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.

Comments

About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is worse than systemd.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Blasphemy. If Flash was truly worse than SystemD, it would have subsumed the entirety of WIndows into FlashOS by now.

Re:About time

[phantomfive]

Now you can get all your ads served in javascript, and they're even harder to block.

Re:About time

[Wootery]

Not really. In principle, any ad which a human can recognise as an ad, a machine can also recognise as an ad.

The issue of 'paid articles' is the edge-case here.

Badger?

[Mikkeles]

You mean they won't let me get my daily fix of Badger Badger Badger?

(To say nothing of Magical Trevor.)

Re:Badger?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean they won't let me get my daily fix of Badger Badger Badger?

Seems to have been converted to HTML5 using Swiffy.

Re:Badger?

[tepples]

Its frame rate in Firefox on my laptop with an Atom N450 CPU is so much lower than that of the original Flash version that it desyncs noticeably within the first ten seconds, with the first "mushroom mushroom" appearing over a second late.

Re:Badger?

[tepples]

You mentioned buyer's remorse. I am willing to correct this by purchasing the replacement hardware that you recommend for the following requirements:

Let's say I want to buy a subnotebook computer (a laptop with a 10.1 to 11.6 inch display) to run HTML5 vector animations, GCC, and Wine applications inside GNU/Linux. (Wine requires x86 or x86-64 architecture.) I also want WLAN, Bluetooth, audio, and suspend to work. Which subnotebook computer brand is any good nowadays?

Re:Badger?

[tepples]

I can't help you with your buyer's remorse.

inside GNU/Linux

Here you go, my son. Pick one and buy it.

Doing so might result in the same sort of buyer's remorse mentioned earlier because the list you cited includes the ASUS T100TA and X205TA, which scored poorly in DebianOn. Sound, suspend, and Bluetooth fail on both the T100TA and X205TA. How would I go about narrowing the list you cited to only those products that work well with GNU/Linux?

Re:Badger?

[tepples]

Answering my own question: I guess one of the costs of using free software is having to copy and paste the make and model into a search engine and add the word Linux for all dozen models in a particular roundup.

I used to blame flash for everything too

[JustNiz]

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.

Re:I used to blame flash for everything too

[Anonymous Coward]

It's piles and piles of Javascript. They run browsers out of memory.

Re:I used to blame flash for everything too

[thegarbz]

Either you've got a rosy coloured view of the past or something very wrong with your browser installation.

If Chrome crashes once a month then it's a bad month. Firefox is likewise not unstable enough to note.

Re:I used to blame flash for everything too

[tepples]

Most unnecessary JavaScript is associated with scripts that track you from one website to another. Users of Firefox can therefore drastically reduce execution of unnecessary JavaScript by activating tracking protection across the whole web. In about:config, set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true.

The one downside of enabling tracking protection is that you lose the ability to read websites whose operators believe that cross-site tracking is part of the economic bargain that qualifies you to receive articles from the site. Last I checked, this included WIRED, the INQUIRER, The Atlantic, and Jellynote.

Bugger HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

*All* media should be click-to-play, regardless of format.

Seriously, what is the case for auto-playing? Does anyone like that?

Re:Bugger HTML5

[Waffle Iron]

To make matters worse, they hid the "click to activate" setting for HTML5 video in some obscure about:config entry. At the very least, it should be in the main config dialogs.

Re: Bugger HTML5

[McCovican]

That's because the setting in a:c that blocks autoplay, also largely breaks HTML5 video altogether. You'll find a lot of stuff won't play at all with that setting enabled.

Re:Bugger HTML5

[tepples]

That can be abused. Watch a site show only the headline and first sentence until the viewer clicks the "Read More" button, which treats the click as an authorization to play for as long as the page remains visible.

A policy to require a separate click for each media element would be impractical as well. A web-based video game would end up pausing every single time an event occurs that results in playing a sound effect. You'd look for the native version only to find that the native version is for a platform other than yours.

Re: Bugger HTML5

[Waffle Iron]

A. I haven't seen a problem with videos not working. Granted, there are only about 3 sites on the web where I have ever wanted a video to play. Everywhere else, I don't care if it breaks.

B. I don't see any technical reason why it should break. How is it any different from faking a "pause" button right after the page load? If it is breaking, the browser vendors should fix it. If the protocol somehow can't handle it, fix the protocol. Get it done.

