YouTube has some bad news for those of you hoping the site would soon ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 video tags: It isn’t going to happen any time soon.
That’s message from the YouTube developer blog which cites half-a-dozen areas where Flash trumps HTML5 and explains why “the <video> tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube.”
The emerging HTML5 standard, which is quickly being adopted by browser manufacturers and developers, offers native video-playback and animation tools that don’t require Adobe’s Flash plug-in. However, while HTML5 handles the basics of video, it lacks many of the extra features that sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Hulu currently offer through Flash-based video players.
To switch to pure HTML5 video would mean YouTube would have to give up features like live streaming, dynamic video quality control and the ability to allow users to jump to specific points in a video.
While YouTube claims to be “excited about the HTML5 effort and <video> tag,” the post makes it pretty clear that HTML5 isn’t going to take over the site any time soon. The video-streaming site Hulu has previously said the same thing: HTML5 lacks the extra features Flash enables.
YouTube has been running an experimental HTML5 version of the site for more than a year, and it remains an opt-in choice for those who want to avoid Flash. The site also continues to serve raw H.264 videos to mobile devices like the iPad, but don’t expect the main browser version of YouTube to make the same changes.
The YouTube developer blog lists several things Flash can do that HTML5 video tags cannot:
Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6.6, an incremental update which tweaks the way the browser handles misbehaving plug-ins, giving Flash and other plug-ins 45 seconds to respond, or else get shut down.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Firefox 3.6.4 was released. It included a new Crash Protection feature that keeps plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight isolated into separate processes. If a plug-in hangs or crashes, it won’t cause the entire browser to crash with it. Firefox only lets the plug-in remain unresponsive for 10 seconds, then it shuts the process down. (This feature is only available in the Windows and Linux version of Firefox, Mac users will have to wait for a future update).
Firefox 3.6.6 extends the amount of time Firefox will wait before terminating unresponsive plug-ins. Mozilla upped the limit to 45 seconds. Apparently, the 10-second timeout limit proved too short for many users — Flash routinely hangs for more than 10 seconds without crashing.
Isolating plug-ins is actually just the beginning. Mozilla’s larger plan is to apply “out-of-process” handling, as the more general feature is known, to all add-ons and even tabs, making Firefox considerably more stable. Once that feature is enabled, each web app would be cordoned off inside its own tab. If one page or app crashes, that single tab simply closes and the rest of the browser keeps cooking along as usual.
Isolated tabs won’t arrive until Firefox 4, which is slated for later this year.
This feature was popularized by Google Chrome, and it’s now being added into other browsers. It also started becoming a standard feature across browsers just as Flash began feeling the renewed heat over performance issues. Even though Adobe recently released a new version of its Flash Player software specifically to address many of these issues, it remains under scrutiny thanks to Apple’s decision to ban Flash from the iPad, and its campaign to get web developers to build rich apps using web standards instead of Flash.
Firefox 3.6.6 was released over the weekend, and it should be an automatic update. If your copy of Firefox hasn’t automatically applied it yet, you can force Firefox to update using the “Check for Updates” menu item, or head to the Mozilla downloads page and grab the latest version.
After spending many months on development and beta testing, Adobe has released the latest version of its Flash Player.
You can download Flash Player 10.1 for Mac, Windows and Linux at Adobe’s website. You’ll need to shut down all of your browsers while it installs. There’s a version of Flash Player 10.1 coming for Android, but it won’t be ready until later this summer. A beta version is available in the Android Marketplace if you want to test it out.
This release is significant for a number of reasons. Most of all, the underlying code has been largely re-written to address the platform’s key shortcomings. Anyone who follows the news knows Flash Player has been roundly criticized lately for its performance problems, its battery-sucking tendencies and its security issues. There’s no Flash allowed on iPads and iPhones for these reasons, and Apple (along with others like Mozilla and Opera) is calling for an end to the plug-in’s dominance as a video delivery mechanism on the web.
Microsoft’s competing Silverlight plug-in for video is winning hearts and minds, reaching 60% penetration on web-connected PCs this spring. Adobe says over 95% of web-connected PCs have Flash Player installed.
Persons of great influence are turning their backs on Flash, but Adobe is hoping this update will spark an attitude change. It has rolled in dozens of improvements which directly address the issues of performance, security and power consumption.
As we first saw in the beta release, the runtime has been re-written to consume less system memory, and Flash Player will automatically shut off if it detects that memory is running low. It can also prioritize the amount of processing power being used by each instance of Flash Player that’s running. So if you have several browser tabs open with Flash content displayed in each tab, the movie you’re watching right now will stay running at full power while the idle instances are dialed back or shut off.
These enhancements should prevent nasty problems like Flash Player causing your browser to crash or your entire OS to freeze, which is usually the result of more Flash than your computer can handle at once — something netbook owners know all too well. Mac users will also notice a significant improvement, as the Flash team says it has paid particular attention to Mac OS X and Safari issues in this release.
