ClickToFlash Brings H.264, QuickTime X to YouTube
You know you’ve thought about it… wouldn’t it be great if YouTube just ran with QuickTime and H.264, instead of Flash. If you’re a Mac owner, that’s almost assuredly a yes.
Adobe Flash runs poorly on Mac, even Adobe has admitted the performance gap between platforms can’t be ignored. Ergo, YouTube runs poorly on a Mac. A $1,500 Mac can be hung up on YouTube, while a $250 netbook running Windows runs circles around it.
ClickToFlash accomplishes two things. First, it takes Safari and makes Flash an option experience. You simply have to click on areas (nicely marked areas) that contain Flash content, to load them. The Flash then loads on the page without reloading any content. More importantly, however, it auto-detects when YouTube videos are available in H.264, and bypasses Flash altogether; loading them in QuickTime instead.
For an added bonus, ClickToFlash gives you one-click download links, which will automatically download the H.264 version to your hard drive, allowing you to store the video in a portable format.
ClickToFlash’s developers say they hope to expand this support to other video-sharing web sites that simulcast in H.264 for embedded devices. Their goal is to make Flash obsolete on video-sharing sites, even before the video-sharing sites themselves move away from Flash.
