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I don't have Google's shovelware installed on my computer, but going to https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ in IE yields an offer to install both Chrome (and make it my default browser) as well as Google Toolbar. Going to that same URL in Pale Moon or Firefox I get the McAfee offer.

People who developed content for a proprietary platform are subject to the whims of the platform owner. In this case, the whims of Adobe primarily involve failing to patch security holes and allowing widespread use of their platform for user-hostile purposes. They could have invested in security, and policed Flash usage. They chose not to, and now Adobe (and their users) are paying the price.

Sadly, Flash is not going away. As I understand TFA, the new version of Chrome will still work just fine with Flash content. It will just ask the user before playing it. If someone wants to see your Flash application, they still can. However, unwanted Flash (primarily in ads) will finally be dead.

Do note: Even if Flash finally dies, Flash applications will remain perfectly usable: Put a copy of Flash on a VM, get copies of anything you care about off the web, and you can run it forever.

Just tested Gimp 2.9.5 on my .PSD file. Gimp still has broken PSD support for Layer Effects.

Reference of Layer Effect Styles:
* https://helpx.adobe.com/photos...

The most aggravating thing for me at the moment is the layer masking capability - GIMP can do it AFAIK but it can't import the masking in from a PSD file. Which is not altogether surprising given that PSD is proprietary and effectively undocumented.

*cough*

I guess either Firefox/Linux is not vulnerable or it is 'open season' and always will be. The latest version for me is 11.2.202.626, see:

http://www.adobe.com/software/... -- You probably have to activate flash for that page

I rarely use flash anyway, so time finally give it the ole heave/ho.

[quote] The bug exists in Adobe Flash Player 21.0.0.242 and earlier versions -- running on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS...[/quote]

According to Adobe the current version of Flash is only 21.0.0.192.
I'd like to hear where this later version is that is already considered obsolete, and where the patched update is.

Just download the free Adobe DNG converter

The Chrome PDF viewer is C++. But PDF viewers in browsers work best with web optimized PDFs.

You've not heard of the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Camera API. Adobe can't let HTML5 do things that Adobe Digital Publishing can't do. It seems to me that HTML5 makes all of the Adobe stuff obsolete, especially since the canvas can render SVG. You can do a machine translation of PDF to HTML5. But Adobe doesn't want you to know that.

Except it's not, and no announcement has been made. In fact, Adobe release a PR for the next version of the Flash Player two days ago.... http://labs.adobe.com/technolo...

Xforms would be better as it is non proprietary

Are you serious? Xforms has been a standard since 2003, and almost no software supports it, and no organization uses it. This is a pretty clear sign that it is dead, and not worth supporting. XFA is at least supported by one software package that is widely used in business, and used by Government agencies worldwide, among others. And while it is "proprietary" in that one company controls the specification, it is hardly a secret.

I was curious about the Adobe Animate comment, so I looked it up. First of all, the provided link says no such thing. Second:
  http://blogs.adobe.com/animate...

...Flash Professional will be renamed Adobe Animate CC, starting with the next release in early 2016.

Animate CC will continue supporting Flash (SWF) and AIR formats as first-class citizens. In addition, it can output animations to virtually any format (including SVG), through its extensible architecture.

So it's the same exact thing as Flash Professional. It's just a rename, and they updated their software to also support HTML Canvas and WebGL and such as alternative output formats.

Have you actually read the PDF spec? All of the interactive forms stuff is documented (see chapter 8), as are the multimedia parts (see chapter 9).

Except that the "open" PDF standard you're talking about is only a small subset of the oldest, most primitive image/text drawing features of said file format

That's not even remotely true. Read the PDF 1.7 specification (chapter 8, specifically) and you'll see all of that stuff documented. JavaScript has been part of the spec since PDF 1.3. The fact that some viewers don't implement features that have been part of the spec for over 10 years is not the fault of the spec.

You might be thinking of the PDF/A family of standards. These are ISO standards for long-term document archiving and specify an intentionally restricted subset of PDF features to ensure that it will always be easy to implement readers for them.

Case in point: Adobe Flash update manager.

Don't forget the latest fuckery. https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html is going away. No more installers to update it, just a universe of shitty little stub executables whose only purpose is to download the real installer, forever. Fuck Adobe and fuck Flash.

Don't forget about the widely-used Adobe tool suite, Adobe Creative Cloud.

It wouldn't surprise me if MS Windows & MS Office moved in that direction in the next decade.

I'm quite sure MS will move in that direction - Office 365 is that already. Once they reach a critical mass with it they will just declare that localy-installed Office won't be available as one-time buy anymore.