On the security front, the new Flash Player will fully honor the rules of your browser’s private browsing mode by not caching any data on the local system while private browsing is enabled.
There are a raft of video improvements — we get hardware-accelerated H.264 video decoding, better HTTP streaming that supports dynamic bitrates for live video streams, and support for peer-assisted video streams (aka “Multicasting”). There’s also a new buffering system, so you can pause, rewind and fast-forward streaming video just like you’re watching it on a DVR (as long as the provider is allowing for it).
There’s no mention here of support for the new WebM video format, which Google, Opera and Mozilla launched last month to serve as an open alternative to H.264. But Adobe has pledged support for WebM in Flash Player, so hopefully we’ll see it sooner rather than later.
However, Flash Player 10.1 does support multi-touch input surfaces, one of Steve Jobs’ sticking points in his “Thoughts on Flash” essay about why Apple isn’t supporting the technology. Multi-touch capability isn’t likely to change Apple’s mind about inviting Flash to the table, but this feature will be a huge boon to those Android tablets that are supposed to be showing up any day now to kill the iPad.
This is obviously a huge release for Adobe, as it comes at a time when the company is under attack for its platform’s pitfalls. So, why the weak-sounding 10.1 numbering, which gives the impression that it’s just an incremental upgrade? Wouldn’t it have been better if they had called it Flash Player 11 since there’s so much new here?
We can save the “This Flash Goes to 11″ headline for the next time around.
Another bit of Adobe software got an update today: AIR. We’ll have more on that later.
Mozilla has announced the first, and hopefully only, release candidate of Firefox 3.6.4, an incremental update which adds one significant new feature to Firefox 3.6 — plug-ins now run in separate processes. That means if Flash crashes, it won’t cause the entire browser to crash with it.
To give the new beta a try, head on over to the Firefox beta downloads page. If you’ve subscribed the beta channel in the past you’ll automatically get the update, or you can force Firefox to update using the “Check for Updates” menu item.
The new feature is known as “out-of-process” handling, and promises to make Firefox considerably more stable. Eventually, Mozilla plans to have each tab isolated in its own process as well, which will also increase stability. Once that feature is there, each web app would be cordoned off inside its own tab, so if one crashes, that single tab simply closes and the rest of the browser keeps cooking along as usual. Isolated tabs won’t arrive until Firefox 4, which is slated for later this year.
Isolated plug-ins and tabs are among the best things about Google Chrome. It’s had isolated tabs since its debut, and isolated plug-in handling arrived at the same time as Chrome Extensions.
With the release candidate available, look for the final version of Firefox 3.6.4 to ship in the next couple of weeks. If you just can’t wait, or would like to help test the latest build, head over to the Firefox beta download site. (Note that the build is still labeled “build 6,” but according to the post on the Mozilla Developer Network, this is the release candidate.)
A new open source project converts Flash animations to JavaScript/HTML5 on the fly, allowing them to be viewed in any modern web browser without the use of a plug-in.
The new project is called Smokescreen, and it’s the creation of a programmer named Chris Smoak. Basically, Smoak’s code dissects the SWF binaries (the meat of any Flash animation) and re-renders all the elements as web standards-compliant code as the animation plays. If you’re producing Flash animations, you don’t need to futz with your code or redeploy any SWFs.
Simon Willison, a programmer and blogger, has an excellent high-level technical description of the behind-the-scenes stuff on his website:
Smokescreen runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64 encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG. Open up the Chrome Web Inspector while the demo is running and you can see the SVG changing in real time. Smokescreen even implements its own ActionScript bytecode interpreter.
Smoak says he will be releasing Smokescreen under an open-source license soon. For now, we have some pretty slick demos. It’s not perfect, but it’s a clear vision of what a Flash-free future would look like.
Obviously, this bit of code won’t work for Flash videos. But there are already HTML5 workarounds for those. Smoak says his original goal was to build something that would let Flash-based banner ads play on the iPhone and iPad. As noble as those intentions are (cough), the possible use cases for Smokescreen extend beyond advertising.
Once optimized and streamlined, it could be used for games. Willison notes that news site infographics are a juicy target. It could also be used for rendering cartoon-like animations, such as the Strongbad episode in the demo. We’d love to see the classic Sex Slave series, originally built in Flash/Shockwave, reborn in HTML5.
There are concerns about how well Smokescreen will run on mobiles with slower, less-powerful processors. Again, we can expect to see improvements once the code is open sourced. Also, only the latest browsers are invited to the party for now — you’ll need Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5, Safari 4 or MobileSafari to experience the magic. It almost works in Opera 10.5x. IE8 is not supported, but Smoak says IE9 “looks promising.”
YouTube has some bad news for those of you hoping the site would soon ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 video tags: It isn’t going to happen any time soon. 
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