Flare is a free, barebones, open source HTML5 video player built by Alex MacCaw.
- Usability: Flare attempts to mimic the QuickTime player offering a simple rounded player control that features a volume slider, timeline and an option to expand to fullscreen. We found some elements of the player control to be a little sluggish, especially the volume slider on default theme. We think this is because, despite being easy to theme, Flare comes with 400kb of images out of the box.
- Size: Flare is pretty hefty, weighing in at over 400kb, it’s not library independent either and it requires jQuery to run.
- Features: Flare is a basic video player offering only core features you’d come to expect from most video players on the internet. It boasts easy flash fallback, simple theming, and full screen support.
- Price:Flare is completely free and open source.
- Compatibility: Thought Flare lacks support for WebM, it worked well enough everywhere we tested it including iOS4. Flare officially supports Firefox, Safari and IE 7, although we found it works in Chrome and most other webkit browsers just as well.
The Flare HTML5 video player is a pretty basic solution and can only fill the most rudimentary demands. That being said, it offers easy skinning, it’s free and has a few pre built themes available. We also appreciate its status as one of the few HTML5 video players that is fully open source, with no frills attached.
This is the fourth player we’ve reviewed in our series: Battle of the HTML5 Players.
Tags: html5