Automatically use HTML5 players on Amazon, YouTube and Vimeo in Chrome

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Automatically use HTML5 players on Amazon, YouTube and Vimeo in Chrome

While there are still many media sites on the Internet that only provide access to their contents via a Flash-based player, there are some that make their contents available both in a Flash version and a HTML5 version. Google’s video hosting platform YouTube for instance offers a HTML5 Beta option for some time now that users can join to watch the majority of videos on the site using a HTML5 player.

Why you’d want to use the HTML5 player and not the Flash-based player? The two core reasons for that are security and stability. Flash vulnerabilities are common and even if you are running Google Chrome with its auto-updating native Flash technology, you can still be vulnerable for the time it takes Google to implement the updates to fix the vulnerability.  And Flash Player is also known for causing all kinds of stability issues, including freezes or even crashes of the browser.

It is certainly not the case that all users are experiencing those issues, but if you do, you probably would like to resolve those issues for a better web browsing experience.

If you use Flash exclusively on YouTube, Amazon or Vimeo, you may want to take a look at the HTML5ify extension for the web browser as it is automatically enabling the HTML5 player on those sites. You can then go ahead and disable Flash in Chrome, by loading chrome://plugins and clicking on disable next to the Flash Player listing there. While you are there, make sure to disable all the other plugins that you may see there as the majority of them are likely not needed at all.

You may receive warning messages that you need Adobe Flash Player to play the contents. Amazon for instance displays those. You can however still click on the play button next to mp3 songs to preview them using HTML5 on the site without issues.

Please note that some YouTube videos won’t work. This seems to be especially true for videos that have been uploaded recently to the site as conversions may take a while before they are completed.

HTML5ify works really well otherwise. If you only use one or multiple of the supported sites you can use it to replace Flash in Google Chrome. If you use more sites then this is unfortunately not really a solution. The author should consider adding support for popular media sites to improve the reach of the extension.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Thursday September 20, 2012 -
Tags:amazon, html5, html5 video, youtube, youtube videos
Categories: Browsing, Google Chrome

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Command & Conquer Remake In HTML5, JavaScript

I was a fan of the Dune games on the Commodore Amiga, and later on of Command & Conquer on the PC even though I preferred Blizzard’s Warcraft series over the Westwood game. Most games in the Command & Conquer universe afterwards failed to impress me though.

Imagine my excitement when I heard that Aditya Ravi Shankar has started to port the classic Command & Conquer game to HTML5 and JavaScript.

The developer has released an impressive looking preview version that is allowing you to play the beginning of the campaign.

You start with two light tanks and a base unit that can build your base on the map. From there you start building up your base, adding power plants, a refinery to harvest and weapons factories to produce troops to fight the enemy.

The developer has made the decision to use the game’s original control mechanism. This means that you control and move units with the left mouse button. You can draw a rectangle across multiple units to control them together. The Ctrl-[0-9] keys allow you to create control groups which you can then activate with another tap on the selected key.

The current game version 0.3d runs best in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, according to the developer. My personal experience was different though. The Firefox version lagged significantly, the Chrome version a little bit less. It did however refresh the border of the game window several times per second which made the game unplayable in the browser. The Opera version was the one that ran smoothly and without issues. I also tried running the game in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 but never came past the loading screen on that machine.

The developer, who is currently looking for volunteers to push the project forward, aims to take the project as far as possible. According to information posted on the site, he plans to integrate multiplayer later on.

There is one issue though that could torpedo the project. If the current rights holder, that would be EA if my information are correct, would put an end to the project. Nevertheless, the game shows great promise, and I personally would not mind playing through the campaign again in a web browser, provided that it works smoothly in there.

What’s your take? Let me know in the comments.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday January 31, 2012 -
Tags:Games

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