Enable HTML5 Player In YouTube

YouTube is adopting the latest HTML5 technology and is giving up on the old-school flash for wider support over modern gadgets, desktops, laptops and tablets. YouTube is currently doing a trial of the HTML5 video player and you can opt-in for it while it's in the trial. Once you're in, and you access YouTube from a supported browser (video tag in HTML5 and H.264 video codec or WebM with VP8 codec). Here's a quick 'how to' enable the HTML5 video player in YouTube -

1. Head Over to #-Link-Snipped-# with any of the following mentioned browser that are supported -

• Firefox 4 (WebM, #-Link-Snipped-#)
• Google Chrome (WebM)
• Opera 10.6+ (WebM, #-Link-Snipped-#)
• Apple Safari (h.264, version 4+)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (h.264, #-Link-Snipped-#, #-Link-Snipped-#)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8 with Google Chrome Frame installed (#-Link-Snipped-#)

2. Hit the ' Join the html5 trial' link at the bottom of the page. The page will detect the whether your browser supports the video formats and will then show you a message that you are in the trial.

I've observed that while in the new mode, videos stream a lot faster and present you with the option of speeding up or slowing down the videos. Quite cool, it is.