It is happening folks, the death of Flash is at hand and HTML5 is slowly on the rise. According to the latest reports, Twitch is finally moving to ditch Flash for HTML5, and while it is a slow process, it will happen soon enough.

At the moment, the game streaming website has changed the video controls from Flash to HTML5. That's far from an HTML5-based video player, but it is only a matter of time before it Twitch brings it out of the grapevine. At the moment, Flash is still more mature than HTML5, which is one of the main reason why most websites have yet to make the switch.

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"We do EVERYTHING in Flash right now," the staff member said. "So we have to port every feature one-by-one into HTML/JS [JavaScript] before we can release the player."

Interestingly enough, Twitch claims that it is unable to get rid of Flash ultimately due to the fact that older browsers have no means of playing HTML5 content. Furthermore, Firefox does not support MediaSource Extensions, which is a tool for JavaScript-based video streaming.

So what's going to happen? We believe in the future, Twitch will have two players. One that is HTML5, and the original Flash-based player. We doubt this will go on forever as eventually the majority of folks still using older browsers will upgrade, and Firefox may one day support MediaSource Extensions in full.

We say in full because Firefox does support MediaSource Extensions, but only in limited quantities for the purpose of playing media on YouTube, Netflix, and others.

Why is moving from Flash a good thing?

Well, the platform is a memory hog and does not play well with mobile devices. Additionally, Flash has always been a security risk, which is one of the reasons why the web is pushing for its quick and timely death.

We understand that after Twitch is finished with the HTML5 controls, the company will then focus on the video aspect, and eventually will release the player in Alpha before making it available as the default.

TagsTwitch, HTML5