Facebook waves goodbye to Flash Video
Facebook announced on December 18, 2015 that it made the decision to switch from a Flash-based video player on Facebook to a HTML5-based media player.
The company will use its HTML5 video player "for all Facebook web video surfaces" including videos on news feeds, pages, and in the Facebook embedded video player. Videos embedded directly from other sites, such as YouTube, use the HTML5 video player by default as well on Facebook.
The change won't affect games on the social media website however which means that Facebook users may still require the Flash Player if they play games on the site.
Facebook engineer Daniel Baulig lists three core benefits of the change to HTML5: development velocity, testability and accessibility.
Facebook HTML5 video benefits
HTML5 video allows Facebook to speed up the development process, not only because there is no need to recompile code, but also as it enables the company to make use of web tools such as jest or WebDriver.
Another benefit of HTML5 video over Flash video is accessibility. Flash is only available for a limited number of platforms, and HTML5 enables Facebook to build a player that is "fully accessible to screen readers and keyboard input", and to leverage accessibility tools on top of that.
Facebook had to overcome challenges on its way to push the HTML5 video player out in the open on the site according to Beurig.
The company needed to get the logging right, to understand how people use the player and how it performs. In addition, it is being used to share data, for instance the view count.
Other challenges included was to take care of browser bugs in regards to HTML5 videos, performance issues in older browsers, and page load time regression.
Facebook noticed metric and user experience improvements already after launching the HTML5 video player. Beurig notes that videos start playing faster on Facebook, that users are reporting fewer bugs, and that interaction with videos has increased as well.
The company is just one of many which switched to HTML5 video already or plans to do so in the near future. It is likely that the switch is accelerated further in 2016 when more and more companies start to migrate away from Flash video to HTML5 video.
Now You: Do you still run Flash?
Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.