Flash-Free Video in 2016 • Hacker News Board

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#21

Post by dplgk » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

martin-adams wrote: post #12

tbrock wrote: post #4

Sometimes I think Steve Jobs' greatest contribution may have been killing flash. Today is a glorious day.

But he did give us iTunes on Windows, so in my opinion, that about balances things out.

and also iTunes on Mac. And WiFi on Mac. and XCode on Mac. and App Store on Mac.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#22

Post by coldpie » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

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.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#23

Post by dplgk » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

Has anyone here that is excited about HTML5 video (and Flash being dead) ever written an enterprise video player? It's a total nightmare in HTML5. You have little control over playback and insight into video events. Meeting business requirements (that Flash fulfilled) with HTML5 video ranges from hard to not possible.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#24

Post by k-mcgrady » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

kozukumi wrote: post #16

dabeeeenster wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC still do which I find infuriating...

Indeed. Frustrates the HELL out of me even more because all their videos are available in web-friendly MP4 for the mobile services and you can get to them if you spoof the user agent. I wish they would just let me toggle a "beta" feature or something.

I'm 99% sure they introduced a non-flash service in beta recently.

Edit: Yeah, you can opt-in with a button on the right column here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#25

Post by skocznymroczny » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

tbrock wrote: post #4

Sometimes I think Steve Jobs' greatest contribution may have been killing flash. Today is a glorious day.

I am not sure if replacing Flash with Javascript is glorious...

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#26

Post by dplgk » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

grabcocque wrote: post #2

So, basically Flash lives on because advertisers are still looking for a way to track us without our permission. Gee thanks.

It's much easier to author and publish an animated ad using Flash than HTML/JS.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#27

Post by michaelbuddy » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

dplgk wrote: post #23

Has anyone here that is excited about HTML5 video (and Flash being dead) ever written an enterprise video player? It's a total nightmare in HTML5. You have little control over playback and insight into video events. Meeting business requirements (that Flash fulfilled) with HTML5 video ranges from hard to not possible.

an enterprise video player wasn't exactly a picnic on Flash. How do I know? Because even the "enterprise" players would crash browsers constantly.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#28

Post by tensafefrogs » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

dplgk wrote: post #23

Has anyone here that is excited about HTML5 video (and Flash being dead) ever written an enterprise video player? It's a total nightmare in HTML5. You have little control over playback and insight into video events. Meeting business requirements (that Flash fulfilled) with HTML5 video ranges from hard to not possible.

I'd recommend one of the open source players, like video.js[1]. Unless you are doing some really advanced things it should cover your needs.

[1] http://videojs.com/

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#29

Post by _jomo » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

rmk2 wrote: post #19

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?

Most of the German public broadcasters still use Flash (arte, ZDFMediathek, 3sat is one giant flash-blob etc.) The most infuriating one is NDR, because they allow you to switch between Flash and HTML5 video. However, if you don't have Flash installed, it doesn't give you that option or falls back to HTML5 (which would be reasonable) but instead throws an error telling you to get Flash. Yup, you need to install Flash…

Some of those sites use an open source player (I forgot the name). They actually changed the default priority order and put Flash first, so if Flash is installed (not necessarily enabled!) it will use Flash in favor of HTML5.

Firefox used to have an option that overwrites the list of plugins reported to JavaScript. Sadly it was disabled a few versions back.

Edit: The player is Projekktor [0], the FF setting was plugins.enumerable_names [1]. There's a new option coming that hides plugins when set to click-to-play [2]

0: https://github.com/frankyghost/projekktor

1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1169945

2: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1186948

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#30

Post by atom_enger » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

asquabventured wrote: post #11

Good! Now move to https!!! Secure the damn web.

Was hoping someone would say this. This should be the only thing they focus on this year until it's done. I see that they POST to a secure endpoint when logging in but that doesn't make a difference once the session cookies are transmitted in the clear.