It's easy to see why commercial software providers would want to push users toward the cloud

There's no guarantee that locally-installed software will remain subscription-free.
Don't forget about the widely-used Adobe tool suite, Adobe Creative Cloud.

It wouldn't surprise me if MS Windows & MS Office moved in that direction in the next decade.

Nope, the opposite: Adobe is killing off those products and renaming Flash Professional.
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativ...

From http://blogs.adobe.com/creativ...
"In order to focus our efforts and resources on implementing this feedback, Edge Reflow (preview), Edge Inspect and Edge Animate are no longer being actively developed"

I thought it was about the other ColdFusion. :P

So you're saying that my Roku is running Flash?

No, the Roku is using the Adobe Primetime Player SDK, which is capable of content playback as well. It will do HLS streaming playback, but not FLV.

You can read Adobe's take on it here:

https://www.overdigital.com/20...

The SDK can be read about here:

http://www.adobe.com/solutions...

You must license it, and it generally only comes in binary form for runtime linking. This allows you to ship a GPL'ed product, but Adobe then does not have to GPL the library for the player SDK.

Again, it's only for HLS content. Earlier versions of the Android player, as indicated in the first link above, would do bot HLS and FLV, since they used the Clank (Chrome on Android) Flash implementation, and FlashAccess built-in plugin from Chrome builds, which were later redacted when Flash support was removed.

Adobe is a teensy bit angry over people stopping "unimportant content in occluded tabs" in Chrome, and now Safari.

Uses more resources? Yep, both CPU cycles and memory, just compare Flash/VP8 to HTML V5 H.264 of the same quality and you'll find its a pig.

Well just use VP8 for HTML5 video then since you claim it's better on the CPU.

when it comes to animation and gaming HTML V5 isn't anywhere as good as Flash

Adobe Edge Animate is good for HTML5 animation. I'm not sure what you mean for gaming. Are you saying that Flash delivers something far superior to HTML5 games like HexGL or AngryBots or DeadTrigger 2? Seems unlikely.

Do we really want Google or Mozilla, or any other browser determining what content we can see or not see in a browser? I understand the security problems with Flash and I am not a fan of Flash, but everybody gets upset if an ISP blocks content, so why is it okay for a browser to do so? What next, will they block? This seems like an awfully big slippery slope and people are just accepting it.

Not really the same situation, I think a browser is perfectly entitled to say what third party plug-in/add-on/extension APIs it will allow, how they'll run and so on. Just like Firefox just decided to change their extension API, now whether it's a good idea is a different story but they're certainly entitled to do so. Would you be opposed to IE dropping support for ActiveX plug-ins too? I'm here assuming that there's some technical difference in flash between ads and video players, not that Google is actually sitting there saying that's an ad and that is not.

But you're saying that because you don't like Flash or Ads. Also, there is a difference in dropping or retiring something, like Active-X, and modifying the functionality of a plug-in that is used to display content created by a third party application. For example, most people would be upset if Google decided to display all JPGs (i.e. the photo of your dog) with the google logo on top of them. This isn't that much different.

That being said, as long as Adobe can offer a plugin with full functionality and it can be added to Chrome then I'm okay with this. As far as I know, the default flash plugin for Google is called Pepper and is probably written and supported by Google, which is why they can do this. According to the site below, you can enable the Adobe plugin which would presumably bypass any default flash behavior changes that Google makes to Chrome.

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-...

Also, there are other browsers that people can use...

none of the Flash replacements I've seen so far actually do the things that Flash originally did, which was vector graphics.

I'd say Adobe Edge Animate does that.

Those where the days when the web was just getting exciting and java applets and gif were exiting. Man did I spend a LOT of time on Macromedia Flash 4 making animations. Still have them on floppies tucked away,not sure if they still work.

http://www.thevoid.co.uk/
http://www.nrg.be/archived/
http://janit.iki.fi/shit/megac...

https://www.adobe.com/showcase...

Even 240p is much bigger than Flash for a lot of videos that I've encountered.

I don't think that's a valid concern given that YouTube is the third most visited site on the web. But, if you are concerned, you can always use one of the many HTML5 animation tools that are available.

Their is a published EOL data for Flash... unfortunately it's just for Firefox (and other NPAPI browsers) on Linux.

It's approximately February 2017. "Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release."
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/f...

The first step (IMO) to ending Flash is to get it click-to-play. Firefox isn't willing to do this, yet [1].. AFAICT the holdup is Adobe with EME.. *sigh*.

