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Flash-Free Video in 2016
- grabcocque 11y agoSo, basically Flash lives on because advertisers are still looking for a way to track us without our permission. Gee thanks.
- gue5t 11y agoAll closed technology, on some level, exists to perpetuate coercion. This is the thesis of the free software movement.
- matthewmacleod 11y agoI think that's a rather extremist view.
- liquidise 11y agohave you read his profile?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- thescriptkiddie 11y agoIt's also true. Even at the most benign level, non-free software exists to coerce you into running unverifiable code on a machine you own. Less benign non-free software coerces you into paying for a license, signing an EULA, participating in a botnet, etc.
- ORioN63 11y ago> All closed technology, on some level, may be used to perpetuate coercion. Maybe this way? There are surely many examples of closed technology that isn't phoning home. The problem is that you don't get many garanties.
- icebraining 11y agoI don't think coercion is necessarily limited to phoning home.
- elorant 11y agoThey don't need Flash to track us. Google does it just fine without it.
- bduerst 11y agoThe difference is whether or not you can detect it effectively.
- dplgk 11y agoIt's much easier to author and publish an animated ad using Flash than HTML/JS.
- phkahler 11y ago>> It's much easier to author and publish an animated ad using Flash than HTML/JS. I thought you just put a video tag and point it at the URL of a video file. What else is missing? ;-)
- dplgk 11y ago100% Browser support. And if you consider the only people that click ads are probably running IE 4, then browser support is pretty important.
- tensafefrogs 11y agoYou can still track users just fine without Flash - the VPAID spec calls for allowing cross-domain "Friendly" scripting access, which is horrible for users.[1] The only problem with Javascript adoption was the availability of Javascript based ads and support for this VPAID style tracking. [1] http://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/VPAID_2_0_Final_04-10-2012.pdf http://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/VPAID_2_0_Fina... - VPAID 2.0 spec, section 8.1.3: "The VPAID ad unit is rendered within a friendly IFRAME (FIF) and can access the DOM of the page in which the player is rendered."
- tbrock 11y agoSometimes I think Steve Jobs' greatest contribution may have been killing flash. Today is a glorious day.
- martin-adams 11y agoBut he did give us iTunes on Windows, so in my opinion, that about balances things out.
- dplgk 11y agoand also iTunes on Mac. And WiFi on Mac. and XCode on Mac. and App Store on Mac.
- danappelxx 11y agoCan you elaborate on the issues with iTunes, Wifi, and Xcode? I know the app store is just a wrapper (which makes it pretty bad) but Xcode is a wonderful (but buggy) IDE, I don't understand how you can make WiFi bad, and I really have no idea where they went wrong with iTunes.
- dplgk 11y agoiTunes is a slow, bloated mess with UI that gets worse with every release. Classic dumbness: Adding 1 song or photo to a phone requires erasing the entire phone because it's synced from another computer? Or trying to sync a folder of photos from computer -> brand new iPhone with brand new iTunes doesn't work. Just stalled progress bar forever. WiFi: There are constantly WiFI problems with OSX and iOS. From plain-ol' reliability to straight up bugs. This isn't including boring DNS stupidity from OSX. https://www.google.com/search?q=osx+wifi+bug https://www.google.com/search?q=osx+wifi+bug Xcode: Absurdly slugish and crashing constantly.
- vxNsr 11y agoAnd don't forget QuickTime!! The all time worst media player.
- jmstickney 11y agoIf they still serve video via Brightcove, seems like a big win for the Zencoder acquisition, which included the video.js player. I do see video.js in the source.
- flavioribeiro 11y agothere's no Brightcove neither videojs, VHS was built from scratch and we have plans to open source it.
- eldod 11y agoBrightcove is following the lead though, they just released the HTML5 first HLS player: https://blog.brightcove.com/en/2016/02/say-goodbye-flash-brightcove-player-version-5 https://blog.brightcove.com/en/2016/02/say-goodbye-flash-bri...
- cpeterso 11y agobtw, what does "VHS" stand for? It's an awesome name. :)
- flavioribeiro 11y agohey! VHS is actually a tribute to the old "Video Home System" :) We also name our releases with 80s movies, here are some examples of the latest versions: - 2.63.0 Coming to America - 2.60.0 The Terminator - 2.59.0 Full Metal Jacket
- wanderfowl 11y agoThis is excellent, and sounds like the result of hard work and harder cajoling of the ad-men. Thanks, NYT, for doing your part.
