
Chrome 55 chooses HTML5 over Flash by default, drastically reduces RAM usage - cpncrunch
http://www.techspot.com/news/67268-chrome-55-now-available-loads-html5-over-flash.html
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campuscodi
This article is inaccurate. There is no Top 10 list.

According to the Google HBD plan, the browser uses the Site Engagement metric.

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106_KLNJfwb9L-1hVVa4i...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106_KLNJfwb9L-1hVVa4i29aw1YXUy9qFX-
Ye4kvJj-4/edit#slide=id.p)

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ape4
Yes, the last page of that presentation says:

There is no longer _any_ notion of a Whitelist for this feature The original
proposal called for seeding the feature with a list of sites who had Flash
usage above 1% (i.e. a “Top 10” list), to limit over-prompting. Instead we
have updated our design to use Site Engagement to better tailor our
enablement, of the feature, based on the browsing habits of the end user (i.e.
it’s a reflection of the sites that they visit).

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profmonocle
Seems to be disabled by default. I can enable the new behavior by going to
chrome://flags/#prefer-html-over-flash, but when I set that flag to "default"
Flash works the same as before.

Has Google confirmed this actually made it into Chrome 55? Their blog post[1]
about the release doesn't mention it. One of the article's sources is from
earlier this year, and the developer thread they link to has been quiet for
about a month. I wonder if plans changed and they're leaving it behind a flag
for now, or if they're A/B testing it somehow.

[1] [https://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2016/12/stable-
cha...](https://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2016/12/stable-channel-
update-for-desktop.html)

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hartator
> An exception to this rule only applies to the top 10 websites that use Flash
> (and only for a year). Those sites are: YouTube.com, Facebook.com,
> Yahoo.com, VK.com, Live.com, Yandex.ru, OK.ru, Twitch.tv, Amazon.com and
> Mail.ru.

I think net neutrality is good for PR, but whenever they have to make a
decision...

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chipperyman573
Why is twitch on there? They switched to entirely HTML5 a few months ago

Edit: And youtube? And Facebook? I have flash disabled (chrome://plugins) and
haven't seen any issues on any of those sites.

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Gankro
You can turn the Twitch HTML5 player off. I had to do this on my laptop
(chrome on macos) a few months ago because the HTML5 player was too unstable.
Like, I didn't even know they had made the change, I was just losing my mind
because I couldn't reliably watch stuff, and noticed it in the settings.

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butz
Who and why are still using Flash?

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abrowne
Many BBC videos, if you don't use an iPad useragent.

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micv
They seem to have at least made iPlayer available without Flash now. That was
a nice surprise.

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agumonkey
v56 also cut memory consumption, it was so dramatic compared to v53 that it
registered as an accounting change to my brain.

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cryptarch
For a second I thought someone implemented a HTML5 renderer in Flash, thank
god that's not the case...

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Turing_Machine
Yes, I thought something similar.

"Chooses HTML5 over Flash" or "prefers HTML5 to Flash" might be better
phrasing than "loads HTML5 over Flash"

~~~
dang
Ok, s/load/choose/ it is.

