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Next Flash Version Will Support Private Browsing

Posted by kdawson on from the en-oh-wye-bee dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The world rolled its eyes when the problem of Flash cookies came to light several months ago. Even if you're careful about cookies or even if you use your browser's private surfing feature, sites can still track you through cookies stored by Flash. However, soon enough the next version of Flash, 10.1, will support private browsing and will integrate with browsers to turn it on when the browser itself is in private browsing mode. Browsers still store data during a private browser session, but they will delete it all at the end of the session. The same will be true of Flash private browsing."

2 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Firefox extensions by pydev · · Score: 5, Informative

    Get FlashBlock or NoScript to turn off flash altogether.

    Get BetterPrivacy to automatically delete Flash cookies on exit; it seems to work well.

  2. Re:HTML5 is not an adequate response by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does HTML5 provides for the same level of rich client platform development as Flash/Flex? With numerous widgets just like in Motif/MFC, just easier to use? (MXML just shines in GUI development, far beyond of what Motif/MFC/AWT/Swing offer).

    Sure. HTML combined with CSS and Javascript / AJAX will do 80-90% of what Flash is used for.

    Does HTML5 allows you to play video with some advertisement in a running text over it?

    Sure. Just use a CSS layer.

    Does HTML5 protects your video site from hotlinking? I.E. can you make sure that nobody can embed your videos into their pages and make sales while you pay for the bandwidth?

    This is a HTTP issue and server side security issue. It is trivial to grep a Flash file for the raw SWF download location most times.

    Sorry, HTML5 'video', 'audio' tags and other dings and wistles... you have your place (probably on YouTube), but you ain't gonna replace Flash anytime soon. Especially not on commercial sites (like pr0n tubes), not for RCP development either. World needs a full-blown rich client platform for the browsers and so far Adobe has been the only one who were able to provide a cross-platform, browser-independent solution. And they did it quite well, despite of some quirks. Sun with JavaFX has failed... would you like MS to take over with their Windows-only Silverlight technology?

    Hardcore Flash games I can see and some super heavy duty flash "applications", but so often this can be done in HTML with CSS / AJAX. The designers are normally just clueless and have no wish to learn code or how stuff works after taking their 1-week Adobe course and getting accreditation as a "web developer".