YouTube and Vimeo Now Sporting HTML5

Video behemoth YouTube and the creative-focused Vimeo are now both sporting HTML5. HTML5 enables browsers to render video without needing a plugin. As of right now, in order to render Flash or Silverlight video users need to install a separate plugin in order for it to work. With HTML5, the browser can treat video just as it if were any other .jpg. HTML5 only works in Webkit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, Camino, etc...), so it won't work in Firefox.

But the beauty here is that most mobile browsers are Webkit-based. In fact, YouTube has been using HTML5 to render videos on the iPhone platform since launch. So, if we have the proof of concept, why hasn't HTML5 been more widely adopted yet? Well, in order to switch to HTML5, services have to give up some features that are built in to Flash right now, like fullscreen viewing. Both YouTube and Vimeo suffer from the same shortcomings of HTML5 video right now, but both are working on implementations for all the features missing.

If more video services continue to follow in the vein of these two, and adopt HTML5 as a viewing option (not the standard, more choices always = better), then there's a good chance we may never have to worry about Flash on a mobile device again, assuming the features can be brought back up to par.

The feature is in YouTube's testtube for right now, so if you want to try it out, you can head here to enable it.