The proprietary flash player has left alot to be desired for Linux and Apple users. Especially if you are running with accelerated 3d and with compiz fusion. Finally it is possible to watch youtube videos in html 5 format instead of the flash player. And I have found an easy way to take advantage of this new feature. This experience for me at least has been so much better. No more low quality jerky video, but instead with html 5 the video can be viewed in high definition and still be smooth.
Here is what I have found to be the easiest way to take advantage of this option:
First install the Chrome Browser. Here is a link to their page.
Next, there is a a grease monkey script that you can install in chrome that will place a view in html 5 link on youtube videos that can be viewed in this new format. It is very easy to setup. After you click on this link for the grease monkey script, click on the link to download the grease monkey script and it will download and a box will pop up with the option to install. Then simply click
Another Option:
An alternative to installing the script is to use the youtube.com/html5 page. Once you are on that page you will need to click on the join beta link. After several tries I managed to get this to work in Chrome but not in firefox. Maybe they were just having some issues at the time. This is a new feature in its testing phase. And the script does offer the convenience of being able to browse youtubes home page and search from there.
You may now search for videos on youtube and many are available to be viewed in html 5 format just click on the view in html 5 link when the page loads.
We may have to wait a while before the rest of the world catches on to html 5 but for now at least you can have some online entertainment free of the many flash player glitches.
Unfortunately with youtube I have not found a simple solution for doing this with firefox the page for the grease monkey script explains why. I am sure there will be a work around found for this. I am looking forward to learning more.
January 24th, 2010 - 4:09 pm
you no longer have to use a special script, youtube is now happy to offer videos in html5 without a hack. visit testtube ( http://www.youtube.com/testtube ) and enable the html5 youtube player, It won’t work for all videos, notable those with ads they say, but it will dramatically improve your youtube experience. Flash player never worked very well so its great to see google breaking away from such a crippling proprietary dependency. Safari will also work.
January 24th, 2010 - 4:41 pm
Youtube actually has a HTML5 opt in page (http://youtube.com/html5). You don’t need any extensions, and I believe it works in Firefox.
January 24th, 2010 - 5:31 pm
I tried the testtube and the youtube.com/html5 unfortunately for me neither one of those seem to be working. And on their page they list the browsers supported and firefox is not listed. That may have something to do with the problem. Or maybe it is my version of firefox or the distribution or some other technical problem. I am looking forward to finding a solution for firefox although I am enjoying chrome. In the mean time I am sure I am not the only one running into problems with youtubes html 5 and this was the solution that I found to be able to utilize that new feature. I am glad to hear that it is working in firefox for some.
January 24th, 2010 - 5:48 pm
FF is not supported because Youtube doesn’t host OGG - just the same h.264 flv files, just in a different player, which is incompatible with FF and incompatible with the former HTML5 standard. Ogg must be the standard for HTML5 else it will be mighty confusing. non-open and we will require patent thingies for using FF!
January 24th, 2010 - 9:51 pm
It doesn’t work in Firefox because Youtube stores videos in the patent-encumbered h264 format. Chrome and Safari have a built-in codec, while Firefox and Opera support only Theora.
January 25th, 2010 - 1:23 am
youtube.com/html5 and vimeo’s recently announced html5 video support will not work in Firefox. The reason for this is that they store and stream the videos in the patented h.264 format. Firefox only supports Ogg Theora. Chrome supports both, and safari only supports h.264. Mozilla has stated that for patent reasons, they will not support h.264, however it is probably infeasible to expect that Google and Vimeo store every single video in two formats (and reencode all existing videos). You would need the h.264 videos for Safari and the flash fallback, and Theora for Firefox and Chrome.
January 25th, 2010 - 1:29 am
Firefox is not supported because firefox doesn’t support the h.264 codec which youtube uses (in both flash and html5/video cases).
FF only supports Theora codec for video tags AFAIK (but I may be wrong here)
January 25th, 2010 - 2:04 am
When they start using Ogg, maybe I’ll start caring. Chrome? No thanks - it it doesn’t work for Firefox, I’m just not interested.
January 25th, 2010 - 2:12 am
This still does not help play youtube videos on a free software desktop operating system.
January 25th, 2010 - 4:20 pm
Firefox? I wouldn’t use it even if it could play h.264. For me it works under chromium perfectly.
February 5th, 2010 - 12:33 pm
Technology really has become completely integrated to our existence, and I am fairly confident when I say that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside… I just hope that as memory becomes cheaper, the possibility of uploading our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s one of the things I really wish I could experience in my lifetime.
(Posted on Nintendo DS running r4i dsi DS ccPost)
April 6th, 2010 - 9:21 am
Hmmm that was strange, my short review got eaten. Nevertheless I wanted to say thank you for the update.