Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flash-Free Video in 2016

open.blogs.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 203 posts

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#81

Post by 0_00_0 »

sparky_z wrote: post #71
0_00_0 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yeah that does sound annoying. Have you tried contacting the extension maker? Perhaps they can add that to the list of fixes/features on their next update?

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#83

Post by phkahler »

dplgk wrote: post #26
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.

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

I thought you just put a video tag and point it at the URL of a video file. What else is missing? ;-)

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#84

Post by pdxandi »

thiagopnts wrote: post #42
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.

there is also http://clappr.io

I find that landing page truly frustrating. I can't do anything besides watch the background video and "Star" them on Github.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#85

Post by seangrant »

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.

Obviously user friendly but businesses don't care when they can't get their metrics.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#86

Post by runn1ng »

sparky_z wrote: post #76
runn1ng wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firefox might have similar extensions.

It does indeed work. However, you might find that some videos don't load as they should. And, for example, gifs on facebook stop after one loop for one reason (since they are not really gifs, but videos).

But I remember similar issues with various flash-blocking extensions too.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#87

Post by whitegrape »

jessedhillon wrote: post #79
cballard wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It would be interesting to see Youtube's statistics on this, because for almost every case personally on my mobile devices and every case I've seen others deal with, that bail-out point is "as soon as possible" if the ad can be skipped.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#88

Post by Someone1234 »

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.

What about a slideshow which has a video of the speaker, and changes the slides for particular timestamps.

At the moment you'll have to detect the playback event and just hope that the video is playing back at the "correct" speed, and change the slides based on a JavaScript clock.

While that works most of the time, it isn't what I'd describe as reliable.

Alternatives exist, like making the slides part of the video too, but now text cannot be copied out, links cannot be clicked, and so on...

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#89

Post by waterlesscloud »

rplnt wrote: post #48

Let's see when Facebook converts. For some reason they love to serve Flash based SOLELY on user agent. So you have a chrome fork without flash? Here, watch this flash. Oh, and this gif is now flash as well. I can't quite figure out why.. but I would vote for incompetence. Can't see any business motivation for doing that.

Yes, Facebook, full of incompetent engineers.

I'll never understand why HN is so desperate to believe something that clearly isn't true.

Re: Flash-Free Video in 2016

#90

Post by agentdrtran »

_jomo wrote: post #59
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?

Pretty much every music streaming service I know of. There were a few that used HTML5, but all of them shut down (most recently rdio). For Spotify, there's a years old request on the forums [0] their support keeps linking people to, but it doesn't seem like they're doing anything about it. Deezer uses Flash for "security reasons" [1] and they don't plan to use HTML5. Someone mentioned Google Play might work, but I ha…

Google Play Music does work without flash but it's a "Labs" feature.
Post reply on HN