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Chrome To Freeze Flash Ads On Sight From September 1
An anonymous reader writes: Shaun Nichols from the Register reports that unimportant Flash content will be click-to-play by default in Google Chrome from September 1. He writes, "Google is making good on its promise to strangle Adobe Flash's ability to auto-play in Chrome. The web giant has set September 1, 2015 as the date from which non-important Flash files will be click-to-play in the browser by default – effectively freezing out 'many' Flash ads in the process. Netizens can right-click over the security-challenged plugin and select 'Run this' if they want to unfreeze an ad. Otherwise, the Flash files will remain suspended in a grey box, unable to cause any harm nor any annoyance."
Hmm, I've had this as a plug-in for a while now (FF though). It interfered a bit with some sites, but it was the fault of those sites anyway, so I guess it is a good idea to have it built-in in the browser (it can work even better than a plugin)
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After all, there's nothing really fucking annoying that can be done with HTML5 ads, and it's not as if the whole ad industry is a crock of malware-infested, distracting, lowest-common-denominator-producing shit anyway.
Seriously, if I could post the grumpy cat photo as a full blown image I would. No matter how savvy tech becomes the average user doesn't install extensions unless someone mentions it. I would love to see the ratio of systems WITH vs. WITHOUT any extensions
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That's silly. It's click to play, not a total block.
Basically, "essential" Flash content (such as embedded video players) are allowed to automatically run, while non-essential Flash content, much of that being advertisements, will be automatically paused.
So.... queue adverts posing as video players in 3. ... 2...... 1......
Why can't they stop the autoplay of ALL content.
Like it or not, all the major browsers are phasing out plugin support. Microsoft and Chrome has already dropped support for plugins other than Flash, and Mozilla is about to do the same. Flash gets special treatment due to its market share, but make no mistake, the browser manufacturers are looking to kill it as soon as reasonably possible, too.
ISP blocking and browser "blocking" are fundementally not equivalent. If my browser "blocks" a flash ad and I want to see it I click it and it plays. If my ISP blocks some content I never see it to begin with. The core difference here is that when the browser is doing it the way Chrome does it it's not blocking it per se; it's simply making it so it doesn't play by default (which, by the way, isn't blocking). When my ISP does it the content literally doesn't get delivered. That's blocking.
Do we really want Google or Mozilla, or any other browser determining what content we can see or not see in a browser?
When it is a known security problem then I have no problem with it. As long as I have the ability to override the decision I don't really see it as an issue. Flash needs to die a hot painful death and this is probably the fastest way to make that happen.
What next, will they block? This seems like an awfully big slippery slope and people are just accepting it.
Not worried about it. If browsers start getting too exuberant with the blocking then market forces are almost certain to correct the problem.
I'd like to see in Firefox by default...
Version 12 had that on by default. Loved it, it sounds like Chrome has it but it requires enabling. On Opera, it was one less thing to change after a fresh install. Somehow that browser came out of the box just the way I liked it.
Unlike most people, I really don't mind ads. It's how companies pay for free services. What I've had issue with for years is the loudness factor of these ads. Some of these ads are at max volume. When factored in that they were auto-play, simply visiting a website would be annoying and potentially hearing damaging.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
There are a few lines you can add to the hosts file on your PC or your DNS proxy to block AdSense and DoubleClick networks. You don't have to go full APK unless you want to. Start with these two and see what else you can pull in from your browser's debugger.
Unlike most people, I really don't mind ads.
You may have missed the recent story about malvertising.
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.
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I'd like to see in Firefox by default...
Since Firefox apes a lot of what Chrome does it shouldn't be long...
Is there anybody here that doesn't use at least ONE ad blocker?
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...
Welcome to the Hotel Flash-it-for-ya... Such a lovely place... Such a lovely place...
An ad company blocking ads from other companies.
Just a matter of time before they simply replace the "non-important" ad with an "important" one...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
> You've replaced something with a grey box. It's gone.
That's not what Chrome beta is doing. Turning off autoplay/autoexecute for 300x250 and smaller swfs is not the same as removing flash support.
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As if millions of marketing drones cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
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Klaatu barada APK.
Autoplay is one "feature" I've never understood. Why can't the default be a still image from the video, either taken automatically, the way desktop file managers from Windows to OSX to Gnome and KDE create thumbnails, or uploaded separately by the content creator? Even a pop-up asking you to click to play is better than an autoplay explosion.
They haven't given up on extensions. On the contrary, they're giving their API a much-needed overhaul. Yes, you'll still be able to block ads and scripts.
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I've turned my Firefox flash plugin to "Ask to Activate". This way I can choose what is "important" and "not important", not the almighty God^Hogle. This doesn't do anything for fine-grained selection of flash objects on a domain, but you can also use the Flashblock add-on for that.
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"Flash gets special treatment due to its market share, but make no mistake, the browser manufacturers are looking to kill it as soon as reasonably possible, too."
If this is true, it's only because they've found more obtrusive and abusive ways to advertise to us that are more difficult to block.
...and he/she/it has shown mercy on us by allowing the destruction of the bandwidth sucking, virus vector, POS that is flash.
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Extensions are not plugins.
Plugins are native executables and work at the OS level. Extensions work at the browser level and are easier to contain.
All well known ad blockers are extensions rather than plugins.
For over 2 years with a plugin.
While I do believe that Flash is horrible and destructive to the internet as a whole, I see this exactly for what this is: Google is closing the internet. They are closing it much like Microsoft did for many years. They marketed and waited until their browser was too much usage to ignore, and now use it to drive the direction of the web to their interest.
What happened to an open web? If people want to use technology x, they should be able to! Why does Google get to pick? What if google tomorrow decided that "Well, we found issues with other ad services, so we'll automatically block other ad services that aren't Google ad service". Oh wait, google ads are in the subset of advertising that ISN'T flash based? HOW INTERESTING... Conflict of.... something... int......
