Facebook Videos Now Use HTML5 Instead Of Flash
Making Flash extinction nearer, Facebook announced that now it uses HTML for all videos and dumped Flash like many websites and browsers. That means Facebook videos are HTML5 now.
Daniel Baulig from Facebook wrote a blog post stating the reason for leaving Flash and by default accepting HTML5 with open hands. He stated,
From development velocity to accessibility features, HTML5 offers a lot of benefits. Moving to HTML5 best enables us to continue to innovate quickly and at scale, given Facebook’s large size and complex needs.
We decided to initially launch the HTML5 player to only a small set of browsers, and continuously roll out to more browsers, versions, and operating systems as we improved it and fixed small bugs. That’s why we waited until recently to ship the HTML5 player to all browsers by default, with the exception of a small set of them.
HTML5 uses stated include Development velocity, testability and Accessibility. They’ve build player with HTML5 that is fully accessible to screen readers and keyboard input. Now it will be easier for visually impaired users to access Facebook products.
Also, Facebook faced lot of issues and challenges while making things work correctly work with HTML5,
- They faced the issue of bugs in various browsers around HTML5 videos. An example includes Chrome’s implementation of the SPDY protocol that cause the browser to stop loading and playing videos in News Feed.
- They noticed that the performance of a lot of older browsers were worse using the HTML5 player than they had with the old Flash player. The experience includes delay in loading times. So they decided to initially launch the HTML5 player to only a small set of browsers, with continuously roll out to more browsers, versions, and operating systems day by day by improving performance and fixing other bugs.
The launch of HTML5 for facebook videos enhanced the video experience for people on Facebook. Videos now start playing faster and users report fewer bugs.