- artursapek 11y ago"VHS"
- bennettfeely 11y agoPerhaps a little off-topic but it would be nice if NPR could HTML5-up their web radio player also.
- smaili 11y agoFantastic news and congrats to the NY Times team. Does anyone know, who at this point still continues to use Flash?
- dabeeeenster 11y agoThe BBC still do which I find infuriating...
- kozukumi 11y agoIndeed. Frustrates the HELL out of me even more because all their videos are available in web-friendly MP4 for the mobile services and you can get to them if you spoof the user agent. I wish they would just let me toggle a "beta" feature or something.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoI'm 99% sure they introduced a non-flash service in beta recently. Edit: Yeah, you can opt-in with a button on the right column here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5 http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoOnly for iPlayer, not for example on BBC News video clips, and not even 100% of iPlayer content yet. Still progress I suppose.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoTrue. Hopefully this is a test and once they get it working they'll roll it out across the BBC sites.
- kozukumi 11y agoYes I was aware of the iPlayer HTML5 opt-in which is what I was hoping to see for the rest of the site. Given that they have all the content in HTML5-friendly video anyway it shouldn't be all that painful.
- asquabventured 11y agoGood! Now move to https!!! Secure the damn web.
- atom_enger 11y agoWas hoping someone would say this. This should be the only thing they focus on this year until it's done. I see that they POST to a secure endpoint when logging in but that doesn't make a difference once the session cookies are transmitted in the clear.
- rifung 11y agoOnly slightly related but even Amazon isn't on HTTPS, which I find to be a much bigger issue since they deal with credit cards
- a457186 11y agoBoth https://amazon.com https://amazon.com and https://amazon.de https://amazon.de work for me.
- flavioribeiro 11y agoyep, this is on our roadmap
- dplgk 11y agoHas anyone here that is excited about HTML5 video (and Flash being dead) ever written an enterprise video player? It's a total nightmare in HTML5. You have little control over playback and insight into video events. Meeting business requirements (that Flash fulfilled) with HTML5 video ranges from hard to not possible.
- michaelbuddy 11y agoan enterprise video player wasn't exactly a picnic on Flash. How do I know? Because even the "enterprise" players would crash browsers constantly.
- tensafefrogs 11y agoI'd recommend one of the open source players, like video.js[1]. Unless you are doing some really advanced things it should cover your needs. [1] http://videojs.com/ http://videojs.com/
- jack9 11y agoIt's terribly primitive and altogether broken from some features (unfinished). Just an fyi
- heynk 11y agoCan you elaborate on this? At work we have a HTML video player that works with files, YouTube, and Vimeo all with the same skin, and we're easily able to do things like save state across sessions. I will say that the transcoding aspect can be complicated. What limitations have you hit?
- dplgk 11y agoListening for video events (cross-browser) reliably. When is a video loading, buffering, paused, what time is it? etc
- thiagopnts 11y agothere is also http://clappr.io http://clappr.io
- sz4kerto 11y agoMy bank introduced a flash-based internet banking half a year ago. Really. (only the login requires flash)
- dude_abides 11y agoWhat I found most heartening about the article was that it spent several paragraphs describing why they initially had to use Flash, and how they managed to get rid of it, but not a single sentence saying _why_ they decided to get rid of Flash. We've come a long way! (Also, thanks Steve Jobs!!!)
- TheCoreh 11y ago> Throughout the second half of 2015, Chrome, Firefox and Safari also began blocking the Flash plugin from automatically loading content unless users gave their permission. In order to continue providing a quality video experience for our viewers, switching exclusively to HTML5 video became necessary.
- dude_abides 11y agoHah missed that. In that case, thanks are due to Chrome+Firefox+Safari!
- mtgx 11y agoAnd yet it still doesn't use HTTPS. Wasn't it supposed to get it by the end of last year?
- dayyvson 11y agoWe had to shift a few priorities last year, but we are working to get HTTPS support on our video player. So, stay tuned!
- cpeterso 11y agoHTTPS is a challenge for video players because a player on an HTTPS web page must also stream video over HTTPS (to avoid HTTP/HTTPS mixed content errors or warnings), which can be costly. Flash doesn't enforce mixed content checks.
- rplnt 11y agoLet's see when Facebook converts. For some reason they love to serve Flash based SOLELY on user agent. So you have a chrome fork without flash? Here, watch this flash. Oh, and this gif is now flash as well. I can't quite figure out why.. but I would vote for incompetence. Can't see any business motivation for doing that.
