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Adobe Flash Now Officially a Part of Google Chrome
MacGene noted that Google has announced plans to include Flash with Chrome. This step will make Chrome easier for Mom & Pop to use, but comes with a host of issues that have been discussed here before. I expect them to announce Silverlight Thursday.
I like it and they should do it
The inclusion of Flash doesn't generate any issues that every other browser doesn't have. Since 99% of people end up installing Flash, it's probably just as well to include it. Those people who don't want it are all computer savvy enough to turn it off; for the rest, it's a service to have it included.
Now, with a bit of luck, Chrome won't become unresponsive when it stumbles across flash applets.
I love Chrome, but its poor flash handling (and stalling when downloading) drives me bonkers.
Is there a way to remove the pre-installed version of Flash from Chrome?
crazy dynamite monkey
lol Exactly what we wanted.
More flash...
Bring back Java Applets while you are at it.
Do you really expect them to announce including Silverlight too? Why?
Who cares about silverlight? I don't install it on any browser I use, and so shouldn't anyone else.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Hey, not that it has anything to do with anything, but Rob is ripping the one-liners attached to article summaries today.
This article:
I expect them to announce Silverlight Thursday.
The Novell/SCO article:
No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this.
The NASA/Toyota article:
We're really in trouble when NASA has no choice but to call Bruce Willis.
The slow-people-down-with-obstacles-article:
All of that is gonna work a lot better than my strategy of placing car-sized holes covered with twigs and branches randomly every half mile or so down the interstates.
Is CmdrTaco giddy with anticipation of some giant prank for Thursday? If he on the gigglejuice? Is he just happy spring is here?
Who knows... but it's nice to see some light-hearted editorialization for a change.
And, now, rightfully so, please mod this post into oblivion.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Users will automatically receive updates related to Flash Player using Google Chrome’s auto-update mechanism. This eliminates the need to manually download separate updates and reduces the security risk of using outdated versions.
How about a prompt? Anything that employs automatic updates makes me uneasy.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"Same thing we every night, Flashy. Try and take over the world!"
---
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Flashy?"
"I think so. But how do you sneak tracking cookies past Porn Mode on Firefox?"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
and the bloat begins...
i did not install it on purpose, guess thats more annoying ads for me
So here's the story; Google releases a new Chromium build that does three things:
1) A copy of the Flash plugin gets installed when Chrome/Chromium is installed, regardless of whether you already have it.
2) Chrome/Chromium now runs its copy of the Flash plugin in a sandbox, so that malicious Flash content can't access your computer.
3) Chrome/Chromium will now auto-scan for updates to the Flash plugin and install them in an automated fashion upon launch.
So basically, the real story is that this is a security update for Chromium, mitigating many of the vulnerabilities with the current setup of having the Flash runtime be run with user privileges from a central location for all browsers, and managed by no one at all.
There's also an announcement of a partnership between Google, Mozilla and Adobe to work on a new API for browser plugins, presumably involving browsers taking a more active role in managing their plugins, and allowing certain features like sandboxing and implementation of some type of common interface standards.
What we get instead is reporting of Google thwarting Apple's putative war on Flash, somehow breathing new life into the beleaguered standard, where Apple would surely do the opposite of whatever Google is doing. I'd not be surprised to see Safari adopt some very similar features in the near future, as they all make pretty good sense, at least for their desktop browser. If only these "journalists" knew enough about what they were reporting to recognize their need to eat crow at that point.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
what part of "don't be evil" do you not understand?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Don't get me wrong, Google has done a lot to push good open web standards, but this decision is one to cater to the masses instead of leading them. Flash needs to die. I love the web, but I also love obscure BeOS based OSS operating systems- which while Chrome doesn't support, its marketshare certainly influences the web sites we ALL visit. If Google starts bundling Flash, then it becomes even more "required" than it already is. I know I'm not alone here especially with the influx of new mobiles and mobile OS's that struggle with the same problems us alternative OS people do.
Presumably this integration will allow multiple flash apps on a page all running in a single flash process. This could have dramatic performance benefits in page loads and memory utilization.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
So, you're actually suggesting that journalists:
a) Are blithering idiots
b) Like to breathe false drama and conflict into stories that really don't have any?
What a revolutionary idea!
...I see "This site requires Flash".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Flash should not be promoted, especially by a company like Google. Flash is not an example of a beneficial technology. It is nothing but a horrible bandage over the crippled client-side web "platform".
