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Comment by PretzelFisch | Hacker News Reader

I don't care so much about video, but audio. I can't find a site that streams audio with out flash. This is how this change will affect me.

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Including Google's own Google Music, I use Firefox in my daily browsing without Flash installed, when I want to listen to my music i've to start Google Chrome which has Flash by default. The experimental HTML5-audio toggle is always disabled for me.

Play Music always uses HTML5 now, which is why the toggle is not available (but it's indicated badly). You can disable the built-in Flash on chrome://plugins and everything will still work.

Only in Chrome, it still requires Flash in Firefox for some reason. They're using some non-standard way of doing HTML5 Audio as far as I remember, which only works in Chrome.

Bug report is here - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=911837 - It's been a while since I looked into it and looks like the details have changed recently. At least a quick attempt now tells me "Please refresh this page in your browser to get back to listening to your music. If issues persist, make sure you have Flash enabled and working."

Is there a standard way of doing HTML5 audio?

By which I mean, a standard that works cross-browser? ;)

Google Play Music uses MSE (Media Source Extensions) to stream MP3. Firefox doesn't support MP3 in MSE streams. Google Play Music could use AAC or Opus in MSE, like YouTube does, but they prefer MP3 because some Android devices have MP3 hardware decoders that (may!) use less battery power than software decoders.

YouTube encodes all their content with in multiple formats: AAC and Opus, H.264 and VP9. I don't know why Google Play Music can't encode their music streams in both MP3 and Opus. They would save on bandwidth by using Opus.

Here is the Firefox bug to add support for MP3 in MSE: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1169485

For me at least, it still needs Flash in Firefox, this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/VH8aOrl.jpg

I believe bandcamp has been flash free for quite some time

Soundcloud streams without Flash.

What happens to all those kids sites that have flash games? Our school lets the kids play cartoonnetwork (and tons of others) games.

Those sites will likely adapt or go obsolete.

There are game engines now that can compile to a pure HTML / css/ Javascript runtime.

That's like banning petrol cars and forcing everyone to go electric (because it's possible) or walk! Why can't kids enjoy some games after all? Maybe the companies behind don't have the funds to rebuild their free-to-play games just because Google doesn't like Flash hence something valuable is lost

It's not as simple as "Google doesn't like Flash."

Flash is a known attack vector. I'd be more comfortable with the argument "Kids should be free to play games" if I didn't have to keep purging virii off my aunt's computer because she won't stop visiting Flash game sites.

Besides, there are alternative browsers. If kids need to drop into Edge to play Flash games, that seems like an acceptable solution? If it isn't possible (because they're on a school network that whitelists browsers, for example), that's indicative of the cost / benefit tradeoff of that use case.

There are alternative browsers indeed and probably some will migrate but many won't and the Flash platform will suffer. Chrome, being dominant on the market, has the power to kill anything that doesn t align with the company s interests, which means we don t have an open web.

That's possible in HTML5 using the MSE, no problem at all.

Rdio had a good HTML5-based player before they bit the dust.

Magnatune?

Bandcamp

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