Game-streaming service Twitch this week took another step toward a full HTML5 player.
A newly redesigned site moves half of the video player—specifically the controls—from Flash to HTML5 and Javascript.
Video still plays underneath in Flash. But, as Product Marketing Manager Georgia Price wrote in a blog post, "this is an important step to releasing the much-anticipated full HTML5 player."
Users will notice the new player on channel pages first, as Twitch gradually rolls it out.
This move is not news to many Twitch fans, who have no doubt been keeping tabs on Reddit, where a Twitch employee provides occasional reports on HTML5 progress. In February, engineer "kixelated" announced a Flash Player update, and tipped the future implementation of the latest HTML standard.
"I've … been making steady progress on a prototype HTML5 video player but it's still off in the distance," he wrote five months ago. "Browser support is still pending, so we can't get rid of the Flash player even if we wanted."
A month later, kixelated said the HTML5 player prototype was fully functional, though still not ready for primetime.
He then posted about two weeks ago, hinting at an impending two-part release. The first, which is rolling out now, moves the user interface into HTML/Javascript. The video transition will come at a later, unannounced date.
"The underlying HTML5 video playback works great," kixelated boasted.
But since Twitch operates mostly in Flash, the team has to port each feature, one by one, into HTML/Javascript. Once complete, the engineers can turn their focus to the HTML5 video element, which will release first in alpha.
"I don't have any dates for it but I personally want to release something ASAP (even with the current bugs)," kixelated wrote, adding that the unoptimized version uses about a third of the CPU and only a fraction of the memory that Twitch's current Flash player requires.
Don't expect the complete removal of Flash any time soon: Browser support for Media Source Extensions is still missing for Firefox and older Safari and Internet Explorer browsers.
In January, YouTube dumped Flash to use HTML5 by default in Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8, and beta versions of Firefox.