Technologies like Flash, Silverlight, and Java applets need to die out. They should not be used, and companies like Google, who have lots of intelligent engineering talent, should not be pressing for its use.
I would rather have seen Google embed Python in their browser, and let us have a real scripting environment. It'd be much better for large-scale software development than JavaScript, and would promote the development of higher-quality web apps that aren't restricted to the small number of platforms that Flash supports.
Comparing this report (which shows flash plugin usage within chrome users) to this report (which shows general flash plugin usage) - it seems only 2% of chrome users have no flash plugin compared to 3.9% across all browsers.
Depending on how you look at it, this is either a sign chrome users don't need additional help getting flash installed or that google is simply catering to their users who have a special affinity for the flash plugin - you decide.
My guess would be this is some special strategic bond between Adobe and Google to further push flash since silverlight is by far the fastest growing plugin technology - but that growth is partially tied to the growth of Windows 7 which comes with silverlight.
If HTML5 is a potential competitor to Adobe Flash, and it will be widely supported out of the box in browsers, it would make sense for Adobe to move towards inclusion in browsers. This is an [anti-]competitive move to ensure continued use of flash.
Silverlight may follow suit for this reason also. However for this reason, I imagine Internet Explorer would be the last browser to have flash built-in.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
For those of you who, like me, took a little bit to figure this out, Thursday is April 1; it's April Fool's Day.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
I wonder if this is a slighting technique on Google's part.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Even if there is some strategic partnership between Adobe and Google, I am fine with this so long as it will not prevent the advancement of SVG which I see as playing a much larger role on the web once IE9 is released.
What are you talking about. Flash, silverlight and java have there place.
The issue is when people abuse the technology and overuse it or use it where its not needed.
There great for complex things like games and complicated applications, but simple things like menus and page content is were i draw the line. There is no reason to make half your site flash based.
O.o
Gonna get interesting now...
From TFA:
With Adobe's help, we plan to further protect users by extending Chrome's “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content.
That means they haven't sandboxed it yet. But it is good to know that they are taking steps to sandbox it in the future.
Currently I am using Konqueror's whitelist feature to only allow specific sites to use plug-ins. In addition to reducing the risk of Flash being exploited, it avoids a lot of annoying animated ads, without disabling ads altogether and denying sites their revenue stream.
---
Java Programming Feed @ Feed Distiller
I kind of agree; flash, java applets, silverlight, can be real nuisances, and it's not really their fault; it's due to a flawed browser paradigm. The client (the web-browser) was designed poorly to handle scripting back in the 90's, and it's been constant headaches ever since. The way the client was designed is innately flawed.
I don't think switching to Python would make anything better. Actionscript, which is basically just modern Javascript, is a decent language... its only real problem is how it's integrated into the browser. If Python had been used in its place, all the cool kids would despise Python.
The problems with client-side scripting have nothing to do with the language. Embedding another scripting language like Python would be unnecessarily confusing and would just add complexity where none is needed. What Flash provides that JavaScript does not are:
Notice that none of these have anything to do with deficiencies in the programming language. Indeed, the language used in Flash, ActionScript, is based on ECMAScript, which is the same fundamental foundation as JavaScript. So for all practical purposes, from a language feature perspective, there is already close parity. I won't go so far as to say they are the same language, but... they're so close that all you have to do is squint a little.
Adding Python to a browser is just a recipe for magnifying the existing compatibility problems by splintering development into multiple camps. That's precisely the way to guarantee that Flash never goes away. Now, instead of focusing on tools for one language, you have to focus tools on two---one for Python in FireFox and maybe a couple of other browsers, and one to deal with JavaScript for all the browsers that won't ever support something like that (IE). To describe this as a terrible idea is insulting to terrible ideas.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't see this as a bad thing. But honestly, why is Google doing this? I mean it takes less than 30 seconds to download, install Flash, and reboot the browser after initial Chrome install.
I personally think it may be a response to Apple not allowing Flash on the iPad and iPhone. Google has stakes in Flash, such as their charts on Google Finance. Google also may have done this in response to Apple's new plans for advertising. And lets not forget that much of advertising on the web is Flash content. If Apple were able to make Flash obsolete and boost up its advertising strengths in the process, Google may loose one of its huge cash cows. In the end, Google doesn't want Apple to have complete control of Internet technologies.
seems like battle lines are being drawn when it comes to this flash vs apple thing. well its loads of plastic tat sold to a few idiots vs the reality of almost total market penetration and a vast community of innovative developers.
tbh nothing would surprise me when it comes to jobs and his loyal band of followers. pathetic is not the word.
fuck apple - hopefully their need to control things will put the appstore model onto all their computers and the assorted swine who support them will just rot in their own walled garden. good riddance.
photoshop runs better on pc now, and thats about the only thing apple computers were good for! no wonder they're pissed at adobe!
