In 2015, YouTube hastened the demise of Adobe Flash when it replaced it with HTML5 as its default video player. In December of the same year, Facebook officially announced that it will switch to HTML5 from Flash for all its web video surfaces. Two years later Google Chrome dealt another major blow when it stopped work on software development kits for Flash. Adobe saw the writing on the wall and eventually announced that it will stop supporting and updating Flash after 2020.
In case your website is still delivering audio, video, and animations through Flash, it’s high time to make the shift to HTML5, an open source and widely used standard. Here are some of the key reasons why you should consider switching from Flash to HTML5 as soon as possible…
Major Web Browsers Have Already Begun Disabling Flash
Major web browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and Opera have already begun disabling Flash in stages. By 2020 Microsoft will disable Flash in Edge and Internet Explorer. Mozilla said it will allow users to use Flash on Firefox till the end of 2020. Evidently, many users won’t be able to access your website’s audio and video content if you don’t make the transition from Flash to HTML5.
Allow Users to Access Content without Installing Any Application or Plug-in
Adobe Flash is cross-platform and browser-independent, but users can’t access content if the Flash Player plug-in is not installed on their computers. Therefore Flash has a negative impact on your website’s user experience as it requires the download and installation of a specific plug-in. In stark contrast, HTML5 will allow users to easily access videos and audio files in your website without installing any app or plug-in. Its practical, convenient to use and cost-effective.
Improve Your Website’s Performance and User Experience
Studies have shown that a huge percentage of visitors abandon websites that fail to load within three seconds. Again, Flash has a detrimental effect on user experience because it is notorious for loading pages slowly. Users must also have high speed Internet if they wish to access websites that still use Flash extensively. As for HTML5, it’s the other way around because it will make your website deliver better and richer user experience by loading pages faster and keeping them responsive. Several researches even indicate that HTML5 videos perform flawlessly on platforms like Linux and Mac.
Embed Audio and Video Files Without the Need to Write Additional Code
In fairness to Adobe Flash, it has helped developers in making websites and web applications more interactive. However, developers need to write additional lines of code so the audio and video content will be accessible on different devices. Even worse is the fact that they have to write longer lines of code to be able to customize the videos because Flash doesn’t support internal page bookmarking and text font size scaling.
As for HTML5, it allows developers to embed videos and audio in web pages with the use of specific tags. They can also take advantage of the various properties of such tags in order to manage multimedia content without the need to write additional code.
Switch from Commercial to Open Source Technologies
Remember that Adobe Flash is a proprietary and duly licensed platform. This means you’ll have to pay if you wish to embed animations, audio, and video to your website using Flash. HTML5 is the opposite since it is both open source and open standards. You will be able to reduce project costs by making the switch from Flash to HTML5. It’s also advisable to build new websites with HTML5 in order to avoid routine updates after 2020.
In summary, Adobe will stop supporting Flash by 2021. Major web browsers have already begun disabling Flash in stages. The meat of the matter is that you must seriously consider migrating Flash to HTML5 if you want to keep your website relevant and deliver rich user experience. Lastly, HTML5 will allow you to embed and manage videos without any additional time and effort, while improving the loading time of your website. It is equipped with nifty features such as cross-browser compatibility, semantic enrichment, rich media support, among others, making it easier to access websites, applications and games even while on the go.
Post a Comment