Remove flash dependency from AeMe?

Dragooon

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Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« on January 29th, 2013, 04:12 PM »
Are the flash plugins required anymore? HTML5 can handle h.264/WebM videos just fine and most of the recent browsers support them, and AFAIK we use flash for only these formats? Same goes with audio. Mass uploading can be conveniently replaced with HTML5 based upload and it'll probably be a better experience plus should be supported across mobiles as well. And I don't think we use flash for anything else.

PS: I also had an idea of allowing on-the-fly conversion of videos to webm for better compatibility with the web. Although it'll only be viable on a server like a VPS.
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Arantor

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Dragooon

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #2, on January 29th, 2013, 04:26 PM »
For WebM:
Mozilla Firefox 4 and later
Opera 10.60 and later
Google Chrome 6 and later
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and later (requires WebM MF components)
Safari on iOS doesn't support it and requires some sort of plugin for Mac OS X

For h.264/AAC over HTML5:
MSIE version 9 and later (not sure if by default)
Google Chrome 4.0 and later
Any relevant version of Safari over all platforms (I think it was 3+)
Mozilla Firefox 17.0 for Android and currently in nightly for desktops
Opera doesn't support any form AFAIK

h.264 seems ideal honestly but Firefox's support is a bit dodgy (screw Opera :P). We also have Ogg/Theora but I'm not sure about it.

Arantor

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #3, on January 29th, 2013, 04:29 PM »
I was more asking about the mass upload aspect.

We still support IE8 with a vague nod at occasional IE7 support.

Dragooon

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #4, on January 29th, 2013, 04:33 PM »
Quote from Arantor on January 29th, 2013, 04:29 PM
I was more asking about the mass upload aspect.

We still support IE8 with a vague nod at occasional IE7 support.
Oh, well IE8 sucks for pretty much anything HTML5. For Mass upload:

Firefox 4+
Google Chrome
Safari 5+
Opera 12+ (Took them two extra years to get on board...)
MSIE 10+ (I think, had a quick look and it does support File API)

Arantor

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Nao

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #6, on January 29th, 2013, 04:51 PM »
The only reasons I kept JW Player thus far are (1) laziness (2) it's hard to say goodbye to the spectrum analyzer I implemented into it (for Foxy!)... Heck, it's the one and only time I ever dabbled into ActiveScript.
One of the reasons why I'm trying to stick to Chrome these days (which is made possible by the very nice Sidewise extension -- it's so sad that Chrome doesn't allow it to be part of the window...!), is that it supports the Web Audio API which is the only alternative to Flash for a spectrum analyzer. Thus, using Chrome would make me feel like I'm still with a universal S.A.... It's silly, I know! (Especially since AFAIK, Chrome requires a flag to be set for Web Audio to be supported...)

The plan was always to switch JW Player to use MediaElements.js, though! It still uses Flash, but only as a fallback, like the latest versions of JW Player.

As for mass uploading, I think that at this point, it's not safe yet to switch to a HTML5-only solution. Opera, Chrome and Firefox all support it indeed, but IE is way too late for the party. And this is a situation where I'm not sure I want to provide a Flash fallback... It's pretty much all or nothing.

Anyway -- Aeva stuff is what I'm playing with these days, due to my recent bug fixing. But I keep reverting my changes because, well, I don't know where to go exactly... Flash being one of the 'I'm scared!' ones. But it'll come soon.
It's interesting that this topic was created today because I started doing spectrum analyzer tests last night... :P (And it resulted in a nice little crash.)

MultiformeIngegno

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #7, on January 29th, 2013, 07:09 PM »
What about Wedge to grant a "Class A" and "Class B" support to browsers? Class A have all the latest goodness of html5, class b don't have video player, mass uploading, etc. Not our fault if users don't upgrade or browser vendors are lazy/have of stupid ideas about codec support.

Arantor

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #8, on January 29th, 2013, 07:12 PM »
If only it were actually that simple. The sad truth is that it isn't.

Are you volunteering to explain to users that it is their browser, not a Wedge bug, that is the problem?

Because that's the grim reality: whenever a user experiences class B behaviour, they're going to blame the software, not their computer, not their browser - but the *site* for failing to comply.

MultiformeIngegno

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Arantor

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #10, on January 29th, 2013, 07:19 PM »
You and I both want to believe that but in the end, the users are going to shout about it, and I'd rather avoid that because user shouting = Arantors having a sad face

Dragooon

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #11, on January 30th, 2013, 02:57 PM »
At the minimum HTML5 playback/upload should be implemented with a fallback to flash based workouts, so that we can ultimately remove them at one point when they're simply a burden.

Nao

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Dragooon

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #13, on January 30th, 2013, 03:39 PM »
Quote from Nao on January 30th, 2013, 03:20 PM
Flash isn't a burden...

Class B = if we hide the feature instead of refusing its use, it's okay.
It's about 30KB :P, and I said "when" they become one. HTML5 will fairly soon take over such media interactions, and that'll probably work for the better.

Nao

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Re: Remove flash dependency from AeMe?
« Reply #14, on January 30th, 2013, 04:18 PM »
Well, personally I'm not fussed whether my browser uses Flash or HTML5 to show me a video.
Fact is, as a site author I'd be more inclined to go with Flash-only than with HTML-only because at least I don't have to provide two versions of my video files...
(I could have implemented the MP4/WebM thing in AeMe, too. I didn't, precisely because I never thought WebM would take over. Well, at least not since I started considering support for two video streams for a single item :P I'm still considering it but not for the MP4/WebM use case.)

Oh, and I got browser crashes from either HTML or Flash, so no winner for me here! ;)