YouTube has been one of the first adopters of HTML5’s <video> tag. Over 3 years ago I remember being pleasantly surprised when my BlackBerry Bold 9930 was finally able to play embedded YouTube videos thanks to the browsers support for HTML5. Since then I have had my YouTube settings set to default to the HTML5 video player when supported – however as of this week that’s a thing of the past as YouTube’s HTML5 video player becomes the default in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox.
That being said – YouTube is also deprecating the “old style” of Flash <object> embeds and their Flash API. Instead they recommend that webmasters switch to their IFRAME API.
For those of you who want to make sure what your browser supports, head on over here to find out if you support the H.264 video codec or the WebM format.
“These advancements have benefited not just YouTube’s community, but the entire industry,” YouTube said in a statement. “Other content providers like Netflix and Vimeo, as well as companies like Microsoft and Apple, have embraced HTML5 and been key contributors to its success.”