This might a big news for all YouTube users as YouTube is now testing HTML5 video player for most of its videos. This according to Google is currently and opt-in feature, but i was able to view a HTML5 video player as i didn’t have the flash plugin on my Firefox. I am using Firefox UX and Ubuntu 13.04 as my operating system. After detecting that i didn’t have the flash plugin, YouTube automatically switched to HTML5 video player.
Click on the image below if you want to try out the HTML5 video player for your browser. You can opt out any time, but do take a look at the current limitation of the HTML5 player, so you don’t blame on something for not working. One of the limitation is advertising aren’t implemented yet, so very good news for the viewers.
A move to HTML5 will make YouTube videos to be viewed on any browser with HTML5 support without the requirement of the Adobe Flash Plugin. And most of all the latest browsers from Android, iOS to Firefox and chrome support HTML5 video transcode. Adobe has been releasing support for Android 4 and also somewhat limiting it on Linux. So HTML5 will be an much needed replacement. And you’ll be getting rid of all those Flash Player Vulnerabilities, Adobe flash is often criticized for.
All in all this is a better move in my opinion as to offer videos without the need of third party extensions that’s been criticized for having lots of vulnerabilities and bad code. Not to mention the load it creates on your browser while playing videos, so if you do switch to the HTML5 video player let us know how it goes in the comments.
