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Firefox 55: Flash Will Become 'Ask To Activate' For Everyone (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Starting with the release of Firefox 55, the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox will be set to "Ask to Activate" by default for all users. This move was announced in August 2016, as part of Mozilla's plan to move away from plugins built around the NPAPI technology. Flash is currently the only NPAPI plugin still supported in Firefox, and moving its default setting from "Always Activate" to "Ask to Activate" is just another step towards the final step of stop supporting Flash altogether. This new Flash default setting is already live in Firefox's Nightly Edition and will move through the Alpha and Beta versions as Firefox nears its v55 Stable release. By moving Flash to a click-to-play setting, Firefox will indirectly start to favor HTML5 content over Flash for all multimedia content. Other browsers like Google Chrome, Brave, or Opera already run Flash on a click-to-play setting, or disabled by default. Firefox is scheduled to be released on August 8, 2017.
Flash is worse than systemd.
I uninstalled Flash about a year after Youtube went HTML5 and everyone followed, when I realized I hadn't used Flash in a year but it was just sitting there silently waiting to get me pwnt.
Good riddance.
You mean they won't let me get my daily fix of Badger Badger Badger?
(To say nothing of Magical Trevor.)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I used to blame flash for everything too, but since the Internet has become a whole lot more flash-free I now get by without it even being installed, but both Firefox and Chrome still keep regularly freezing/crashing, in fact more than ever, on both Windows and Linux.
*All* media should be click-to-play, regardless of format.
Seriously, what is the case for auto-playing? Does anyone like that?
who in their right mind would run flash on by default?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Advertisers like it.
We, speaking of the majority, variously known as "the product" or "the victim", depending on how honest one is being at any particular moment, don't count. Because we, again speaking of the majority, will continue to return to sites that abuse us in this fashion.
I highly recommend a local blacklist. When a site does this, slap a 127.0.0.1 into your hosts file for the site name. This will prevent the site from ever loading into your browser again via normal links.
Or, you can keep going back. And they'll keep abusing you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What do you mean by "convert flash to HTML5"?
#DeleteFacebook
Yes, it's not Mozilla's problem to convert Flash to HTML5 on the fly. There are plenty of tools available to create HTML5 animations. Adobe itself supports CreateJS and publishes to HTML5 in Adobe Animate. Adobe could also take it a step further and produce a WebAssembly build of Flash player to support old Flash junk that the authors are too lazy to convert to HTML5.
What's "Flash"?
Is it like COBOL or something?
At least Flash can be blocked / click-to-play. While, in major web browsers, HTML5 video and audio auto-play by default with seemingly no way to disable.
Without running add-ons, is there any simple way to disable HTML5 auto-play in any major web browser?
if it was risky then anti-Virus or Apple would update it in next microversion. There is more working Flash content then all modern game consoles (never more than a NES but you know...). Flash just grows and whois trying to clip it?
It is a content delivery api independent of browsers, so I look at it's critics with absolute skepticism: how many console games can be played on competing consoles?
Flash is here to stay; if you cant embrace and extend it competitively then make something better. All the discussion here is like when Linux 2.0.34 distributions installed on a desktop running FVWM95 were advertised as a competitor to Windows 98. So embrace the existing API and make it more secure.
Bunch of Microsoft Stallmans in this forum.
There's a large corpus of games, animations, and so on, written in Flash. Unlike DRM and advertising, those are actually useful.
games and animations running on a deprecated platform are "useful"??? How are they "useful" when you can't PAY people to install the required runtime? Get out your dictionary and look up the word "useful".
I'd like Javascript to be "ask to activate", too. Actually, all active content.
For me, the browser has become a kind of vacuum cleaner, sucking up every disgusting stuff it finds on the Internets and trying to execute it. On my computer.
I treat it like a diseased thing.
I got fed up with the constant upgrade nags about a year ago. Occasionally video sites will refuse to work, but most of what I failed to load were ads, or annoying autoplay videos on articles I was trying to read. sadly these seem to be shifting away from Flash as well.
Those horses bolted 20 years ago.
This decision should have been made with the introduction of NPAPI back in the heady days of Netscape 2.0.
I use the National weather service sites and many loops of maps ans sat images and radar still use Flash as the default. I am all for moving away from Flash but maybe these browsers are preaching to the wrong group. Its not the user that's the problem, its the web sites who refuse to allow Flash to be retired.
flash stinks.
it is rarely accessible, it is abused by advertisers and for user tracking.. but this is a simple fix. 'ask to activate'
which is FAR BETTER than the alternative.. which we are ALSO getting rammed down our throats: the demise of the flexibility of firefox as we know it, and its massive library of legitimate and useful addons.
careful of what you wish for.
soon enough, you will all be begging for the 'old' firefox, even if that meant it included flash support.
the new firefox will suck.
if you use firefox, make a list of those addons you can't live without.... for which there are no true alternatives in a world with a fully-chromified webextension-enabled firefox. that list will make grown men weep uncontrollably.
there's a reason why those who use firefox, use it: addons. chrome addons are horrible, the chrome 'store' is horrible. change for the sake of change is horrible.
we did NOT ask for *THIS*.
when 52esr is retired early next year, that will be the saddest day on the internet since.. well, since the internet began.
