Slashdot Mirror
Windows 8 Won't Support Plug-Ins; the End of Flash?
An anonymous reader writes "The Microsoft Windows Engineering Team has announced that the Metro interface web browser in Windows 8 will not support plug-ins — Adobe Flash included. Users will still be able to open a traditional browser interface to make use of legacy sites that rely upon plug-ins. This news follows a recent blog post by the Internet Explorer 10 team pushing the use of HTML5 video as a replacement to Flash video. With Google, Apple, Mozilla, Opera and other major players already backing HTML5 — is Adobe Flash finally dead?"
Using patented shit formats. So yes, they are.
The lack of Adobe Flash support shouldn't be the issue here. The real thing that should concern us is that it won't support *ANY* plug-in. It seems like everything is becoming a walled garden these days. For a long time, the trend for browsers was MORE "modability" and freedom, not less. Now we're going backwards.
I just hope Mozilla doesn't get any ideas. Firefox is still the best browser out there for add-ons.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Maybe, or maybe, the IE team, like the Firefox team, is awfully tired of their software being used as a vector for Flash's seemingly infinite supply of vulnerabilities.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
H.264 is technically better format too. That's why it should be picked, not based on some religious free software views.
Not all concerns about the Freedom to use a technology are matters of obsessive fanboyism or faith. There are plenty of pragmatic concerns associated with IP that only the most reckless would choose to ignore. A technology can be 1000x better than anything else that exists but still be effectively useless or a huge risk to end-users or business management. As an end user, I don't want my choices limited by how many technologies a prospective vendor can afford to employ. As a developer, I want to be able to create or fix technologies I encounter without much bureaucracy, being hindered by secrecy or risking having all of my hard work phased out through planned obsolescence strategies. As a business owner, I don't want the items purchased by my business to be hindered by cumbersome, nuanced, legal agreements. In my view, the diversity and innovation facilitated by Free software is almost always better even in cases where proprietary counterparts have a few more features or slightly better performance. Essentially, the freedom to do what you want has its own innate value that, while hard to quantify, should be thoroughly considered before making *any* important decisions, both technology-related and otherwise. It's not always easy to predict when and how those restrictions might hinder your opportunities in the future.
Just because it's Situation Normal, doesn't mean it's not All Fucked Up.