- tomschlick 11y agoThey probably just have a whitelist of user agents that they have verified HTML5 video to work well on... If it's anything they don't recognize they serve flash.
- mmcclure 11y agoI'm not sure if this is what you're referring to, but they also don't allow you to embed a custom HTML5 player, just Flash. So, if you're a content producer or platform that wants to use your own player, your only option is to embed a SWF. The irony is that I'm pretty sure the reasoning has security in there somewhere.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoYes, Facebook, full of incompetent engineers. I'll never understand why HN is so desperate to believe something that clearly isn't true.
- Practicality 11y agoBecause the alternative is some kind of conspiracy theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
- vermontdevil 11y agoYet NYT does not bother with subtitling their videos. Feels like I'm back to the early 80's when less than 20% of tv shows including news were captioned. Two steps forward, then three steps backwards. Great.
- sparky_z 11y agoI know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective, the switch to HTML5 has been really frustrating. I happen to hang out around these parts so I understand the reasons for it, but if I didn't it would probably make me mad. It would feel like websites were just trying to get around my flash blocker and shove their autoplaying media in my face. Just goes to show how different things can look from the developer side of things.
- 0_00_0 11y agoWhat do you mean? There are extensions for blocking autoplay HTML5 media same as flash...
- sparky_z 11y agoThey don't work reliably (some things still autoplay), and sometimes they break the media entirely or don't discriminate between things you actually want to autoplay. For example, the one I currently have installed also blocks "gifv" files from autoplaying in the browser, even though there's no play button to click on. Every time I click on a reddit link that turns out to be a gifv file on imgur, it stays frozen on the first frame and I have to click on "view image", manually change the url to "gif", and reload it. As others here have mentioned, they also tend to break youtube in odd ways. It feels like there are a million little annoyances like that. Back in the "flash era", click-to-play was effortless.
- 0_00_0 11y agoYeah that does sound annoying. Have you tried contacting the extension maker? Perhaps they can add that to the list of fixes/features on their next update?
- RHSeeger 11y agoWhen you right click on the gifv, there should be an option to "Show Controls", which allows you to start/pause/etc it.
- blinkingled 11y agoNow if they could make Firefox play those videos on Android all would be good. Are NYT videos DRM enabled or use a codec that FF doesn't support on Android? FF should be just using the platform provided codecs and if it works in Chrome it should work in FF - but I just get a Video/Mime Type unsupported error on FF when browsing NYT.
- eldod 11y agoThere are no DRMs on the NYT streams (hls.js supports AES encryption, but it's not exactly a DRM liek Widewine or Playready). Firefox Android doesn't have Media source Extensions, that allow HLS support in HTML5 : http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/mediasource/ http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/mediasource/
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cpeterso 11y agoFirefox on Android is supposed support MSE (for MP4/H.264, but not WebM/VP9). For example, YouTube MSE works in Firefox. Is it broken for you? That JW Player page is out of date. It also says MSE doesn't work on Firefox desktop. :)
- blinkingled 11y agoI recall reading somewhere that there's a whitelist for MSE and only a few sites are enabled on FF right now?
- cpeterso 11y agoYes. There was a temporary whitelist while Firefox MSE was still in development (to workaround some API incompatibilities on some video sites), but the MSE whitelist was removed in Firefox 42 (November 2015) allow all websites to access the MSE APIs: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185611#c6 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185611#c6
- pjbrunet 11y agoTurn off Flash for YouTube https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5
- shmerl 11y agoI hope DASH will remain patent free. There was some attempt to attack it. It's quite important for Web video.
- akoumjian 11y agoIt should be noted that the native browser decoders for h264 still produce worse color presentation than flash players. Also, the flash runtime's pseudo-streaming is faster than Chrome's http pseudo-streaming (it takes longer for the same h264 file to start playing back). I love HTML5 video, but there are still huge areas for improvement that show up frequently.
- modeless 11y agoYouTube in Chrome starts playing video practically instantly, before the page is even finished loading. It's faster than Flash ever was.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoparent is referring to pseudo-streaming (aka downloading a video over http), not proper streaming (aka YouTube, etc)
- serge2k 11y ago> native browser decoders for h264 still produce worse color presentation than flash players which browsers? Which platforms?
- akoumjian 11y agoLast I checked Chrome's h264 had less accurate color presentation than most off the shelf flash decoders. I can't seem to recall how Firefox's webm decoding stood up when the file was comparatively accurate to the h264 the flash player was using.
