YouTube: Flash still ‘owns’ HTML5

June 30, 2010

Official Youtube API blog yesterday brought nice blog post, giving the reasons for not letting HTML5 replace Flash as the default video option for steaming. YouTube software engineer John Harding’s argument comes down to one simple statement: “We need to do more than just point the browser at a video file like the image tag does – there’s a lot more to it than just retrieving and displaying a video.” He goes on to list several points where Flash still beats the up-and-coming HTML5 <video> tag.

One of the points is the need to standardize video format, and concerns about patents and licencing, which all speaks in the favour of Flash. There’s also the need for an effective and reliable means of delivering the video to the browser. Simply pointing the browser at a URL is not good enough, as that doesn’t allow users to easily get to the part of the video they want.

Harding also speaks about content protection, fullscreen option and Camera and Microphone access, which all set Flash as a primary option for Youtube. He encloses his statement with: “Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.”

You can also read about this on ReadWriteWeb.

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