Facebook announced that its videos will now use HTML5 by default as Flash continues its slow demise.

The company’s chief security officer made headlines a while back when he called for the death of Flash, and even since then, Adobe dropped Flash from Flash Professional CC.

Facebook’s Daniel Baulig says, “We recently switched to HTML5 from a Flash-based video player for all Facebook web video surfaces, including videos in News Feed, on Pages, and in the Facebook embedded video player. We are continuing to work together with Adobe to deliver a reliable and secure Flash experience for games on our platform, but have shipped the change for video to all browsers by default.”

“From development velocity to accessibility features, HTML5 offers a lot of benefits,” he adds. “Moving to HTML5 best enables us to continue to innovate quickly and at scale, given Facebook’s large size and complex needs.”

The company points to development velocity, testability and accessibility as the main benefits to HTML5.

It also says that as a result of the switch, videos play faster on Facebook, and people like, comment on, and share more videos now.

Read this post for some discussion about challenges Facebook had to overcome to make the switch.

Image via Facebook