Flash is dead: YouTube drops Flash in favour of HTML5

Adobe Flash was already on the way out, but YouTube just stabbed it in the heart by dropping it as a standard video delivery format in favour of HTML5.

HTML5 has long been heralded as the natural successor to Flash, and it'll now be the default delivery method for videos streamed using Safari 8, Internet Explorer 11, Chrome and the latest versions of Firefox.

As well as being more efficient than Flash, HTML5 is also better supported across all of today's most relevant platforms: smartphones being the most obvious, generally lacking Flash support.

On the YouTube blog, YouTube Engineering Manager Richard Leider said that HTML5's adoption of adaptive bitrate (ABR) was a big part of the decision to use the newer standard by default.This allows YouTube to dynamically alter video quality to suit the bandwidth available.

And that means less time watching the buffering screen.

Flash vs HTML5

Moving to HTML5 will also allow YouTube to use the VP9 codec (which enables 4K video at 60fps), as well as enabling faster video load times and WebRTV support for easy sharing of videos and video broadcasts.

It looks like the only one who won't benefit from this move is Adobe and its Flash standard.

But by now even Adobe must know the writing's on the wall for Flash.

via The Verge