YouTube pushes Flash to the back burner, will now default to HTML5 player

Nearly five years after Steve Jobs published his infamous "Thoughts on Flash," streaming video service YouTube has announced plans to migrate away from the technology as users accessing the site via Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8, and beta versions of Firefox will now be served the HTML5 video player by default.

Calling the move a "critical step forward," YouTube engineering manager Richard Leider detailed the company's reasoning in a post to the official YouTube Engineering blog. It represents the culmination of four years of work, and was enabled by several recent additions to the HTML5 video specification.

MediaSource Extensions allowed YouTube to provide adaptive bitrate streaming, which provides a mechanism for adjusting the quality of the video stream based on the throughput of the user's internet connection. Encrypted Media Extensions provide a framework for layering digital rights management into a standard HTML5 video player, and have also spurred adoption of the standard by companies like Netflix.

Leider also calls out Google's VP9 codec — Â though videos will continue to be available in h.264 — Â as well as the new live-streaming WebRTC technology and HTML5's new Fullscreen API.

Alongside the user-facing changes, YouTube has also officially deprecated its Flash API and object embeds in favor if its more recent iframe system. There is no word on when or if YouTube will disable Flash entirely.

Flash usage has been driven steadily downhill largely by the popularity of Apple's iOS devices, which do not support Flash. Blowback from that decision prompted Jobs's widely-cited open letter in which he recounted six reasons that Flash would not make its way to iOS.

Adobe has also faced numerous security problems with Flash. Most recently, the company acknowledged a critical vulnerability in the Flash player that could allow an attacker to take over users' computers simply by directing them to a website.

55 Comments

thewhitefalcon 4444 comments · 10 Years

About 9 years ago

Just pulled Flash off my MBA, will remove it from other computers as time allows.

mpantone 2215 comments · 18 Years

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Flash usage has been driven steadily downhill largely by the popularity of Apple's iOS devices, which do not support Flash.

Actually, no current mobile operating system supports Flash. It's not just the popularity of iOS devices that has driven Flash usage, it's the entire smartphone and tablet marketplace.

Adobe themselves abandoned Flash development for mobile devices years ago. The software simply doesn't exist.

solipsismy 5099 comments · 10 Years

[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/184530/youtube-pushes-flash-to-the-back-burner-will-now-default-to-html5-player#post_2667128"]Nearly five years after Steve Jobs published his infamous "Thoughts on Flash," streaming video service YouTube has announced plans to migrate away from the technology as users accessing the site via Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8, and beta versions of Firefox will now be served the HTML5 video player by default.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure if this qualifies as Schadenfreude or not, but I laughed at the headline because of all the people that claimed the iPhone wold fail without Flash and used YouTube as the reason why Flash is required, and today it's not even the primary way in which media will be delivered even in IE on Windows. [QUOTE]...and have also spurred adoption of the standard by companies like Netflix.[/quote] Huh?! I hadn't heard about this, but a quick search shows this happened months ago.

[quote name="TheWhiteFalcon" url="/t/184530/youtube-pushes-flash-to-the-back-burner-will-now-default-to-html5-player#post_2667131"][image] Just pulled Flash off my MBA, will remove it from other computers as time allows. [/quote] For those wishing to do the same it's /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Flash Player Install Manager.app » Uninstall.