Earlier in 2016, some Google engineers launched a plan against Flash. With the release of Chrome 55 this week, their plan to roll out HTML5 is beginning to come to fruition.

Google Chrome’s new update will start disabling flash content by default. This means Chrome users will have to enable Flash manually, or whitelist websites of choice that contain Flash content. No big deal, right?

Well, According to W3schools, This past Month Google Chrome accounted for 73.8% of the global browser market share. To put that in perspective, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and Opera share a total of 21.1% of the market. With this kind of acceptance among the internet’s 3 billion users, Google Chrome has the power to influence how the internet works. So, if Google kicks Flash to the curb, websites and developers worldwide will be forced to do the same.

 

New HTML5 Video Replaces Flash - Chrome 55

 

Google Chrome 55 and HTML5

So, what exactly does this mean? For regular web users like yourself, it’s a good change. Your CPU’s workload will go down, and your battery life will go up. However, in the near future Flash content is set to become so annoying to use that it will become obsolete.

This creates a huge problem for developers and businesses adept to using Flash. The change in the marketplace will result in a requirement for HTML5 content sooner rather than later, and businesses have to act immediately. This resulted in a big challenge for our team.

Using HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) for HTML5 Video

Because our video player was Flash-based, it required a total re-thinking. To do this, we worked Akamai and other leading organizations to develop a new method of video delivery. How did we deliver? Protocols. Specifically, HTTP Live Streaming, or HLS for short.

HLS gives us greater control over our video playback while eliminating the need for Flash. To make it work the way we want, we use JavaScript. This JavaScript passes the video data from HLS to the browser which decodes the video and plays it back directly, without the need for any plugin.

If it sounds a little complicated, it’s because it is.

HTML5 > Flash

Thanks to the power of HTML5, we were able to customize our video player in ways that were not possible through Flash. Once our player looked just right, we tested it on many unique devices to ensure functionality. The new player proved to work great, and we’ve been using it ever since.

So sayonara, Flash. It’s been fun.