Google Display Ads Going All-HTML, Will Ban Flash In 2017 (arstechnica.com)

Google has announced its plan for display ads to go 100% HTML 5, in hopes of reaching the widest possible audience across screens. Starting on June 30, 2016, Google will no longer accept new Flash display ads from advertisers. And on January 2, 2017, even old Flash display ads will be blocked. This move comes as no surprise, as Google has been nudging its advertisers to stop using Flash. In fact, Google is not the only one moving away from Flash in favor of HTML. Steve Jobs hated Flash, and even Adobe itself has dropped Flash for Adobe Animate.

Comments

Flash by default

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use the AdWords platform to create display ads with their tool, it will give you a Flash and an HTML5 ad. This has been the default for several years now, and you can't change it, it's just what you get.

Re:Flash a historical footnote

[dejitaru]

Adobe? nah, but wondering that now with Google and Facebook

Click the Monkey

[freefal67]

But will we be able to click the monkey in HTML?

The downside

[squiggleslash]

The downside here is that means you can't just get rid of CPU intensive ads by disabling Flash.

Like the HTML5 video tag, that was supposed to free us from evil Flash, but just brought forth the unblockable autoplaying autoloading multimegabyte video ad, this isn't as great a piece of news as it might seem...

Re:The downside

[fermion]

It is not so much CPU intensive, as much as animated ads are very distracting, often has an undesired audio component, etc. Pretty much Flash is going away because most web browsers have the ability to block flash. We don't have the ability to block HTM5 animation.

Re: The downside

[guruevi]

Almost every browser allows you to control auto-play. The benefit of plain HTML is that it's just a regexp to filter out auto play from videos rather than flash which puts you at the behest of Adobe to whatever they think is best for you OR you completely disable the plugin.

Re:The downside

[BitZtream]

. . .

Why do you think Google is doing it?

Do you think the lack of ad blocking software that works for shit with the HTML 5 tricks might have something to do with Google suddenly wanting to not allow Flash ... just a few years after they made a selling point of their browser doing flash and other browsers/mobile platforms not doing it?

Nothing Google does is 'for the people' unless you mean advertisers when you say people.

Re:The downside

[tlhIngan]

Like the HTML5 video tag, that was supposed to free us from evil Flash, but just brought forth the unblockable autoplaying autoloading multimegabyte video ad, this isn't as great a piece of news as it might seem...

Upgrade your browser or your adblock plugin - autoplay disabling has been a staple since they started. (It is after all, just rewriting the DOM). Doing the same in Flash required blocking the entire thing.

And really, any DOM editing plugin should be able to see an ad and completely nuke it from orbit.

And if there's any sites that block visitors with adblockers (Forbes, Wired), a little DOM rewrite can have it so just enough runs to get you through but not load the ads. NoScript has replacement scripts for blocked domains, so similar technology can be created.

And most ad blockers work by blocking ad javascript (used to load flash objects). They probably already work for blocking ad javascript in HTML5.

Re:The downside

[markdavis]

>" We don't have the ability to block HTM5 animation."

Exactly. And I have been warning about this for years, since the concept came up. I knew EXACTLY how it would be used- Ads, banners, stupid crap all over sites. Besides being extremely annoying, it destroys thin clients. It makes slower machines CRAWL. It sucks the battery out of mobile devices.

We used to be able to have relief by just blocking Flash and using adblock. Those days are over. It has spread beyond just ads and now client-side animations are everywhere. Browsers like Firefox need to somehow have some type of way to block (or SLOW) ALL types of animations. It won't be easy to do this without breaking sites. Could possibly be done with something that loads such objects on demand (hiding them/overlaying them) or by detecting tight loops to trigger blocks or slowdowns.

If you don't might blocking just all video/audio/media, that can be done in Firefox with about:config, stuff. But that is an all-or-nothing affair. Here are some examples for those desperate enough (pulled from my thin client configs):

user_pref("webgl.disabled", true);
user_pref("webgl.disable-extensions", true);
user_pref("image.animation_mode", "once");
user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);
user_pref("browser.preferences.animateFadeIn", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.animate", false);
user_pref("toolkit.scrollbox.smoothScroll", false);
user_pref("browser.panorama.animate_zoom", false);
user_pref("browser.fullscreen.animateUp", 0);
user_pref("browser.tabs.maxOpenBeforeWarn", 8);
user_pref("dom.max_script_run_time", 10);
user_pref("layout.css.prefixes.animations", false);
user_pref("browser.download.animateNotifications", true);
user_pref("media.navigator.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.webm.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.encoder.webm.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.autoplay.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.ogg.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.wav.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.wave.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.opus.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.audio_data.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.raw.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.webaudio.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.webspeech.recognition.enable", false);
user_pref("media.webvtt.enable", false);
user_pref("media.peerconnection.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.fragmented-mp4.ffmpeg.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.getusermedia.aec_enabled", false);
user_pref("media.getusermedia.noise_enabled", false);
user_pref("media.gstreamer.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.mediasource.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.video_stats.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.navigator.video.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.fragmented-mp4.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.autoupdate", false);
user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled", false);
user_pref("media.webvtt.enabled", false);

partway there!

[Gravis Zero]

now they just need to ban javascript and images so that the internet advertising can be restored to it's former glory: text links!

Re:block them now

[XXongo]

I've blocked them by the simple expedient of, when my browser flashes the message "Could not display content because your flash player is out of date. Update?" clicking "go away".

Adobe is not dropping Flash

[unrtst]

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.