.

      Everyone complains about this but its been a solved problem for years on firefox at least.

    15. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Take off your Apple-blinders! If you think they're any better than those that you mentioned, you've drank way too much Kool-Aid.

      But this really comes down more so to the advertisers and inexperienced-web-developers MAKING the adverts, not those serving it up.

      And this is what Google is doing to help counter shit advertising:
      https://googleblog.blogspot.co...

      And Speaking of AutoStart, remember when Apple added that feature to System 8 and then someone released a worm that took advantage of it? I do, I had to go through and clean it off all of the Macs at work.

    16. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      Forget preventing auto-playing videos, I want to prevent them from pre-loading in the first place. This is bandwidth wasting and anti-users since it eats in their monthly quota without them having asked for it.

    17. Re:Can you turn autostart off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've been able to do this natively, in Chrome's preferences, for _years_. Without add-ins or extensions. It's just part of the browser. o.O

  2. html5 test still short 55 points. by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    "YOUR BROWSER SCORES 500 OUT OF 555 POINTS"
    In terms of HTML 5 compatibility I found that chrome tends to be in the lead. But with HTML5 and chrome out for years now... We really should be able to at 100% HTML5 compatibility.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:html5 test still short 55 points. by TFlan91 · · Score: 1

      You would think so...

      Chrome 53: 499
      Chrome 54: 500

      Looks like a pretty small step for developers, and a non-existent leap for consumers.

    2. Re:html5 test still short 55 points. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's one better just like the version number, they will have it cracked by Chrome 109.

    3. Re:html5 test still short 55 points. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Html5test freely mixes things that are part of the HTML5 standard with things that are not. While the things it tests mostly have some value, it shouldn't be taken as an indicator of what browsers have "100% HTML5 compatibility".

    4. Re:html5 test still short 55 points. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. It's very biased towards Chrome, actually. Look at caniuse.com for something a bit less crappy (but be aware that it too includes stuff that isn't really standard, but just comes with some browsers).

    5. Re:html5 test still short 55 points. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      But with HTML5 and chrome out for years now... We really should be able to at 100% HTML5 compatibility.

      Before you get up in arms, what is broken? What website have you visited where Chrome has failed to render correctly?

      I'm all for standards but if the standards include things that aren't done in practice then I don't see much of a need to get 100% compatibility.

  3. Extension for other browsers? by crow · · Score: 1

    This sounds like a great idea for a browser extension. Are any available for Firefox or older versions of Chrome? (I'm stuck on an old version of Chrome due to bugs they introduced that make it not work for me anymore.)

    1. Re:Extension for other browsers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm... http://news.softpedia.com/news/future-firefox-versions-will-automatically-fix-old-youtube-flash-embed-codes-499035.shtml

  4. Chrome vs. Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I want to try a Chrome-based browser but I'm concerned that it will spy on me. Is Chromium safe?

    1. Re:Chrome vs. Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use Vivaldi with uMatrix and Referer Control (to disable the HTTP Referer). I also like SRW Iron with the same 2 extensions.

    2. Re:Chrome vs. Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Personally I'm not as big on privacy as I should be, but I've been very happy with Vivaldi. I hate Chrome's interface, and Firefox has been unusable for quite a while. Midori can't seem to get off the ground. Vivaldi does have its quirks but holy hell is it customizable.

      I just use uBlock, TamperMonkey, and Privacy Badger.

    3. Re:Chrome vs. Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is Chromium safe?

      No, but it's better than the rebrandings of dubious quality like SRWare Iron & Co

    4. Re:Chrome vs. Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is wrong with Iron? I mostly use Vivaldi & Pale Moon but do use Iron on occasion.

      I haven't seen anything particularly wrong with it, but then again I'm a light user of it.

  5. Flash Embed Rewriting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really? A browser injecting changes into pages? I already don't trust Google why would I believe they aren't going to Ad Embed Rewrite in the future.

    1. Re:Flash Embed Rewriting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree here. A browser should display the page as is sent by the server, and that's it. If people want to use plagins to tamper with the page, ok. If google wants to provide an extension doing that rewrite, ok, but tampering with the source should never be part of the browser itself.

      Let's hope chromium won't follow that.

  6. So great that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WebM is caching on. Oh, wait. . . .

    1. Re:So great that by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      WebM is caching on. Oh, wait. . . .

      You must be joking. I run Chromium (no flash installed) and there are many YouTube videos I cannot play. The /html5 test says it supports everything except h.264, and yet YouTube doesn't even support WebM correctly.

      Somebody at Google got their pet project funded, but everybody else apparently felt free to ignore it.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    2. Re:So great that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Works fine on Firefox with flash set as click to play and the built-in h264 plugin, though it mostly uses VP9

  7. No-Flash advantage? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    What is the advantage of bypassing Flash? Besides getting rid of this pile of crap that has been polluting the computer world for 15 years?

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    1. Re:No-Flash advantage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You won't be tricked into installing flash which means one less security hole.

