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One option was to go down the Click-to-Play route which offers a HORRIBLE UX. Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default. Disabling Flash however,

by hendry 11y ago

One option was to go down the Click-to-Play route which offers a HORRIBLE UX. Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default. Disabling Flash however, Youtube actually seamlessly falls back to HTML video. Well done. But I can't help but think, outside the Youtube world (BBC for e.g.). LOTS is going to break. I wouldn't take this tact with my parents or clients.

barrkel 11y ago
I much rather click to play over autoplay of videos, including on Youtube. My browsing workflow involves a lot of middle-clicking links to open them up in background tabs. Autoplaying video is major annoyance in this context.
- 7Z7 11y ago
  This is something that Safari on OS X gets so right, that I've long been amazed (and annoyed when I have to use other browsers) that the other browsers don't copy the functionality. In Safari, if you tab out a new page, it will load the content but pause it until you show the page. So you can tab out a bunch of video pages and they each only autoplay when you tab through them. Wanting the same functionality on Chrome seemed to involve plugins or clicking (which has now turned into right clicking and choosing play).
magicalist 11y ago
> Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default No since January[1]. Maybe you have an old cookie set or something? [1] http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults...
- jhasse 11y ago
  From the link: "and in beta versions of Firefox" Maybe he's still using a Firefox stable version a few months old?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  If you disable Flash completely then Youtube works fine with HTML5 video. However, when Flash is set as click to play then Youtube still prompts to enable Flash. Annoying.
  - hendry 11y ago
    You're right. :)
    - sp332 11y ago
      You can use this page to see if your browser will use HTML5 by default, and set a cookie to try HTML5 instead of Flash if it's not the default. https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5
  - magicalist 11y ago
    I'm late to respond to this, but this is really not true (speaking as a several-year (and current) user of click to play Flash). I would suggest checking the https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 page sp332 suggested to see if you have checks in all those boxes and making sure you're using a recent version of whatever browser you're running[1]. Only if your browser doesn't support the needed html5 video features does it switch back to flash. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617 for the ongoing Firefox bug, but you should be good with MSE in recent Firefox on Youtube in particular (see last comment in that bug)

by hendry 11y ago

barrkel 11y ago

I much rather click to play over autoplay of videos, including on Youtube. My browsing workflow involves a lot of middle-clicking links to open them up in background tabs. Autoplaying video is major annoyance in this context.

7Z7 11y ago
This is something that Safari on OS X gets so right, that I've long been amazed (and annoyed when I have to use other browsers) that the other browsers don't copy the functionality. In Safari, if you tab out a new page, it will load the content but pause it until you show the page. So you can tab out a bunch of video pages and they each only autoplay when you tab through them. Wanting the same functionality on Chrome seemed to involve plugins or clicking (which has now turned into right clicking and choosing play).

magicalist 11y ago

> Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default No since January[1]. Maybe you have an old cookie set or something? [1] http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults...

jhasse 11y ago
From the link: "and in beta versions of Firefox" Maybe he's still using a Firefox stable version a few months old?
JupiterMoon 11y ago
If you disable Flash completely then Youtube works fine with HTML5 video. However, when Flash is set as click to play then Youtube still prompts to enable Flash. Annoying.
- hendry 11y ago
  You're right. :)
  - sp332 11y ago
    You can use this page to see if your browser will use HTML5 by default, and set a cookie to try HTML5 instead of Flash if it's not the default. https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5
- magicalist 11y ago
  I'm late to respond to this, but this is really not true (speaking as a several-year (and current) user of click to play Flash). I would suggest checking the https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 page sp332 suggested to see if you have checks in all those boxes and making sure you're using a recent version of whatever browser you're running[1]. Only if your browser doesn't support the needed html5 video features does it switch back to flash. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=778617 for the ongoing Firefox bug, but you should be good with MSE in recent Firefox on Youtube in particular (see last comment in that bug)