- imaginenore 11y agoShow us the evidence of that claim.
- akoumjian 11y ago
- cpeterso 11y agoOne advantage of Flash over HTML5 video (in Firefox, at least) is that Flash has its own H.264 decoder for platforms that don't include one (like Windows XP or the "N/KN editions" of Windows for Europe and Korea). Flash can also use the GPU for decoding or compositing of video on XP, providing better performance than Firefox playing VP9 using a software decoder. YouTube recently relegated Flash to the bottom of its list of preferred video formats. Firefox users on XP who used to get hardware-accelerated 1080p video using Flash now get VP9. Many older XP machines can't keep up decoding VP9 in software. I recommend Firefox users on XP install the "YouTube Flash Video Player" add-on, which will force YouTube to use Flash again: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-video-player/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-flash...
- Pxtl 11y agoXP machines? In 2016? That's solving the wrong problem.
- cpeterso 11y agoXP is still a big problem. About 14% of Firefox users are running XP, about the same share as running Windows 10. Google says they will drop support for Chrome on XP and Vista in April 2016. They already extended their XP EOL twice before (from December 2015 and April 2015), so there's a good chance they will need to do it again.
- Pxtl 11y agoI had an old Xp-based laptop running as a file-and-print server. It was behind a router, so not even fully public. Nothing was even running on it besides SMB shares, VNC, and a media server. Some kind of botnet must have hit it, because one day I got a bandwidth-consumption notice from my ISP and found that an SSH server and a torrent system had been installed.
- cooper12 11y agoYoutube also serves VP9 in preference to H.264 in general. I had to install a browser extension to trick it that my browser doesn't support it so I'd get hardware acceleration. I don't know if the decision is based on ideology or bandwidth savings, but it certainly isn't nice on my CPU.
- j2bax 11y agoI was at a primarily Flash based company during the glory days of Flash and then through the transition to HTML5/JS. While I understand perfectly (and even support) why the shift happened (thanks Steve!), its still frustrating sometimes to know that now, years later we still aren't able to provide the quality of games that we were in Flash 3-4 years ago. We can do a lot, and things have come a ways, but right before the major shift happened, when Flash gained GPU support, the effects and performance possible in most major desktop browsers was pretty awesome. I realize that HTML5 is now capable of utilizing the GPU, but its browser support is still not where it needs to be for us to offer it as a mass consumer option for most of our clients. I look forward to the day when we can say HTML5 is so much better (than Flash) for interactive/media content on the web, but sadly we still aren't there. I have hope that we will get there eventually. Until then, we will continue providing slightly dumbed-down games and content with the benefit of it working on mobile, tablet and desktop browsers.
- bobajeff 11y agoI agree that HTML5 can't do 3D stuff very well across the board yet. But if we're honest here niether could Flash. I remember trying Flashes Unreal demo and though it ran it was barely playable. Most of the games I've played in Flash could definitely be done in HTML5 using the 2D Canvas.
- neals 11y agoI totally agree. I've worked with AS3 up until a few months ago but have also been moving to HTML5 for a few years besides. The amount of brainpower that is wasted on quirky legacy browser behaviour and the lack of consistency between them makes me long for the days where I could position and measure and control with ease and speed as in Flash.
- StillBored 11y agoI might say much the same things about web development in general. Twenty, years later I still think its easier to create a desktop application with a remote SQL back-end than a web app for any moderately complex application. Data aware visual components and the like have only pale imitations in html/javascript/css. Things like crystal reports have been ported to the web environment but along the way seem to have lost the convenience they had, where it was possible to add them 3/4 of the way through a project. Now you have to rework 1/2 the back-end code (it not the entire project) to add a package like into the mix.
- gmfawcett 11y agoLive streaming is still a pain-point in HTML5. I can play a live HLS stream on my Android or iOS phone, or I can play a live RTMP stream through Flash on the desktop; but everything else on the desktop is flaky, or experimental and flaky (MPEG-DASH), or just nonexistent (in the browser, that is -- not including video clients like VLC). I would love to see 2016 be the year where this gap is closed!
- mentos 11y agohttp://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
- mschuster91 11y ago> Chrome, Firefox and Safari also began blocking the Flash plugin from automatically loading content unless users gave their permission. Fuck auto-play websites, made possible by HTML5. Even LOADING content unless the user explicity consented is horrible behavior. Not everyone has an unlimited tethering plan or WiFi, fuck you very much.