YouTube ditches Adobe Flash for HTML5 on most browsers

GOOGLE'S YOUTUBE video portal has made the switch to HTML5 as a default renderer, marking yet another milestone in the downfall of the Adobe Flash format.

Historically, Adobe Flash has been the renderer of choice despite its buggy limitations because it offered a number of tangible benefits over early HTML5 implementations.

However, from today, Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox will move over to the much-improved HTML5 standard.

Richard Leider, engineering manager at YouTube, explained in a blog post that a number of enhancements to the standard had made it a viable alternative, and pointed out that, as well as browsers, HTML5 is found in smart TVs and other streaming devices.

Adaptive Bitrate as part of MediaSource has, Leider says, reduced buffering worldwide by 50 percent, and as much as 80 percent on high congestion networks. MediaSource is also used for live streaming on games consoles and media streamers.

VP9 Codec allows high resolution at 35 percent less bandwidth, making 4K and 60fps videos start faster.

Encrypted Media Extensions allow the security aspect to be separated from the delivery, making the HTML5 rendering standard across platforms.

WebRTC, as recently highlighted in Mozilla's Firefox Hello app, allows a wider range of streaming without plug-ins, and full screen embedding allows for full 4K when videos are blown up.

As part of the announcement, it was also confirmed that Google will deprecate the 'old style' of Flash

However, this is not the end of Flash and YouTube completely. The protocol remains active for now, for the sake of older browsers, but knowing Google this arrangement will not be indefinite, especially once the current Firefox betas become stable.