Adobe Flash Player up to date. Why can I not see you tube videos with Firefox?
I have had this problem for a week now. I can hear the videos but not see the images. I went into plug ins and updated Adobe Flash Player but it hasn't helped. Restarted etc. Going back into the plug in page it is still saying Adobe reader needs to be updated on my windows xp, Adobe said it is updated. Could this be related to why I cant watch the videos?
Chosen solution
Starting with Firefox 40, YouTube is serving many Windows XP users a different player, its HTML5 player. To confirm which player is being used in the page, you can right-click the video and check the last line of the short menu (context menu) that comes up. (If Firefox's menu is blocking, press and release the Alt key to see the player menu.)
Assuming you get the black menu which has HTML5 in the last line, that's your problem. So... what to do about it. Here are two possible workarounds:
(1) Use an add-on to force YouTube to serve you the Flash player
There are at least two extensions for this, you only need one:
- https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-video-player/
- https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-player/
(2) Use an add-on to tell YouTube you're still running Firefox 39
(A) Install the extension https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ua-site-switch/ which admittedly has a confusing interface.
(B) Select and copy the old user agent identification for Firefox 39:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
(C) While on a youtube.com page, click the little drop-down triangle for ua-site-switch and paste the old user agent string and then press Enter to save it
(D) Then reload YouTube bypassing cached files (Ctrl+Shift+r)
(E) Repeat B & C on https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/ to apply the hack to embedded videos
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Chosen Solution
Starting with Firefox 40, YouTube is serving many Windows XP users a different player, its HTML5 player. To confirm which player is being used in the page, you can right-click the video and check the last line of the short menu (context menu) that comes up. (If Firefox's menu is blocking, press and release the Alt key to see the player menu.)
Assuming you get the black menu which has HTML5 in the last line, that's your problem. So... what to do about it. Here are two possible workarounds:
(1) Use an add-on to force YouTube to serve you the Flash player
There are at least two extensions for this, you only need one:
- https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-video-player/
- https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-player/
(2) Use an add-on to tell YouTube you're still running Firefox 39
(A) Install the extension https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ua-site-switch/ which admittedly has a confusing interface.
(B) Select and copy the old user agent identification for Firefox 39:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
(C) While on a youtube.com page, click the little drop-down triangle for ua-site-switch and paste the old user agent string and then press Enter to save it
(D) Then reload YouTube bypassing cached files (Ctrl+Shift+r)
(E) Repeat B & C on https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/ to apply the hack to embedded videos
Oh, regarding Adobe Reader, there is an update available from inside the Reader application. You can use Help > Check for updates to get from 11.0.10 to 11.0.12. Now, Mozilla's plugin checker site might still consider that outdated because Adobe has a whole new Reader product, but I suggest trusting Adobe on this one.
Thank you for the quick reply and information. Very helpful. I used the extension link above because it was on HTML5 player. I would never have gotten it sorted this quick on my own. It is working now after using the link and refreshing. If I have any problems with Adobe reader I will go on the application. Thanks again.