[1] https://groups.google.com/foru...

It hasn't been this way for a very long time, if ever. There has been a few bugs related to this 'protection' over the years, though. Browsers only allow reading content copied from the current page, only through the oncopy/onpaste/oncut events. That is, when you copy something on a page, the site can know that you did, and what you copied from it. (It can always write in it though).

Same with Flash (see http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer10_security_changes.html#head61 ... they say in Flash 9, in 2007, content couldn't even be read, ever, from the clipboard, and in Flash 10, in 2008, it now could be read, but only when content was copied from an animation, and only for that specific content).

And even these events can be disabled (e.g., "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled = false" in Firefox). I think I remember disabling them in IE6 too, after each reinstallation, way back in the days.

That being said, it's probably good still to avoid leaving a password in the clipboard after use... I generally copy some random text afterward...

Picasa was free (and decent) there were better ones though ---- or at least software that had actual options --- All of them died and are gone, except for a couple majors.

Free:
http://www.irfanview.com/
http://windows.microsoft.com/e...
http://www.faststone.org/FSVie...

Paid; less than $70:
http://www.acdsee.com/en/produ...
http://www.aftershotpro.com/en...
https://creative.adobe.com/pro... (admittedly subscription)
http://www.arcsoft.com/photost...
https://www.ashampoo.com/en/us...

There is no shortage of local photo management and editing applications available for Windows.

Or Email clients

I won't spend a huge amount of time posting more links; this page is pretty comprehensive:
http://alternativeto.net/softw...

I'm assuming that you're trying to avoid MS Outlook for whatever reason, and "Thunderbird" by some miracle never crossed your desk. Windows Live Mail isn't bad at all (it's still even a usenet reader!) Opera Mail, Zimbra Mail, and eM client are all excellent and free.

There is no shortage of either form of software. Alternativeto.net and Softpedia are great resources for this kind of thing.

,,,is there an equivalent development program for HTML5? Like, would I really have to code absolutely everything including the x,y positions of literally every shape to grace the screen, or is there something with a drag/drop transform interface to modify shapes directly on the canvas?

I think the program you're looking for is called "Adobe Flash Pro CC": http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2...

What would you suggest to convert existing SWF vector animations to HTML5 format or to create new vector animations in HTML5 format?

I'd use Flash Professional. Converting an existing Flash project is pretty easy. I imagine WebAssembly might offer further opportunities to build a Flash interpreter over what Shumway offers so far. Adobe themselves might compile Flash player to WebAssembly.

What would you suggest to convert existing SWF vector animations to HTML5 format or to create new vector animations in HTML5 format?

I'd use Flash Professional. Converting an existing Flash project is pretty easy. I imagine WebAssembly might offer further opportunities to build a Flash interpreter over what Shumway offers so far. Adobe themselves might compile Flash player to WebAssembly.

https://helpx.adobe.com/securi...

And Abobe insists on the use of their shitty buggy updater that stops at 25% every time for installation - and they stopped posting the ftp link for the new one - I can't even get to their repository via ftp anymore.

Adobe provides real full installers, no bullshit stubs: https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

They just hide them very well. Fuck Adobe and fuck Flash.

I found the patch tool here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/915/c...

Oh, and Adobe is actively testing streaming Photoshop to a client via a web browser, specifically for devices like the Chromebook, so that argument holds less water as time goes on, too.

http://helpx.adobe.com/creativ...

New features added to the desktop applications after CS6 may not be supported in the exported file, or by the CS6 application.

And when you go to Update it. It takes you to a web page. If you're not paying attention, it will try to install other stuff like the useless Mcaffee. The Adobe web page downloads a shim installer - not the real thing. The shim installer downloads the real thing and then installs that... Do Adobe programmers smoke crack or something?

For future reference, https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html is the real download page for Adobe Flash.

I, too, always hated shim installers. What the fuck. Download an executable in order to download another executable that is actually the real installer? Fucking WHY? Adobe isn't the only company to do this. What the fuck ever posessed anyone to think this was a good idea?

Run this command from the named Administrator account:
@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin

Add this to the machine startup script or acceptable alternative of your choosing.
choco install flashplayeractivex
choco install flashplayerplugin

Flash is now less retarded.

Also, the site for direct download of Flash installers is: http://www.adobe.com/products/...
And the sad thing is I typed that shit out from memory because it is etched in my brain at this point.

What does that mean for the future of Adobe?

It means they will re-work their authoring tools, which is what they actually make money on, to produce content that "plays" on HTML5/JavaScript.

http://www.adobe.com/products/...

