Facebook Videos Now Compatible with iPhone and iPad, via HTML5

The iPhone and iPod are incredible devices for veiwing the web, but when you come accross a flash video, all you see is a little blue lego peice. It has been long rumoured that Flash would eventually come to these devices, but with Adobe dropping the project recently, there is no hope of that now. We talked about HTML5 a while back, and how it was coming to many websites, via a company called Brightcove.

Facebook held a conference a few days ago, outlining some big changes coming to the site. One of those changes is to introduce HTML5 for all their videos, and it is now live. It hasn’t made it’s way to all videos, yet, as there so many videos on Facebook.

I did some tests on my iPad this morning. The first video I tried didn’t work. I just got a message saying the video could not be played on my device.

I tried a few more, and I eventually found one that works. This video was one I uploaded from my iPhone, so the resolution is poor.

This is a big step towards moving away from Flash on the web. With Apple shunning Adobe recently, we’ll see a lot more content providers moving towards HTML5. With HTML5 being compatible with everything, content providers will most likely find it it easier to offer content in just the one format.

Hey, I’m compatible with iPhone, so follow me on Twitter: @rorypiper