Daily Archives: May 5, 2015

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YouTube no longer uses Flash by default

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If you’ve been trying to live without Flash, because of its never-ending security vulnerabilities, take heart. YouTube now shows videos using HTML5 instead of Flash by default. YouTube will still use Flash in browsers that don’t support HTML5, but all the major browsers do now support it.

Flash use is still pervasive on the web. But this change by YouTube – arguably the biggest user of Flash up to now – is going to reduce Flash usage enormously.

Note that while YouTube started experimenting with this change some time ago, it’s only recently shown up in Firefox, with version 37.

If YouTube was the only place you were using Flash, you should be able to completely disable Flash in your browser now.

Google, Internet

Google pushing for mobile-friendly web sites

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Google wants the web to be easier to view on mobile devices. To encourage web site owners to make their sites mobile-friendly, Google is now ranking mobile-unfriendly sites lower on mobile searches.

In other words, if you run a web site that fails to meet Google’s mobile-friendly requirements, that site will now appear lower down in Google’s search results, when the search is performed on a mobile device.

There’s no reason to panic, however. Mobile-friendliness is only one of numerous factors that determine where a site ranks in Google search results.