Facebook Ditches Flash Uses HTML5 By Default

Tech firms around the world are working hard to end the life of Flash due to the frequent and often serious security flaws that Flash suffers from. Facebook's chief security officer called for Flash to be discontinued about six months ago and Adobe itself is already stepping away from Flash and has renamed Flash Pro to Animate CC. Facebook has now announced that it has ditched Flash for video on its site.

All Facebook videos now load via HTML5 by default. Facebook says that it is still working with Adobe to deliver reliable and secure flash experience. However, Facebook has switched to HTML5 video playback by default in all browsers.

Prior to this move Facebook was using HTML5 for web video on the Newsfeed and other pages, but HTML5 didn't work perfectly on older browsers. Lots of debugging has now been performed to make it work on all browsers and set HTML5 as default for all browsers.

Facebook says that in the long term the move will make videos on the social network more reliable and faster. HTML5 allows the videos to start playing faster and users are reporting fewer bugs according to Facebook. The social network also says that people appear to be spending more time with the video content thanks to the change.

SOURCE: TheNextWeb