Software / Services

YouTube Offers HTML5 Video Player as Flash Alternative

YouTube on Wednesday announced that the popular video-sharing Website will now support HTML5 for video playback. HTML5, for the uninitiated, is an in-development Web standard that aims to add various niceties and enhancements to the modern Web-browsing experience.

Similar Articles:

In YouTube's case, that means that browsers that support the HTML5 tag and can play H.264-encoded video can now watch videos on the site without needing to use Flash at all. Since Flash is enough of a resource-hog on OS X that entire software utilities to avoid it exist, this is a pretty compelling move for Mac users. On the Mac, only Safari and Chrome support the technologies needed for YouTube's implementation--that means every (up-to-date) Mac user on the planet can start surfing YouTube Flash-free.

You can join the HTML5 beta with a single click, but YouTube notes that you'll miss out on a few things if you do: for one thing, there are no ads (I know, terribly disappointing), but the beta also lacks fullscreen video, closed captioning, or annotations.

YouTube is calling the HTML5 beta an "experiment," but in my testing it works flawlessly.

Comments

Speed Up Everything!

PCWorld shows you the secrets to improve performance on all your hardware.

Get the Superguide now!

Business News Daily

Get the latest technology news that's important to you and your business, fresh seven days a week.

Best Prices on Desktops

XPS 8300 Midsize-Tower Desktop $599.99 and up See All Prices
XPS 8300 Midsize-Tower Desktop - Customizable $699.99 and up See All Prices
XPS 8300 Midsize-Tower Desktop $963.26 and up See All Prices
Inspiron 620 Mini-Tower Desktop $479.99 and up See All Prices

See all Best Prices on Desktops »

Latest in Business Center Blogs

Linux Line - May 30, 2012 10:35 AM
LibreOffice Gets a Huge Speed Boost Version 3.5.4 of the popular free productivity suite offers performance gains of as much as 100 percent.
Simply Business - May 30, 2012 10:04 AM
Free Ebook Teaches You to Ace Every Presentation For a limited time, Amazon is offering this $26.99 Kindle book free of charge.
Linux Line - May 29, 2012 4:01 PM
Fedora Linux 17 'Beefy Miracle' Makes Its Official Debut Offering more than 60 new features, this free new OS has much to offer business users.
Security Alert - May 29, 2012 5:39 AM
'Flame': Lethal Cyberweapon or Media Hype? 'Flame' is a sophisticated malware attack, but one vendor takes issue with the hyperbole over the threat and calls it "2007 era technology."
Net Work - May 28, 2012 10:33 AM
Should Facebook Make a Smartphone? The rumors that Facebook is developing its own smartphone platform and/or hardware continue to persist. If true, it's a gamble that could have a significant impact on the social network.
Linux Line - May 27, 2012 7:11 AM
Microsoft Delivers a Blow to Open Source with Visual Studio 11 Focusing exclusively on Metro, the free, Express version of this software will no longer offer support for desktop-style applications.