Re: Bugger HTML5

[McCovican]

A: Lucky you. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that if they actually put this into the primary options, not many other users would be so relaxed about it breaking content. B: The great almighty Waffle Iron has spoken. It shall be so.

Re: Bugger HTML5

[Waffle Iron]

If you think I'm being unreasonable, maybe you could tell my why it breaks, what is the justification for creating such a crappy architecture, and what is the justification for not fixing the crappy design?

Re: Bugger HTML5

[McCovican]

I'm not a Mozilla engineer dude, I don't know why they think the way they do. I was just trying to help explain that the a:c fix isn't as simple as you think. Also, explaining to you why things work they way they do isn't actually a prerequisite of thinking that your entitlement complex is unreasonable.

Re: Bugger HTML5

[Waffle Iron]

I don't have an entitlement complex. As I pointed out, the config fix works for my use case. That doesn't make this alleged limitation any less stupid, though. For example, there are a lot of people on metered data plans, and auto-play videos are undoubtedly costing them a significant amount of money. Saddling them with this crap is plainly irresponsible.

I've had it on ask to activate for years

[rsilvergun]

who in their right mind would run flash on by default?

Re:I've had it on ask to activate for years

[DontBeAMoran]

Who in their right mind would run flash?

Fixed that for you.

Re:I've had it on ask to activate for years

[KiloByte]

There's a large corpus of games, animations, and so on, written in Flash. Unlike DRM and advertising, those are actually useful.

Re:I've had it on ask to activate for years

[bill_mcgonigle]

who in their right mind would run flash on by default?

I was still using Macs when I installed the Flashblock extension on Firefox, so that was a good decade ago.

Who in their right mind ships a browser that has Flash autoplay enabled? Users were fed up before Flashblock was written (in response).

Re:I've had it on ask to activate for years

[AmiMoJo]

I would be happy with click-to-play if it wasn't such a bugger to keep up to date. The update mechanism for Flash is horrible. The way Chrome does it, where Flash is bundled with browser updates, is much better, but Firefox still relies on Adobe to keep the plugin up to date.

Re:I've had it on ask to activate for years

[KiloByte]

Yeah, I really wish Flash was available as a reasonable stand-alone executable that actually works.

This way, we'd have all the good Flash content still working; that on the web Flash degenerated into a tool for DRMing videos hurts what I consider legitimate uses. And those would be nice to have the same way we have NES emulators.

Especially if it's portable -- somehow every dev around me talks about jumping the x86 ship for arm64, where nothing Adobe exists.

Re:I've had it on ask to activate for years

[mjwx]

There's a large corpus of games, animations, and so on, written in Flash. Unlike DRM and advertising, those are actually useful.

Not to mention vendors who still use it... Looking at you VMWare... who are killing off the very usable, solid, stable, fast and quite nice Vcentre thick client.

Autoplay abuse

[fyngyrz]

Seriously, what is the case for auto-playing? Does anyone like that?

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.

Re:Autoplay abuse

[DontBeAMoran]

I've started adding auto-play video domains to my hosts only a few months ago, adding domains manually every time. I think I only have about 50 in my list and it's already pretty rare to see something auto-play.

Yes it's easier if you get your hosts file somewhere else, but from my own habits and from what I've read, most people only visit a small number of known websites so it's not like adding domains to hosts is a permanent job.

Re:Autoplay abuse

[trawg]

Or, you can keep going back. And they'll keep abusing you.

I like going back over and over to close the website immediately, so that their stats show that more users bounce after a very short period of time, which hopefully they correlate to the addition of autoplaying video.

I suspect I'm an edge case though and most people happily sit there and soak it up.

Re:Autoplay abuse

[doom]

That's how I'm currently handling full-screen javascript pop-ups (sign up for our newsletter!). If enough of us learn to hit control-w fast, maybe they'll get the message.

Re:Autoplay abuse

[fyngyrz]

This works great for a few sites, but quickly bogs down everything

Not unless you're running on an 80286, it doesn't. Probably not even then.

Re:Mozilla

[DontBeAMoran]

What do you mean by "convert flash to HTML5"?

What?

[Sir Holo]

What's "Flash"?

Is it like COBOL or something?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's something that can improve pictures in poor lighting conditions. Apparently HTML5 is letting websites access to the computer's cameras through the browser and Firefox is trying to play it safe by not accidentally blinding anyone who is driving. The clues are in the details. It's being rolled out to Firefox Nightly first. This should greatly improve night pictures. The daily Firefox builds will likely get it later.