    2. Re:No-Flash advantage? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      You Tube is precisely the reason I disabled Flash plugin... with flash I was having so many glitches and lockups that could bring the whole browser down. Never had problems with html 5 content.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
  8. Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

    Does anyone have a fix for that error about the missing i386 file on Ubuntu/Debian when certain 32 bit packages are present? I've found a few proposed solutions, but none of them work. On my main box (Qubes OS, using a Debian 8 template), this error is especially annoying because it is preventing Qubes' update scripts from properly executing.

    1. Re:Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by kd8bny · · Score: 1

      Does anyone have a fix for that error about the missing i386 file on Ubuntu/Debian when certain 32 bit packages are present? I've found a few proposed solutions, but none of them work. On my main box (Qubes OS, using a Debian 8 template), this error is especially annoying because it is preventing Qubes' update scripts from properly executing.

      Is it an apt missing or held package?

    2. Re:Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You need a 64bit kernel too in debian

    3. Re:Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1
      It's basically searching for an i386 version of Chrome and throwing an error when it doesn't find one (since this was discontinued by Google a while back.) I've never taken the time to familiarize myself with all of the finer points of apt / dpkg, so I'm fuzzy on precisely why this happens, but apparently it only happens if you've enabled 32 bit packages on your 64-bit Ubuntu/Debian install, and also (I think) installed certain 32 bit packages. It doesn't prevent you from installing or using 64-bit Chrome, but it does throws the error every time you look for updates.

      I was content to ignore the error message until I realized it was also preventing the proper execution of Qubes' update scripts, which is an extra annoyance at best (meaning I can't rely on the Qubes VM Manager's update notification or easy right-click update functionality), and at worst might end up somehow breaking some of Qubes' AppVM functionality or security features.

      Chrome isn't my primary browser anyway so I'm considering just ditching it (or perhaps maintaining a separate x64-only Debian 8 Qubes template for it, if I think I can spare the space on my SSD), but I haven't had a chance to spend hours digging for a fix yet. The error in question is:

      Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/chr...
      Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-i386/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)

      More details on the issue can be found in the 'fix' that I linked to (which doesn't work for me or others.)

    4. Re:Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

      I have a 64 bit kernel. This error appears when you've enabled i386 packages on an amd64 install of Debian. It doesn't prevent installation or usage of Chrome but the error is breaking some additional stuff for me since I'm encountering it in a Qubes Debian 8 template. See this page for some more details on the error.

    5. Re:Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by norweeg · · Score: 1

      I have found that updates overwrites the google-chrome.list file with a bad copy. I had to set an hourly cronjob to put the [arch=amd64] back in

    6. Re:Official Google Chrome repo issues on Debian by leiz · · Score: 1

      Has this always been a problem or did it start again in Chrome 54? You may want to file a bug report about it? https://crbug.com/new

  9. If not, Tampermonkey / user script by raymorris · · Score: 2

    If there's not a ready-made extension, Tampermonkey will run the Javascript of your choice. I imagine it would take several minutes to write the Javascript to switch the Flash embed to html5. Tampermonkey is useful for all sorts of things. I have a TM script for Slashdot that gets rid of that "hosts file" guy who used to be on here. Any post that mentions that file name more than once, or has certain other strings, disappears for me.

    1. Re:If not, Tampermonkey / user script by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could you share this script?

  10. About time by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 2

    I like the way it takes a couple of seconds before it replaces the flash plugin just so you can see who's still banging rocks together (BBC I'm looking at you!)

    --

    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  11. Don't know what they did but it's fast now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just upgraded from "About Google Chrome" and it seems to be running fast and smooth no more temporary freezes while scrolling or slow running sluggish for that matter.

  12. Is the a headline descrambler ext for slashdot? by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

    I think the editors are just fucking with us now. Do we really think the slashdot editors have such a poor grasp of language that they throw out at least one completely unparsable headline every day unintentionally? Nobody is that stupid and incompetent. My money is that they're just trolling us now.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  13. A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive for a web browser to be rewriting the contents on a web page? Shouldn't it be rendering it exactly as the developers intended it? Isn't this the browser equivalent of a compiler that inserts malicious code in programs that it compiles?

    On top of all that, given that Google owns Youtube, you'd think they could change their code to use HTML5 on their side rather than writing a workaround in their web browser. Sounds like there's some internal conflict going on or something.

  14. Vulnerabilities too ? by dargaud · · Score: 1

    So, does that mean it also rewrites all the Flash security holes into HTML5 security holes as well ?!?

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
  15. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2

    Shouldn't it be rendering it exactly as the developers intended it?

    Hell no. That way lies damnation, PDFs, and embedded images with text on them.

    HTML is, first and foremost, about content. CSS is about style, but those are suggestions.

    And Youtube has been converting uploaded videos to HTML5 complaint ones for a while now. I suppose they don't have the time to backconvert their whole catalog, although I heard they were slowly doing so..