Flash is useless on my 192dpi laptop. Everything is so tiny or sometimes only fills up the top left 25% of the box. Adobe doesn't ever seem to care -- https://bugbase.adobe.com/inde...

: icons, logos, background images, that kind of thing However, there are several applications available right now on OS X that are not only much cheaper than Creative Cloud but also get much more positive comments from professionals who are doing that kind of work.

I agree with you. Those applications are pleasant. By professionals I meant graphics professionals not non-graphics professionals that do some graphics work.

Basically, we've all been trying to force Adobe's 800lb gorillas to do the job for years, but the reality is that we were just waiting for someone to come along with a tool aimed at exactly what we need to do, with a feature set and user interface tailor made for that kind of work. Now several different businesses have, and if the people in the industry I know are at all representative, those newcomers are already attracting a significant share of the professional market. Not only are they cheaper by far than Photoshop, they are also significantly better in that particular niche.

Agreed. That's the norm for most products they keep moving up market and dropping the lower end of their user base as they evolve. Oracle was once the low end solution for people who couldn't afford a mainframe or mini.

It's not LibreOffice that Microsoft should fear, it's tools like Scrivener stealing all the professional authors

Well there is 2 things:

a) niche apps
b) disruption from below

Scrivener is pretty cool. Possibly a better fit for authors. Authors are a tiny niche. Microsoft has always had to contend with niche apps for niche players. That's not a real threat. Scrivener being the application of choice for reports though because of integrated research with school kids would be a much bigger threat. That isn't niche.

some modern replacement for TeX stealing all the technical people,

Well that's existed for about 2 decades now and speaking of Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/products/...

. If you're writing the foundation that all of these other applications are going to run on, then stability and longevity are vital attributes.

Possibly. I'd say backwards compatibility is vital for a large application stack. But that's easy enough to achieve via. virtualization and containerization. Microsoft has already hired Docker Inc to create a containerization scheme for Windows. So it wouldn't shock me if in 2 years or so you can have applications running in multiple Microsoft OSes even if they don't port from version to version while the underlying OS changes rapidly.

The other possibility is Microsoft moves back to a policy where application stacks need to be updated. Very much like what exists on OSX. Everyone is expected to be upgrading their applications regularly. It is part of the cost of the platform.

PDF was open enough from the beginning to have its specification available in print from the days of Acrobat 1.0: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pd...

Here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pd...

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/con... --- for some reason they don't have the first edition available (not that it's all that useful these days).

PDF was open enough from the beginning to have its specification available in print from the days of Acrobat 1.0: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pd...

Here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pd...

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/con... --- for some reason they don't have the first edition available (not that it's all that useful these days).

PDF was open enough from the beginning to have its specification available in print from the days of Acrobat 1.0: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pd...

Here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pd...

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/con... --- for some reason they don't have the first edition available (not that it's all that useful these days).

PDF isn't a locked down format:

http://www.adobe.com/content/d...

There are extensions and other software that can encrypted and DRM pdf but I assume Linux Voice isn't going to use those.

Or it could be that their competition is the most used advertising/search engine in the entire world, Google.

Every time you go to Google it suggests that you should switch to chrome. Maybe that eventually gets to people and they click willingly. Maybe one day they accidentally click somewhere on the page and get it. Maybe they download adobe acrobat or flash and get it installed by drive-by. Maybe a malware site does the drive-by.

A DIVX codec pack causes IE to use Chrome inside IE
Avast antivirus installs chrome if you miss the tiny checkbox Adobe installs chrome with if you miss the checkbox while installing flash player or reader. Maybe you just wanted to install Google Earth and play with maps. Boom. You've now got chrome If you install any well known popular application, chances are it bundles a chrome install.

Hey that's a great idea! what if we just make everyone run chrome if they decide to click yes to a popup box IChrome evangelists are taking a cue from malware writers.

It should be noted that Google is now ceasing this drive-by install method of chrome

Clearly, Firefox needs to invent a superior search engine to regain market share, then push people people to install Firefox. Or just convince everyone of their devoted followers to script "install firefox" into applications and web pages where it is completely unnecessary. That's how Google got their market-share.

Here is one solution: use a sharpie and permanently black out the confidential information. I guess the government forgot how to use sharpies to black out people's names and addresses. Lord knows Adobe Acrobat doesn't have any features to help with this. Oh wait ... http://www.adobe.com/products/...

Yeah, the 99% are PC market share:

http://www.adobe.com/mena_en/p...