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Flash-Free Video in 2016

open.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#171

Post by lstamour »

fenomas wrote: post #166
acdha wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I look forward to the day when we can say HTML5 is so much better (than Flash) for interactive/media content on the web That depends on the kind of media we're talking about about: HTML5 video was noticeably faster and higher quality on day 1 and Flash never caught up on performance, which is a big deal for laptop users. Even if you're plugged in, having the fans running constantly and still seeing dropped frames i…

> HTML5 video was noticeably faster and higher quality on day 1 and Flash never caught up on performance.. Flash video was never perceptibly slower than html per se. The only thing that really affects video performance is whether or not it's hardware accelerated, and in cases where flash used HW it performed the same as html. The reason it seemed slower is that AFAIK there's never been an HTML video implementation th…

The biggest problem with flash video, to me, is the slow networking and buffering. Native browsers are optimal for such work, ActionScript not so much. Things improved but it was too little too late and Flash video deteriorated its quality further as its use in an automatic fallback to HLS streaming video -- native implementations are simply faster and smoother at playing back video than AS through Flash's convoluted APIs.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#172

Post by mschuster91 »

> 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.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#173

Post by emmett »

coldpie wrote: post #22
smaili wrote: post #10

Fantastic news and congrats to the NY Times team. Does anyone know, who at this point still continues to use Flash?

Twitch.tv, sadly.

We're working on the switch (I announced at TwitchCon). It's particularly hard for live video, but that's just an excuse. Clearly the time has come.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#174

Post by cooper12 »

cpeterso wrote: post #113

One 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 l…

Youtube 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.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#175

Post by Zirro »

Arnavion wrote: post #168
sparky_z wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy crap, that's really helpful. Thank you! But from the user perspective... how was I ever supposed to guess that?

FYI the exact wording depends on the browser, but all HTML5 video elements will have that context menu option. And other options like "Copy URL", "Loop", etc. depending on the browser. Of course some websites like youtube override the context menu event to prevent that from showing.

While it is hardly a discoverable feature, you can override custom context menus (at least in Firefox) by holding SHIFT and clicking.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#176

Post by forrestthewoods »

clouddrover wrote: post #169
forrestthewoods wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years ago there were a dozen sites dedicated to flash games that raked in millions of views per month. I couldn't name you a single WebGL site dedicated to games. Where is the modern day Newgrounds? There isn't one. It doesn't exist. And that's a damn shame.

I'd say Newgrounds is the modern day Newgrounds. I don't have Flash installed, I went to Newgrounds, and the first couple of games I clicked on worked without Flash while others still required it. If there's new or old content that still requires Flash, then it can be emulated. Here's an example of a large collection of games playable in an HTML5-based emulator: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games…

I've not seen a single WebGL game on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit ever. I used to see and play Flash games all the time.

It's not even remotely what it used to be.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#177

Post by j2bax »

clouddrover wrote: post #164
j2bax wrote: post #115

I 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…

> we still aren't able to provide the quality of games that we were in Flash 3-4 years ago What's an example of this? The HTML5 and WebGL games I've seen match anything I've seen in Flash. It's true that you need an up to date and capable browser, but that's true of any platform.

I'm not saying it's not possible. I've seen some incredible HTML5 and WebGL games/tests with limited modern browser support. Unfortunately our clients (large children's entertainment companies) require their games can be played on every device in every browser. Sadly, it costs us more to do less in so many environments.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#178

Post by voltagex_ »

Zirro wrote: post #175
Arnavion wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI the exact wording depends on the browser, but all HTML5 video elements will have that context menu option. And other options like "Copy URL", "Loop", etc. depending on the browser. Of course some websites like youtube override the context menu event to prevent that from showing.

While it is hardly a discoverable feature, you can override custom context menus (at least in Firefox) by holding SHIFT and clicking.

Many thanks. I wonder how many other features I'm missing out on..

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#179

Post by acdha »

fenomas wrote: post #166
acdha wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I look forward to the day when we can say HTML5 is so much better (than Flash) for interactive/media content on the web That depends on the kind of media we're talking about about: HTML5 video was noticeably faster and higher quality on day 1 and Flash never caught up on performance, which is a big deal for laptop users. Even if you're plugged in, having the fans running constantly and still seeing dropped frames i…

> HTML5 video was noticeably faster and higher quality on day 1 and Flash never caught up on performance.. Flash video was never perceptibly slower than html per se. The only thing that really affects video performance is whether or not it's hardware accelerated, and in cases where flash used HW it performed the same as html. The reason it seemed slower is that AFAIK there's never been an HTML video implementation th…

Hardware acceleration is a broad term used to describe different things and implementation quality still matters (i.e. does it do everything from format decoding to color conversion, scaling, compositing, etc. and are any individual steps combined?).

Every time I've done that comparison, Flash has used significantly more CPU for the same file. It's possible that they've finally managed to get close on the right combination of hardware, OS, and driver versions but given how regularly I still see people talking about huge improvements after uninstalling Flash, I'm skeptical that this is the most common experience.

Similarly, hardware acceleration was not a given in the past and since there's still plenty of buggy hardware and drivers out there, both Flash and all major browsers have software playback paths and there's even more room for variation there. It's not as bad as when people were comparing Flash's scalar code to Apple's well-optimized SIMD but if you disable hardware acceleration you can still see major deltas because Adobe was never willing to invest the same amount of effort in optimization. This hit Flash more because there were design constraints which caused it to silently disable HW acceleration and developers using fast desktops often didn't notice that happening.

Flash was never better than the native AV frameworks on Windows or OS X. What it offered was convenience during the period when you couldn't rely on everyone having support for a modern video codec and, of course, being able to do things other than simply play back a video file.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#180

Post by ethbro »

jdc wrote: post #152
BatFastard wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree, Adobe's problem was they made it too easy to create crappy content which could give the browser bad performance. And by make it too easy to deploy that bad content to the web. Now that the majority of bad flash developers are gone, and it's being used less for ads and more for mobile, maybe it can make a come back.

What do you think Adobe should have done to hinder people from creating (or perhaps publishing) low quality content?

Require developer accounts with authorization tokens to consume more than a set amount of CPU before the framework terminated your animation? Call it "Flash Pro" or something.

Then at least you've got an account on Joe frameloop ad.

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