Video players are something that you see a lot on the web but previously, most of these have been flash based, whatever the design might have been. In fact, websites like YouTube still use a flash video player and so do things like 4OD. Flash is getting phased out however with the addition of devices like the iPad to the market so HTML5 players are becoming the new standard. Luckily, there are a number of great open source video players out there that have been coded in HTMl5, here are some of the best:
- FlareVideo: This is a HTML5 video player that is completely free for you to use as it is open source completely. The video player looks great as a standard design but the great thing about it is that you are free to customise it using CSS/HTML and JavaScript. This means that with a little bit of knowledge, you can actually have a video player that will look very customised to your website free of charge.
- Projekktor: This is a JavaScript wrapper basically for HTML5 video and audio. There are a lot of great advantages to having this video player including the fact that it solves a lot of cross browser compatibility issues that have been occurring with HTML5 video players and that it looks great too. There are also a number of great non-standard features included.
- VideoJS: This is basically a JavaScript video player that uses the HTML5 functionary that is built into a lot of the latest browsers out there. As we know, one of the best things about using a HTML5 video player is the consistent look that you will achieve in almost every browser and this is something that this plug-in really pulls off. It looks great tool and will add a professional look to any website.
There are a lot of other HTML5 options out there and we are sure that eventually, YouTube, Vimeo and many other well known video hosting sources that are free will start using HTML5 players.
