Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise With New 'HTML5 By Default' Chrome Setting (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: In a Google Groups thread named "Intent to implement: HTML5 by Default," the Google developers announced initial plans to implement a new feature in the Chromium core that will disable the playback of Flash content by default, and use HTML5 instead, if available. The feature is scheduled to ship with Chromium builds in Q4 2016, according to the current timeline. To avoid "overprompting," a whitelist will allow ten major websites to continue to show Flash content by default without pestering users with "Allow domain.com to run Flash Player" prompts. The whitelist will be in effect one year only. The list includes the domains of YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, VK, Live, Yandex, OK.ru, Twitch, Amazon, and Mail.ru, the biggest sites running Flash content today. Previews of the settings and prompts UI are also available.

Comments

Meanwhile demanding more Flash usage...

[Anonymous Coward]

by not improving YouTube.

I already have Flash disabled in Chrome

[vbguyny]

It was great 10-15 years ago but now that HTML5 is largely supported by all modern browsers we can finally say good bye to the CPU heavy / security flawed plug-in known as Flash.

Re:I already have Flash disabled in Chrome

[bluescrn]

Flash is starting to seem slick and lightweight (at least for games), compared to some of the HTML5/JS/WebGL stuff. Everyone's taking their huge C++ codebases, running them through Emscripten, and out comes something far bigger and slower to download/compile/start than anything in Flash.

Let's extend that idea

[Gadget_Guy]

How about they implement blocking autorun of all videos by default unless you whitelist a site. There are really only a couple of video sites in the world that I ever want to have a video run without my intervention.

No, I don't want your video ad (especially with sound). No, I don't want the trailer of your movie or game appearing as the banner on top of every page on your site. No, I don't want an autoplaying video to accompany the perfectly good text version of your news article that just says exactly the same thing.

Re:Let's extend that idea

[knorthern knight]

On Pale Moon (a Firefox fork) go to about:config and set...

media.autoplay.allowscripted false
media.autoplay.enabled false

Note that on Youtube, you have to do extra work to start the first video, because of disabling autoplay...

* click somewhere in the picture frame
* click on the little triangle in the bottom left of the image to start playing

Firefox should be similar.

Re:Let's extend that idea

[Sigma 7]

I should not have to download an extension for something that should be a core feature of the browser.

Disabling Javascript was a core feature of Netscape 4.0, and had the added benefit of plugging practically any drive-by-exploit from an ad network.

Re:Let's extend that idea

[ortholattice]

How about they implement blocking autorun of all videos by default

You mean like YouTube, where when you middle-click open several tabs of videos of possible interest, they all start playing in a cacophonous roar? Then you have to open each tab to pause it before you can even start watching one of them, defeating the whole purpose of "open in new tab".

Oh wait, Google bought YouTube and added that incredibly annoying autorun "feature".

I don't know what they were thinking, but I do know that it has caused me to do a lot less casual sampling of their videos..

Re:Let's extend that idea

[NotAPK]

But, they also don't buffer the content any more.

The optimial is to allow the user to open a series of tabs in a row, start buffering the videos, but not to play them. Once the user arrives at the tabs the content should be there ready to go.

Obviously they are trying to limit their bandwidth costs by only streaming what is deemed to be necessary. But in my experience the buffering on YoutTube is so biased towards saving bandwidth for Google that it doesn't really work for the user at all.

Plenty of other options available these days. For my own video hosting, it's amazing that you can simply put an mp4 file on the web server and most browsers will ply it, and even stream it, for the user. Very nice and simple way to go.

Re:Let's extend that idea

[thegarbz]

The optimial is to allow the user to open a series of tabs in a row, start buffering the videos, but not to play them.

That is NOT optimal. If you're in a situation where you need to rely on buffering then buffering multiple videos at once just means that you can't actually watch anything anymore. Your connection that may have been able to play a smooth video with buffering now suddenly does nothing and you get to sit there for a few minutes waiting so you can hit the play button.