I can understand that users need Flash functionality, however I kind of wonder how problematic this will be for Google. Google may want to port their browser to other platforms which Flash may not support, say for Android, or whatever. Imagine someone wants to use ChromeOS on MIPS, or some yet to develop processor architecture. Then there are all the security issues typical of a closed source product. Google will be publicly distributing code which they do not control, can debug, patch or maintain. People should be funding Gnash or whatever. Perhaps even work some more on one of those fancy Actionscript on Javascript interpreters.
...it would mean "Google Chrome Now Officially Not Free Software".
Fortunately, it isn't.
The filesystem is the package manager
Depending on how you look at it, this is either a sign chrome users don't need additional help getting flash installed or that google is simply catering to their users who have a special affinity for the flash plugin - you decide.
I go with, "making the browsing experience as painless as possible." Google loves to do this with everything, including one-click installing video/voicechat plugins for GMail.
Initially Google did not support Flash -- you had to manually install the Flash executable and hope that Chrome picked it up. So I'd also say, the Chrome users are more technically apt than others.
Flash should not be promoted, especially by a company like Google. Flash is not an example of a beneficial technology.
Why should Flash be demoted by a company like Apple? Promoting a successful (and free to the consumer) propriety technology is no worse than disabling it for your own selfish business purposes.
Technologies like Flash, Silverlight, and Java applets need to die out. They should not be used, and companies like Google, who have lots of intelligent engineering talent, should not be pressing for its use.
Why? If it weren't for applets and Flash, innovation on the Internet would be stale. The state of the Internet would be 15 years behind. There would be no Penny Arcade, no Youtube, no Hulu, no Facebook apps. The only reason open technologies are approaching (barely) what Flash can do now is because Flash paved the way.
Don't you know how this usually works? Companies see a chance for profit, develop a proprietary technology and are successful for many years. Then over the years open source copy feature after feature until they reach parity, upon which the open source version might be successful. In fact, it's a miracle that the web as we know it was developed upon open source technologies like HTML, CSS, and the like.
April fools day is April 1st, not March 30th.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
wow, a real clarion call from a true hero, starring into the distance as he... talks shit
yeah, this year will be the year of svg, it's been waiting to happen hasn't it? what about vrml, its gonna take off soon i'm tellin ya!
get a grip and get a computer that can run flash. if not then stop moaning - just don't use the web.
.. it helps me what browser's to stick too.
i don't hate flash, but there are some flash ads that resources hungry, so flash ends up in Disabled Plugins directory.
the moment i can't disable, i'll go back to firefox.
What about Silverlight for the Linux version of Chrome? I don't see it happening. A Silverlight plugin is available for Firefox through a Novell project called Moonlight Mono but, no one has ever gotten the plugin to work with Chrome. Furthermore, Moonlight is always a few revisions behind the latest version of Silverlight. Silverlight is necessary to watch certain internet radio broadcasts. Also, Silverlight is needed for downloading Netflix movies.
I think the real issue here is that google chrome claims to be an "open source project", but it's increasingly straying from that goal.
I've never liked the idea that such a huge amount of content on the internet requires adobe flash, closed-source software. I am of the opinion that the web, of all things, should be open source, and that sites shouldn't require you to install proprietary programs in order to view it.
Google is also debating whether or not to start using a proprietary video format for Youtube which will be implemented along with HTML 5. I sincerely hope they don't, because this would be a major blow to the mozilla foundation; they would either have to accept proprietary software for firefox or watch as users leave firefox because they can't watch youtube videos. HTML 5, with its scripting abilities, should be a huge advantage to open source on the web, not its demise.
For that reason, I really don't like this decision. Google seems to be betraying their allegiance to open source.
A large point of the story was the development, by Google and Adobe, of a new standard for creating plugins.
Did anyone else find this the most interesting part of the story?
The problem with Flash is that it's a crap implementation that is buggy, a security risk, leaks memory, and is non-compatible with many systems. Probably if it were made a real standard with opensource code base it could be a lot better. The vast majority of stuff people use Flash for could be done without Flash if IE didn't suck so badly. You could almost say Flash is the only thing keeping Internet Explorer alive.
