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I've been using the web without Flash installed on my system for months now - an it really surprised me how little I have to jump into Chrome (with its built in

I've been using the web without Flash installed on my system for months now - an it really surprised me how little I have to jump into Chrome (with its built in flash) to play a video! Flash is headed for irrelevance - I doubt it will make much difference at all in this format choice. What will matter a lot more is what format mobile devices are able to play.

rkudeshi 14y ago
I'm really curious...do most sites now fall back to HTML5-compatible players even on the desktop? I'd love to uninstall Flash, but it'd be a major pain if I had to switch over to Chrome every time I wanted to visit an MP3 blog or news site (think CNN or The Verge with their proprietary Flash video players). EDIT: Also, last I checked, HTML5 videos on YouTube could not be played in "true" fullscreen (they'd only take over the browser window, not your entire screen). Has that changed?
- brokenparser 14y ago
  1) Those using popular open source players often do. Podcasts and vodcasts should have an RSS feed you can subscribe. 2) Yes, full screen works since the JS API was implemented in all browsers (albeit prefixed until recently) except for IE.
- stephen_g 14y ago
  News sites would probably be the ones that would make you flip over to Chrome, as well as MP3 sites I guess. The Verge falls back properly, as do pretty much all YouTube videos. Most browsers (at least Safari definitely does) do proper full screen too. I'm not sure if the experience would be as good with Firefox as I'm not sure if they support H.264 yet. But I heard that was planned. I'd encourage you to try it for a while - it's free and pretty quick to re-install Flash if it gets too annoying.
jkubicek 14y ago
I've been doing the same. The only time I need to switch to chrome for video is when I want to watch ad-supported videos. One caveat is that most of my video consumption is Youtube, a little from Vimeo and almost nothing from anywhere else. Other than some minor annoyance of flipping to Chrome, the only real downside to browsing without Flash is that there's a surprisingly number of sites that silently fail without warning if you don't have flash installed. I'm looking at you, eBay.
- sans-serif 14y ago
  Facebook embeds.

rkudeshi 14y ago

I'm really curious...do most sites now fall back to HTML5-compatible players even on the desktop? I'd love to uninstall Flash, but it'd be a major pain if I had to switch over to Chrome every time I wanted to visit an MP3 blog or news site (think CNN or The Verge with their proprietary Flash video players). EDIT: Also, last I checked, HTML5 videos on YouTube could not be played in "true" fullscreen (they'd only take over the browser window, not your entire screen). Has that changed?

brokenparser 14y ago
1) Those using popular open source players often do. Podcasts and vodcasts should have an RSS feed you can subscribe. 2) Yes, full screen works since the JS API was implemented in all browsers (albeit prefixed until recently) except for IE.
stephen_g 14y ago
News sites would probably be the ones that would make you flip over to Chrome, as well as MP3 sites I guess. The Verge falls back properly, as do pretty much all YouTube videos. Most browsers (at least Safari definitely does) do proper full screen too. I'm not sure if the experience would be as good with Firefox as I'm not sure if they support H.264 yet. But I heard that was planned. I'd encourage you to try it for a while - it's free and pretty quick to re-install Flash if it gets too annoying.

jkubicek 14y ago

I've been doing the same. The only time I need to switch to chrome for video is when I want to watch ad-supported videos. One caveat is that most of my video consumption is Youtube, a little from Vimeo and almost nothing from anywhere else. Other than some minor annoyance of flipping to Chrome, the only real downside to browsing without Flash is that there's a surprisingly number of sites that silently fail without warning if you don't have flash installed. I'm looking at you, eBay.

sans-serif 14y ago
Facebook embeds.