Firefox To Block Non-Essential Flash Content In August 2016, Require Click-To-Activate In 2017 (mozilla.org)

Mozilla has announced that it plans to discontinue support for Flash in Firefox. Starting next month, Firefox will block Flash content "that is not essential to the user experience." Also, starting sometime in 2017, the browser will require click-to-activate approval from users before a website activates the Flash plugin for any content. In a blogpost, the company writes:Mozilla and the Web as a whole have been taking steps to reduce the need for Flash content in everyday browsing. Over the past few years, Firefox has implemented Web APIs to replace functionality that was formerly provided only by plugins. This includes audio/video playback and streaming capabilities, clipboard integration, fast 2D and 3D graphics, WebSocket networking, and microphone/camera access. As websites have switched from Flash to other web technologies, the plugin crash rate in Firefox has dropped significantly. [...] We continue to work closely with Adobe to deliver the best possible Flash experience for our users.

Comments

And this is why my primary browser isn't Firefox

[HBI]

Too much trying to think for me, without being able to turn the behavior off. Firefox and PKI is an absolute abortion. Now they are going to make people's lives more difficult vis a vis Flash because of some religious reason.

Way to grow that market share!!

Re:And this is why my primary browser isn't Firefo

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Flash isn't any sort of standard except in the limited sense that it is used on a lot of web sites.

And, until recently, more widely available and consistent across platforms than just about any official web standards other than HTML 4, CSS 2.1 and HTTP. In other words, Flash was a standard in the only way that really matters: it worked the same almost everywhere. Which, by the way, is far more than can be said for many of the new shiny toys that are supposed to replace it.

It's a proprietary, closed source plugin and application; the precise opposite of a standard.

Well, for one thing, that isn't anything like the precise opposite of a standard.

As for proprietary, closed source, and running as a separate process, have you looked at how HTML5 video works on iOS lately? Or the uses of EME, which is now a W3C standard? Or the number of different encodings you need to create to do something as simple as playing a video across most browsers in 2016, compared to the exactly one you needed with any number of Flash video players before?

This so-called "standard" exists solely at the whim of one company, Adobe, and they can do whatever they wish with it without regard to its users or anyone else.

How is that fundamentally different to all the major browsers pushing substandard HTML5 features instead because Google decides Chrome will do so and everyone else apparently feels the need to emulate them? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (except that now you can't even see what the old boss was like any more because all the records are inaccessible).