HTML5 Worse than Flash Due to Autoplay

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:HTML5 Worse than Flash Due to Autoplay

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. Thanks. Is there any similar way to disable in Chrome or Edge?

apparently.

Re:HTML5 Worse than Flash Due to Autoplay

[hviezda14]

Dunno why moderated to 0, please moderate parent up. It was helpful.

Re:People still use flash?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I uninstalled Flash about a year after Youtube went HTML5

You never edit videos on YouTube, do you?
 

Re:People still use flash?

[AHuxley]

It was good for video and mic support over different OS, browsers.

It's not needed

[91degrees]

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.

Re:WTF is with all the anti-Flash hype?

[thsths]

Yes, I am sure people said the same about Silverlight, ActiveX and the Quicktime plugin.

Quick! Close the barn door!

[jensend]

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.

Re:WTF is with all the anti-Flash hype?

[jenningsthecat]

Yes, I am sure people said the same about Silverlight, ActiveX and the Quicktime plugin.

I'll give you Quicktime and ActiveX, but I don't think anybody outside of Redmond ever said that Silverlight was here to stay.

Still allows tracking, cap use, and CPU use

[tepples]

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.

Re:Still allows tracking, cap use, and CPU use

[doom]

The goal of ad-blocking is to keep from being irritated by morons who have you confused with an idiot who can be sold to by being irritated.

Can't buy Adobe Animate for HTML5; must rent

[tepples]

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.

Re:Can't buy Adobe Animate for HTML5; must rent

[Merk42]

Why would encouraging them to write their ads in HTML5 require them to use specific software?

Re:Can't buy Adobe Animate for HTML5; must rent

[tepples]

Flash is a proprietary platform using proprietary software from the vendor, Adobe.

A paid-for copy of proprietary Macromedia Flash or proprietary Adobe Flash prior to Creative Cloud can still be used without charge. This is not true of proprietary Adobe Animate in Creative Cloud.

If you don't like it, then leave it.

So how can an author leave Flash and take his old creative works with him? Which application distributed as free software do you recommend for creating HTML5 vector animations, particularly for converting old FLA source files?

Re:Can't buy Adobe Animate for HTML5; must rent

[tepples]

Flash isn't free software. Why should your HTML5 animation tool be free software?

Because you put so much emphasis on the word "proprietary". What's the benefit of replacing one proprietary tool with another proprietary tool?

Re:Can't buy Adobe Animate for HTML5; must rent

[tepples]

In theory, Flash is an open platform as well since Open Screen Project removed restrictions on third party SWF players.

Re:Can't buy Adobe Animate for HTML5; must rent

[tepples]

Then we appear to disagree on the definition of an "open platform", and discussion will be unfruitful until this is resolved. Does it mean "one for which a free writer and reader could lawfully be created"? Or does it mean "one for which a free writer and reader already exists"? If neither, than what does it mean to you?

Re:you're daft

[tepples]

games and animations running on a deprecated platform are "useful"???

The Nintendo Entertainment System is likewise "a deprecated platform". Yet many classic games are exclusive to it, not having been (legally) ported to a newer platform.

sudo: Bad command or file name

[tepples]

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.

Re:Mozilla

[tepples]

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.

Re:Many sites still use it

[tepples]

"Default" yes, "only" no.

At the top of National Weather Service's radar pages is a link "Go to Standard Version". NWS refers to the animated GIF as "Standard Version" and the Flash animation as "Enhanced Version". For example, "standard" radar for IWX (Northern Indiana) looks like this: no terrain layer but still usable for many.

Other than Animate, what converts FLA to HTML5?

[tepples]

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?

Re:Other than Animate, what converts FLA to HTML5?

[Merk42]

their ads

Who said ads?

The link from the AC you replied to is called "Convert Flash Ads to HTML5"

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?

Yes, convert but why couldn't they write their news ads (because, again the original link is about ADS) in HTML5 using whatever IDE they choose?

Newgrounds, et al are a different subject. A bloo bloo, my Silverlight/Java Applet/Macromedia Shockwave game doesn't work in 2017 ;_;

empower the users!

[doom]

Wouldn't it be cool if Firefox 55 was "ask to activate"?

Re:Mozilla

[tepples]

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?

Re:Mozilla

[tepples]

Google doesn't include the experience and expertise of other Slashdot users reading this discussion.