Plug-ins are a bad idea anyway. At least the way they are commonly implemented. It'd be better if they would more tightly integrate Java and force all plug-ins to be written for the JVM. At least then it'd be more compatible and sandboxed. Then you wouldn't have to install anything and it'd be more likely to work on your iPod or Nintendo.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
i don't think java can be replaced completely by javascript. and java is quite open too.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
If not for Internet Explorer the web would be years ahead. Before IE even existed I was doing things with the web that Flash didn't offer for years. The IE took over and everything went stale because nobody was willing to cut off the 90% of Internet users to stupid to use a real browser. I liked it better in the days when we blocked users from our sites for being logged in from AOL, Prodigy, etc. We let the idiots in and it all went to hell just as we imagined.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
the problem with flash video is that it stutters on my core duo laptop running a fully updated ubuntu 9.10. by the way, compiz runs perfectly on the same laptop.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
The main problem is that historically, Flash developers have been extremely bad at implementing graceful degradation, or even content description targetted specifically at users who do not have the capabilities (physical or technical) to comply with a specific technology.
Javascript, over the years, has become extremely good at graceful degradation. Toolkits such as JQuery really stress the fact that Javascript should be used to augment a user's experience, without making support for said toolkit or language a requirement.
A common example of this are menus which show will display a submenu when hovered, but still work as a proper HTML link if clicked (intentionally or because the user's browser is unable to display the submenu). I have seen quite a few websites where the navigation relied extensively on Flash, and there was no way to browse anything else than the index if Flash was unavailable.
I think everyone realises that Flash is a dying technology. Its proprietary nature, lack of openness, CPU-hungry cycles and history of poor design have made it the black sheep of webdesign; the only reason it still is popular is because of YouTube. As a few in here have said, Joe Bloggs doesn't care about what technology powers the fancy and shiny flashing buttons on the interwebs. So, whether it's Flash or something else, they'll adopt anything as long as it just works. We just need to wait for websites to stop providing it.
Unless we're talking about very fancy vector drawing, there rarely is anything about content disposition in Flash that provides an advantage over HTML/Javascript. A few examples of this are LivePipe and JQuery Tools. Most of these are available through Content Delivery Networks, which drastically reduces load times.
I couldn't agree more about Flash being awful. Flash causes nearly every Safari crash or hang I've ever seen, statistically speaking.
I don't think Java is the answer, though. Java on mobile devices is an even worse battery hog than Flash would be. Build one on top of the other, and there goes your battery life in one easy step.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No disagreement here.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No! In Firefox - when I search for a term on a page - I can hit enter and FOLLOW a link! In Chrome, (unless I have the extension type-ahead-find) pressing Enter during the search just closes the Find window - and DOES NOT leave the link selected! This kills keyboard navigation - which in some cases is far quicker than mousing to the link.
The problem is that the only viable alternative to Flash is Canvas.
Internet Explorer doesn't support it except through a plugin
Firefox supports it, but it's about 70% the speed of Chrome
Chrome supports it, runs it the fastest (as far as I can tell anyway) but it's still about half as fast (Atleast) as an equivalent thing made in Flash.
Javascript needs a serious kick up the arse from where it is now to even think of taking on Flash. It also needs a decent Developer GUI that can be handled by Artists (like Flash has)
I love Canvas, and I love Javascript. But for ease of use, and for rapid development, I use Flash.
Also, AS3 has a much better custom class syntax than JS that's much more similar to C++/C#.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Please remind me, because I haven't seen it in a while for some reason -- how long does the Java plugin take to start up again?
BetterPrivacy by NettiCat
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623
But that's after NoScript has allowed the Flash content to run.
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
I honestly think that Flash has a lot to fear from Canvas, but as you said, Javascript is holding it back. Check out this neat little thing (Canvas Game by one of the Opera staff): http://devfiles.myopera.com/articles/650/step_4_enemies.htm and you can see that Flash has a lot to fear. Onwards and upwards I say.
Pretty much instantly on my system. Yours might be different.
There's no good way to qualify your answer due to too many variables, sorry.
so flash causes safari to crash, is that such a bad thing?
surely, keeping ignorant apple lurving cunts off the web is about as good as it gets.
bravo!!!!!
To have completely different sessions of Gmail (or other services), open the incognito window (Ctrl+Shift+N). I find this mode really handy for web development to test stuff that require a secondary account.
Firefox also has something similar, but last time I checked, you can't go Incognito and normal mode at the same time, unlike Chrome.
Why not run AS3 parallel to JS? They can use the same VM. Maybe create descent DOM replacement and export it to the VM.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.