"Flash gets special treatment due to its market share, but make no mistake, the browser manufacturers are looking to kill it as soon as reasonably possible, too." If this is true, it's only because they've found more obtrusive and abusive ways to advertise to us that are more difficult to block.
The elimination of plugins is happening for entirely technical reasons. Microsoft obviously has their own Silverlight plugin, support for which is also gone in their latest browser.
HTML 5 is the future, also for ads. AdBlock etc. handle them without problems.
Like it or not, all the major browsers are phasing out plugin support.
They are doing no such thing. They are converging on one standard plugin architecture, that is all. Flash works because it has been written for each type, not because it gets special treatment. If you want to download it it'll even give you the option of PPAPI (Chrome / Opera), NPAPI (Firefox due to be phased out), and ActiveX (IE due to be phased out). The phase outs are simply shifts to PPAPI instead.
Explain to me how repeatedly posting unwanted advertisements for your product on Slashdot isn't spamming?
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
They are doing no such thing. [...] PPAPI (Chrome / Opera), NPAPI (Firefox due to be phased out), and ActiveX (IE due to be phased out).
Did you just rebut my claim that plugin support is being phased out by mentioning three incompatible plugin systems, two of which are end-of-life? Neither Firefox, Microsoft Edge (nor Safari for that matter) are slated to gain PPAPI support.
PPAPI plugins are only supported in Chrome and its variants, and usage is dismal. Of plugins that were most popular just two years ago, neither Silverlight (end-of-life), Unity Webplayer (end-of-life), the Google Earth plugin, Java, the Google Hangouts plugin nor the Facebook Videos plugin are available as PPAPI. PPAPI is in practice an internal Chrome API to be used with built-in modules (not plugins) such as Flash, the PDF viewer and NaCL.
All the above mentioned plugins are being supplanted by various HTML 5 features, with the possible exception of Java (which is just dying, as an in-browser technology). The native browser features aren't all there yet; Unity's native WebGL offering is still struggling with audio and video fidelity, but the gap is closing quickly. Already, Unity reports that compiling C# to .NET IL, IL to C++, and then C++ to asm.js JavaScript, and executing the result in Firefox, yields slightly better performance than executing the original IL in the (admitedly, somewhat dated) Mono runtime normally used in Unity.
Spamming loser.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Did you just rebut my claim that plugin support is being phased out by mentioning three incompatible plugin systems, two of which are end-of-life?
Yes I did. Did you just read half my comment and then claim it wasn't a rebut because you missed the part about the OTHER TWO CONVERGING?
So let me repeat it again for those of us with short attention spans: "They are converging on one standard plugin architecture". Firefox is phasing out support for NPAPI and implementing a system that supports Chrome extensions, basically a translation layer that will support PPAPI for those of you who missed the Slashdot discussion on this last week. IE has already implemented NPAPI as an alternative to ActiveX in edge (thank god) and according to their forums they are deciding whether to adopt other schemes in wake of Mozilla and Chrome's recent abandonment of the old scheme.
Claiming that an alternative doesn't exist because usage is small is utter garbage. Silverlight, et al are not being ported to PPAPI because of the developer's choice, nothing more. There's nothing stopping these plugins to be ported to another plugin API like Flash has, but really thank god it isn't. No one will miss any of the above except for a few people running legacy code.
Times change, APIs, change, and we move on. We port, or we let things fade into obsolescence. But don't pretend that browsers have phased out plugin support as currently all major browsers have a plugin API, and those who have signalled they are phasing out one have announced plans to support another.
It's all you deserve. You have already had it explained to you that I don't post anonymously to you, APK, I stand behind everything I say about you and your mental illness issues and your need to foist your insanity on everyone here.
Spamming loser.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Wow, you really are delusional aren't you? I've never used your hosts tool nor have I used uBlock or any other tool of that nature other than ABP. I care so little about the topic I'd be unlikely to debate you on it and as I've not used your software I cannot evaluate its performance.
I am however very willing and able to abuse incompetents such as yourself under my own moniker; in fact I really wouldn't have it any other way.
I do understand why you find it hard to imagine someone who has integrity yet is capable of easily besting you. This is why you cannot believe me when I tell you the truth - you don't recognise truth any more, because you tell lies and cherry-pick statistics. You operate multiple sock-puppet accounts and you stalk people you feel have slighted you. You spam over and over and over and over again, you repeat yourself ad nauseum and you hypocritically and repeatedly accuse others of your own transgressions. You also like to pretend you have a bunch of anonymous supporters and the seriousness with which you take this obvious and infantile ploy of yours has been an ongoing source of much mirth and merriment to all who watch your desperate contortions.
In general, you are about as welcome as an anal polyp and your ridiculous literary style ensures that most of what you have to contribute is disjointed and unpleasant to read. You are an unwelcome disruption and no amount of posting your silly "everybody loves APK" list will make any difference to anyone - people see you as a low-life scum because that is how you behave.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Oh, I nearly forgot: you're still a fucking spamming loser. You know what people mostly think of spammers? Yeah, that's you they're thinking of. Take your unsolicited commercial advertising bullshit somewhere else.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Yes, we've all seen that spam before, thank you Mr. Spammer. So, are you going to let me thrash you again with only this feeble response by way of rebuttal? Spamming loser.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Premise: spammers are losers.
Fact: APK is a spammer.
Conclusion: APK is a loser.
Premise: pretending to be someone else to back you up makes you a loser.
Fact: APK depends upon multiple sockpuppet accounts and is laughably clumsy in his use of these accounts.
Conclusion: APK is a total loser.
Spamming loser.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?