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Flash-Free Video in 2016

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Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#71

Post by sparky_z »

0_00_0 wrote: post #60
sparky_z wrote: post #57

I know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective, the switch to HTML5 has been really frustrating. I happen to hang out around these parts so I understand the reasons for it, but if I didn't it would probably make me mad. It would feel…

What do you mean? There are extensions for blocking autoplay HTML5 media same as flash...

They don't work reliably (some things still autoplay), and sometimes they break the media entirely or don't discriminate between things you actually want to autoplay. For example, the one I currently have installed also blocks "gifv" files from autoplaying in the browser, even though there's no play button to click on. Every time I click on a reddit link that turns out to be a gifv file on imgur, it stays frozen on the first frame and I have to click on "view image", manually change the url to "gif", and reload it. As others here have mentioned, they also tend to break youtube in odd ways. It feels like there are a million little annoyances like that. Back in the "flash era", click-to-play was effortless.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#72

Post by danappelxx »

dplgk wrote: post #21
martin-adams wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you elaborate on the issues with iTunes, Wifi, and Xcode? I know the app store is just a wrapper (which makes it pretty bad) but Xcode is a wonderful (but buggy) IDE, I don't understand how you can make WiFi bad, and I really have no idea where they went wrong with iTunes.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#73

Post by paol »

coldpie wrote: post #65
sparky_z wrote: post #57

I know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective, the switch to HTML5 has been really frustrating. I happen to hang out around these parts so I understand the reasons for it, but if I didn't it would probably make me mad. It would feel…

Firefox has the setting "media.autoplay.enabled" for this. It mostly works, although some websites (notably Youtube) assume that autoplay succeeded and so the player acts slightly wonky, e.g. the played/paused state is backwards. I would be interested to know of any extensions that do similar and work better.

I have autoplay disabled in FF. The trick in Youtube is to double click the play button the first time. After that all works normally. (For some reason double clicking the video area doesn't produce the same result.)

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#74

Post by radley »

themartorana wrote: post #62
sparky_z wrote: post #57

I know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective, the switch to HTML5 has been really frustrating. I happen to hang out around these parts so I understand the reasons for it, but if I didn't it would probably make me mad. It would feel…

We're only happy to see it die because it was never well cared for. Flash was much heavier and much, much more insecure than it needed to be with Adobe-level money behind it. They were terribly poor stewards of the technology. I mean no offense to anyone that was on the Flash team, I am making a (flawed?) presumption that it probably didn't feel great inside the company either. Others may tell you I'm wrong - it's ab…

I agree - was definitely poor stewardship, but also there was a perceptual problem for developers. Flash was created for designers and artists, the coding part was secondary and thus traditional developers found it extremely frustrating.

The internal team became obsessed with changing it to something more focused towards developers with AS3, Flex, Flash Builder, and Flash Catalyst. Instead of improving something successful, they tried to twist it into something it wasn't.

The final straw was Jobs, not because Flash was bad but because iOS was extremely locked down. There was no way he was going to share his new platform:

"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."

Without iOS, there was no future for Flash (Android was still in it's infancy) so Adobe pulled the plug. Just a few years later Apple will go on to hire Kevin Lynch, former CTO of Adobe, to be VP of Technology at Apple focusing on the Apple Watch.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#75

Post by sparky_z »

coldpie wrote: post #65
sparky_z wrote: post #57

I know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective, the switch to HTML5 has been really frustrating. I happen to hang out around these parts so I understand the reasons for it, but if I didn't it would probably make me mad. It would feel…

Firefox has the setting "media.autoplay.enabled" for this. It mostly works, although some websites (notably Youtube) assume that autoplay succeeded and so the player acts slightly wonky, e.g. the played/paused state is backwards. I would be interested to know of any extensions that do similar and work better.

Believe me I've looked. As far as I can tell, there's no way to make one that works for everything because the HTML5 standard* doesn't have a clear distinction between things that autoplay and things that don't, the way there was between "flash content" and "everything else".

*I'm not a tech guy so I may be using the wrong terminology here.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#76

Post by sparky_z »

runn1ng wrote: post #63
sparky_z wrote: post #57

I know everybody here hates flash (for excellent reasons!) and is happy to see it die. But, as a user who doesn't work in tech, I really miss the ability to enforce click-to-play loading of videos. From my pseudo-outsider perspective, the switch to HTML5 has been really frustrating. I happen to hang out around these parts so I understand the reasons for it, but if I didn't it would probably make me mad. It would feel…

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-auto...

I may have to switch to Chrome (from Firefox) and see if actually works as described.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#77

Post by coldpie »

sparky_z wrote: post #75
coldpie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has the setting "media.autoplay.enabled" for this. It mostly works, although some websites (notably Youtube) assume that autoplay succeeded and so the player acts slightly wonky, e.g. the played/paused state is backwards. I would be interested to know of any extensions that do similar and work better.

Believe me I've looked. As far as I can tell, there's no way to make one that works for everything because the HTML5 standard* doesn't have a clear distinction between things that autoplay and things that don't, the way there was between "flash content" and "everything else". *I'm not a tech guy so I may be using the wrong terminology here.

Yes, it's a tricky problem because "what does autoplay mean?" If you load up a page containing an HTML5 game, presumably you want the background music and SFX to work. But how do we differentiate those from an unwanted autoplaying audio ad?

I believe the Firefox devs settled on anything during/after a user interaction is allowed to autoplay. More at this bug (which I've been following for years, if you couldn't tell :)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659285

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#78

Post by vxNsr »

dplgk wrote: post #21
martin-adams wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And don't forget QuickTime!! The all time worst media player.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#79

Post by jessedhillon »

cballard wrote: post #64
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.

> You have little control over playback This sounds user-friendly. > insight into video events If "insight" means "tracking", this sounds very user-friendly.

> If "insight" means "tracking", this sounds very user-friendly.

I personally would like advertisers and content producers to know at which point it is that users tend to bail on watching their video, or will click through to the content. That might allow business users to receive useful feedback and actually optimize their funnel, instead of wasting my time with a shotgun, best guess approach.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#80

Post by coldpie »

paol wrote: post #73
coldpie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has the setting "media.autoplay.enabled" for this. It mostly works, although some websites (notably Youtube) assume that autoplay succeeded and so the player acts slightly wonky, e.g. the played/paused state is backwards. I would be interested to know of any extensions that do similar and work better.

I have autoplay disabled in FF. The trick in Youtube is to double click the play button the first time. After that all works normally. (For some reason double clicking the video area doesn't produce the same result.)

It doesn't quite work "normally," the play/pause button state is backwards, but yeah, it works good enough.
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