YouTube Improves HTML5 Player

The HTML5 version of YouTube’s player has been seeing stdy improvements lately and is rapidly approaching fture parity with the Flash version, according toa post by Google Operating System.
YouTube has offered users the option to opt intoan HTML5 betafor over a yr now, which allows you to dispense with Flash when watching s on the website. The HTML5 player now supports closed captioning and annotations for s which have them and there’s native fullscreen support for users of Firefox’s nightly builds and Chrome’s dev channel.Furthermore, right-clicking on the HTML5 player now gives you the option to copy the URL, copy it with the current time bookmarked or copy the embed , among other options. The folks at Google Operating System say that they have even seen the HTML5 player pop up when watching s on the website with the HTML5 beta disabled, which may suggest that Google is getting rdy to take the fture out of beta soon.Unfortunately, YouTube still forces you to watch s using its Flash-based player when it has ads in it, so you’ll often end up doing so despite being a member of the HTML5 beta, forcing you to resort toother, browser-based methodsto get access to the HTML5 version of the .However, the fact that YouTube is silently working on improving its HTML5 player signals good things for the technology, which scored a significant victory over Flash when announced that it wascanning the mobile Flash pluginrlier this month.With the large mobile and tablet market free of the alrdy diminished influence of Flash, and with sites like YouTube andVimeogoing the Flash-free route, it’s a good bet that HTML5 will overtake the resource-hvy plugin on the desktop eventually, despiteits current dominance.
Source: The Next Web