Brian GarnerYouTube's HTML5 support is offered through a beta opt-in program and is currently only available with browsers that support both HTML5 and H.264 video encoding.
This limits the beta to Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is also supported if Google's Chrome Frame is installed.
The HTML5 player fully replaces the Flash player for most videos on the site, but some limitations do exist. Videos with advertisements are currently not supported, and will play instead in the Flash player. Fullscreen playback is also not yet supported.
YouTube refers to the opt-in as "an experiment" and welcomes feedback from the community on its HTML5 integration.
HTML5 allows video to be rendered natively inside the browser, as opposed to Flash which requires a browser plug-in to be installed.
Flash is still not supported on Apple's iPhone. Major sites that use Flash for video on the web, including YouTube, CBS Mobile, and the BBC, now push standard H.264 video to the iPhone directly.
Beginning Thursday, video site Vimeo also will begin to support HTML5 playback. Playback using the HTML 5 standard is available on the same browsers that YouTube supports: Chrome, Safari, and IE with Chrome Frame.
For more, read AppleInsider's Flash Wars series:
Adobe in the History and Future of Flash [Part 1 of 3]
The Many Enemies and Obstacles of Flash [Part 2 of 3]
Adobe Fights for AIR with the Open Screen Project [Part 3 of 3]
Christine McKee
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
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100 Comments
And Firefox updated to 3.6 today too!!
Yosemite theme, light sky blue, so much better than grey...
Woho! I like the browser wars!!
Lets hope this quickly becomes production quality code, fully supported on all YouTube videos. I'm a bit bandwidth limited right at the moment but one file I checked looked really good.Dave
This is a step in the right direction. I'm tired of flash being around. I've disabled flash completely in my browsers so I don't have to deal with it any more. If the site doesn't support regular html sites, than I don't visit them. No more popup ads populating 90% of my screen with a close button the size of an atom. You can do that with modern javascript libraries as well, but I only see it in flash for some reason.
Either way, I feel flash has really gone down hill in the last few years. Really ever since the main javascript libraries have been more stable and feature complete. I hope this sends a clear message to people who want flash work done.
Looks like Firefox isn't supported because it's an open source project that can't pay royalties on the patent-encumbered H.264 codec.
Does the iPhone's Safari browser do HTML5? I know the iPhone has a YouTube app, so it doesn't matter for this, but for every other site out there that offers video who want to offer it on iPhone, will they be encouraged to offer it in HTML5?