In principle, any ad which a human can recognise as an ad, a machine can also recognise as an ad.
I thought the goal of ad blocking was to avoid the cross-site tracking, data transfer quota use, and CPU use of requesting, downloading, and processing an ad in the first place. For a long time, Flash's content-type on a site that doesn't have entertaining vector animations was a very good predictor of a particular element being undesirable.
Even Adobe is telling people to convert to HTML5
In part because it requires authors to stop using an outdated yet resellable* used copy of Flash and start renting Adobe Animate in Creative Cloud.
* The license agreements of commercial off-the-shelf proprietary software usually have a provision for license transfer along with all copies of the product.
sudo apt-get upgrade
"sudo" is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
(Translation: Windows UAC doesn't appear to support running an elevated Command Prompt as a subshell in a non-elevated Command Prompt window.)
And to answer your next question: Some people continue to run Windows because they've found that GNU/Linux doesn't fully support the chipset of their laptop.
Adobe itself supports CreateJS and publishes to HTML5 in Adobe Animate
Which stops working after a month even if you pay for it.
Adobe could also take it a step further and produce a WebAssembly build of Flash player to support old Flash junk that the authors are too lazy to convert to HTML5.
But that wouldn't make Adobe money. Instead of letting authors convert works made with used copies of Flash, Adobe wants to lock authors into a Creative Cloud rental agreement.
Ask to activate becomes default for Flash? So I can finally get rid the add-on I have used to provide the same functionality, ever since Mozilla devs decided that ask to activate is only for other plugins and outdated Flash versions, and rather than clicking play, you only got the options "no" and "always"?
Oh right, I disabled Flash two weeks ago.
> variously known as "the product" or "the victim" [...]
My preferred term is "the gullet". Feels about right.
See subject: 1 of Opera's (not CHOpera Chinese/Chrome) options was "only on demand" for FLASH, ages ago. I still think it's a great browser & should be resurrected + improved w/ what's been done to javascript in the newer browsers (& Opera used to be the "speed king" ALL THE WAY AROUND, not just HTML renderings (always fastest there) but also in javascript processing back then - but since then, the latest browsers made BIG strides since then in that area).
APK
P.S.=> Presto is a great engine - it's a SHAME to see it put out to pasture the way it has been... apk
Years ago I uninstalled Flash from all my computers and I'm still amazed how many web sites greet me with the red "This requires the latest version of Flash. Click here to install" banner. Really? Is this 1999 or something? Even Adobe has given up on Flash.
their ads
Who said ads? On sites such as Newgrounds, Albino Blacksheep, and Dagobah, the SWF is the primary work that the viewer has chosen to view.
Even Adobe is telling people to convert to HTML5
it requires authors to [...] start renting Adobe Animate in Creative Cloud.
Why would encouraging them to write [things] in HTML5 require them to use specific software?
Because as far as I am aware, only said "specific software" is capable of converting the author's existing FLA source file to an HTML5 canvas animation. Otherwise, the author would have to remake the vector animation or game from scratch. Or what package other than Adobe Animate can convert FLA to something modern?
That's HTML5 for you. Now try decoding video with an unsupported GPU that used to work in flash.
The only counter argument is "buy a new machine" without fail.
So no big loss.
Wouldn't it be cool if Firefox 55 was "ask to activate"?
On Kongregate. I just load up the page and I've got the extra points from the Badge of the Day. On Monday, I get my Kongpanion. On Friday, I get the Shiny version. Rarely do I encounter a game I haven't gotten the badges for. Don't need Flash to load for those games. But a lot of new games are still being made in Flash. It's still more efficient and reliable than Javascript or Unity engine.
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
About 17,000 sites. I have loaded into my firewall's DNS. Cleans up all machines at one time. Yes, it is not prfect and you will be complains about being a a ADBlocker, but you are not. You are a tracking blocker.
All thre browsers do bad things to the users. I cannot use firefox for managing self-signed certifacte website anymore. MY firewall is blocked, access to printers are blocked.
Chrome, Edge are not much better. They are smart enought to be at least like SSH. Once I note that this site is "good"
REMEMBER IT!!!
Do not hide 4 clicks alter to gain access to machine on my own subnet. ARGH!!
Which stops working after a month even if you pay for it.
So don't use it, kid. Use another HTML5 animation tool. There are many to choose from. The point is that Flash is redundant. Flash is a dead-end, single vendor platform with no future.
Use another HTML5 animation tool. There are many to choose from.
Among the many HTML5 animation tools to choose from, which are worth one's time to evaluate?
Among the many HTML5 animation tools to choose from, which can import and convert legacy FLA source files?
which are worth one's time to evaluate?
You tell me, boy.
which can import and convert legacy FLA source files?
You really should learn how to use a search engine. Your laziness wastes time.
Google doesn't include the experience and expertise of other Slashdot users reading this discussion.
Why so afraid face up to the realities for yourself? It's lazy. I thought the Flash Defense Force was stronger than this. I'm disappointed.