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Google has a beta of YouTube that uses HTML5's video tag, but what gains do I get from using this, other than not having to install Flash just for YouTube?

Alex
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Jeff Yates
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5 Answers5

8

Four points that make HTML5 not so hot for YouTube:

  • Cannot point to a particular point in a video with the #t=21m0s portions
  • Cannot watch content protected videos
  • Full Screen Support (currently does full browser screen)
  • Recording directly to YouTube with a webcam
  • On Firefox and Opera, only videos with WebM transcodes will play in HTML5 (found this one on HTML5 beta page)

Advantages are written by every blogger out there, mainly less memory hogging and browser/mobile compatibility.

Alex
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phwd
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7

Under OS X (and probably on Linux too) the HTML5 video playback uses far less CPU than the Flash video player. This might change when hardware acceleration is released in the OS X Flash Player (currently available as a beta http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/gala/)

Marc
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5

Utilizing HTML5 will allow you, ideally, to avoid the ever growing list of security issues with Flash. Which, in itself, is value enough.

Alex
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Woot4Moo
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1

The best advantage of HTML5 of YouTube player is compatibility with Android devices. When the user click the player to watch a video, no need to skip to YouTube App. Just embed and watch the video within the page, no Flash problems. At PresentationTube, we use HTML5 to allow mobile users watch the video within the page the same as the desktop.

Alex
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Alaa Sadik
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-2

HTML5 disables the plugin container in Firefox and this is a good opportunity to have lower memory usage with this browser. Also, HTML5 loads faster.

jonsca
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TechStyle
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