I'm happy to announce that Video.js 7 is now out! It brings to Video.js support for HLS and experimental DASH support via the Video.js HTTP Streaming (VHS) project. Video.js 7 also drops support for some older Internet Explorer browsers only keeping support for IE11.

While it's out, it's still in pre-release for a short while and only available under the next tag on npm. Some time next week, we'll flip the switch and make it latest.

changes for removing IE8 code

This release is pretty exciting because it means we were able to remove a bunch of code for old browsers and we can now start using newer web platform features that we had previously been avoiding like the :not() css selector. It'll also free us to look forward at new features and not be held back by needing to support old browsers like IE8.

Getting Video.js 7

You can get it from npm via

npm install video.js@next

or

npm install video.js@7.0.0

From GitHub Releases,

Or from our or another CDN

https://vjs.zencdn.net/7.0.0/video.min.js
https://vjs.zencdn.net/7.0.0/video-js.css

https://unpkg.com/video.js@7.0.0/dist/video.min.js
https://unpkg.com/video.js@7.0.0/dist/video-js.css

https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/video.js/7.0.0/video.min.js
https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/video.js/7.0.0/video-js.css

VHS and Video.js

Video.js will be bundling VHS by default for ease of use for new users. However, some people don't want VHS or are using another plugin. For this, we have a separate build of Video.js which doesn't include VHS.

You can get it from our CDN or another CDN

https://vjs.zencdn.net/7.0.0/alt/video.core.min.js

https://unpkg.com/video.js@7.0.0/dist/alt/video.core.min.js

https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/video.js/7.0.0/alt/video.core.min.js

Finally, expect a more detailed post about VHS in the weeks to come.

What the future holds

Video.js hasn't really had a roadmap for a long time. With this release, we think it's time to take a step back and create a roadmap.

The roadmap will take into account currently open issues and internal and external feature requests. In addition, we're going to look at currently available features and see if it's worth refactoring them with the more modern web in-mind.

Later down the line, we'd also want to make a roadmap for a Video.js 8. Given that this release only adds VHS and removes old browsers, there're plenty of already deprecated features that it's time to remove.

Updates from the Video.js 7 roadmap

Video.js 5.x

As of this release, Video.js 5.x is now officially deprecated. This means that we will no longer work on it or back-port fixes to it but it's still available for usage if you're still using it. We do urge you to update to the latest 5.x, or better yet, upgrade to 6.x or 7.

Build Tools

In the roadmap post, we talked about potentially switching to webpack from Rollup for better support of importing VHS into Video.js. However, while doing this work, we found out that the filesize of Video.js will increase by about 20%, which isn't a trivial amount, not to mention that the filesize is already going to increase from the default inclusion of VHS.

Eventually, after much work, we were able to figure out how to bundle VHS using Rollup as well and we are continuing to use Rollup for our builds.

Google Analytics

Video.js 7's CDN builds will no longer send any data to Google Analytics via our stripped down pixel tracking.

Video.js 6 and below CDN builds will continue sending data, unless you opt out with window.HELP_IMPROVE_VIDEOJS = false, but versions 6.8 and above will honor the Do Not Track option that users can set in their headers before sending the data.

We are continuing to investigate our options for collecting our CDN logs in an open manner and will post updates when we have any.