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  16. Yay! Can speed through more vids by mccrew · · Score: 1

    This means that I'll be able to use my new favorite Chrome extension - Video Speed Controller - to crank up the speed of more videos I encounter in my clickings. Not affiliated with that extension.

    --
    Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
  17. please somebody murder flash by FudRucker · · Score: 0

    i want that awful awful thing wiped off the internet, now when i upgrade chromium i will have to find a way to disable this exciting new feature, thx

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:please somebody murder flash by Ostrich25 · · Score: 2

      Maybe take another look at what this exciting new feature does before you try to disable it.

  18. Opposite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's funny. I do the opposite. I use a Chrome plugin that reverts YouTube to the Flash viewer. I loathe Flash as much as the next guy, but I prefer being able to rewind a video a few seconds and have it immediately play. For some reason, in every browser I've tried it always restarts the HTML5 stream and it always takes a couple seconds.

    So, apparently Flash can quickly re-show me what I've already downloaded, but HTML5 cannot.

  19. Fuck off with your YouTube mania! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck off with your YouTube mania!

  20. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    External websites are still hosting embedded flash objects, youtube can't do shit other than serving compatible formats.

  21. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And Youtube has been converting uploaded videos to HTML5 complaint ones for a while now. I suppose they don't have the time to backconvert their whole catalog, although I heard they were slowly doing so..

    It's not about the availability of the videos in HTML 5 formats, it's about the HTML-snippets used to embed youtube video into websites. Some sites haven't updated to a version of that snippet that automatically uses HTML 5 video if available, but instead are stuck with an old version that always uses Flash.

  22. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like there's some internal conflict going on or something.

    I'm pretty sure that that's Google's story. Silo everything, create a bunch of competing products with no coordination for compatibility, phase out the ones you don't like.

  23. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't it be rendering it exactly as the developers intended it?

    The Flash -> HTML5 rewriting option does indeed display the page as intended, unless the intention was to waste bandwidth and CPU cycles and still display a sub-par rendering of the video. Or maybe if you are a fan of Flash and want everyone to suffer under it.

  24. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Sloppy · · Score: 2

    Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive for a web browser to be rewriting the contents on a web page?

    Speaking as someone who goes to extra trouble to add various extensions (e.g. ublock origin, privacy badger, tampermonkey, etc) to fix web pages because the browser still doesn't do enough, and who used proxies (squid-with-sleezeball, privoxy) before we had good browser extensions: no, it doesn't seem even slightly counter-intuitive. Why would it be counter-intuitive? I totally don't get it.

    Shouldn't it be rendering it exactly as the developers intended it?

    It should be rendering it however the user intends to see it.

    Isn't this the browser equivalent of a compiler that inserts malicious code in programs that it compiles?

    Yes, it is, if you look at it loosely enough. But then, it's also the browser equivalent of a program loader than removes malicious code from the programs it loads, or a linker that binds symbolic references to addresses, or a program that compresses data, or an image resizer, or good ol' awk and sed, or ... it's the browser equivalent of the web browser itself (rendering pages instead of showing HTML tags)! Gee, filtering data is like a lot of things!

    Sorry you've had so many bad experiences that the first analogy that came to your mind was something unpleasant. Do you use a lot of malware? Maybe cut back on that.

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  25. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Translation+Error · · Score: 1

    Not at all. The browser is a tool of the user to interpret the code on a website. How it behaves as a result should be up to the user. Realistically, it usually ends up being decided by the browser maker, but the page's developers shouldn't come first.

    --
    When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
  26. The browser has no business rewriting webpages. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The browser has no business rewriting webpages.

    1. Re:The browser has no business rewriting webpages. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Preach it homie

  27. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's a dangerous game in general. Suppose that Chrome started replacing Google's old phone number with their new phone number on every webpage, thinking that they're doing readers a favor. When a webpage happens to display the same integer in another context, then it's gonna be goddamn hard for readers to discover that it's been corrupted by their browser.

  28. Get ready for more tracking by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

    BroadcastChannel API will also be implemented "to allow one-to-many messaging between windows, tabs, iframes, web workers, and service workers."

    And guess who's going to use that crap first? Advertisers. If you were able to avoid being targeted and tracked so far, you have zero chance now.

  29. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive for a web browser to be rewriting the contents on a web page?"

    It isn't when people want to get rid of the big last security whole - flash. Flash is a security nightmare and it was used everywhere for videos, this basically allows people to use youtube and big flash sites and so sites can finally kill flash. Since flash is predominantly used for video these days and not much else.

  30. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't it be rendering it exactly as the developers intended it?

    Malware and all?

  31. Firefox? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dear Firefox devs,

    I know I said stop copying Chrome, but please copy this one feature of Chrome!

    Signed,
    one of the few Firefox users left

  32. Re:Yay! Can speed through more vids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, that extension is awesome.

  33. Re:A web browser rewriting web pages is good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With every release Chrome is looking more and more like the new IE6. I have to believe that's intentional on Google's part too.