That's a fantastic way to piss off users and lose them.

"Planing"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they going to bring it over to the jointer after that?

Re:"Planing"

[Applehu Akbar]

I don't like the tenon of this thread.

Re:"Planing"

[macbuzz01]

Clearly the router should be used to fix this issue.

Meanwhile

[nyet]

Every single "enterprise class" web service (e.g. HR, payroll, health care, etc.) will be still insist on flash for the next 20 years.

hardly killing it

[luther349]

is it will just use html 5 if it can hardly killing flash. devs love flash becouse they can fill it with ads something they cant do with html 5.

Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise...

[QuietLagoon]

FTFY

biggest flash users are porn sites

[sittingnut]

"... domains of YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, VK, Live, Yandex, OK.ru, Twitch, Amazon, and Mail.ru, the biggest sites running Flash content today"
really?
some of them, yes. but biggest sites using flash are big porn sites.

Re:41% is less than 100%. Less than half

[Etcetera]

Why would it be illegal for them to make a browser that works well with their site? 90% of mobile apps are browsers configured to work with only one site. Are most mobile apps illegal?

You mentioned that a lot of people use Chrome, are you thinking of monopoly laws? A monopoly is when one company is the only company providing a product. That would be of Chrome was the only browser, if the user had no other choice.

In fact, according to your link Chrome has 41% market share. Other sources say less, but anyway that's nowhere near 100%. You can't use any browser other than Chrome? MOST people use some other browser.

Are you new here or do you legitimately not remember the IE browser tying issues? You don't need 100% market share to be a monopoly, you just need to be able to exercise price/feature/etc control without (realistic) chance of competition. "Google is making a change to its browser that favors its own sites and we all just have to deal with it because that's the way it is" is pretty much the definition of a technology monopoly.

I have no working flash in chromium for years

[allo]

As chromium does not package pepper flash and google is too arrogant to use npapi plugins anymore.

No problem. And from the named sites ... amazon needs flash? youtube? Search engines like yahoo and yandex?
No. They work without it pretty well.

Whitelisting YouTube makes no sense

[jonwil]

It makes no sense to white-list YouTube when Google should be making YouTube send HTML5 video to any recent-enough-to-support-HTML5-video version of Chromium anyway.

How do I block HTML5 video

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I hate audio and video auto playing and auto looping. At least with flash there are a number of add-ons that work and block the damned thing. HTML5 video is not as easily blocked. As the advetisers and clickbaiters figure out more creative ways to be annoying, I'm wondering what the state of the art is in blocking unwanted audio, video, autoplay, autoloop etc?

Why not port them to HTML5 to target mobile users?

[tepples]

Why haven't new games been written in HTML5 instead of Flash? And why haven't old games been ported from HTML5 to Flash? I imagine that the ability to extract more revenue from advertisers by showing ads to users of phones and tablets would be reason enough to port games. Or are these the kinds of games that doesn't translate well to the no-hover, no-keyboard, fat-finger input model of phones and tablets?

Re:Why not port them to HTML5 to target mobile use

[EmperorArthur]

I've seen how Digital Media is taught at universities. Many times the flash games are written using a design tool that allows higher levels of abstraction, and/or zero actual knowledge of programming. These "visual coding" tools typically allow for html5 export at the push of a button, but it's 2016 and the professors still expect flash! This also means if they learn any coding it's going to be flash.

Basically, it's like how universities took forever to switch languages in introduction to coding courses. Modern digital media is sort of a conglomeration of coding, web development, marketing, art, 3d design, and animation. The problem is, when they want a student to learn art, they have them take an art class. When they want them to do 3d printing or coding they DO NOT have them take the appropriate 'introduction to programming' or 3d engineering class. They make their own! The department doesn't consider knowledge of basic programming logic to be important, just like knowledge of material science and tooling doesn't seem to be important when working with physical objects...