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Adobe Announces that in 2020, Flash Player Will Reach Its 'End-of-Life' in Light of Newer Technologies (webkit.org)
Adobe said on Tuesday it will stop distributing and updating Flash Player at the end of 2020 and is encouraging web developers to migrate any existing Flash content to open standards. Apple is working with Adobe, industry partners, and developers to complete this transition. From a blog post: Apple users have been experiencing the web without Flash for some time. iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch never supported Flash. For the Mac, the transition from Flash began in 2010 when Flash was no longer pre-installed. Today, if users install Flash, it remains off by default. Safari requires explicit approval on each website before running the Flash plugin.
In a blog post, the company wrote: "Adobe has long played a leadership role in advancing interactivity and creative content -- from video, to games and more -- on the web. Where we've seen a need to push content and interactivity forward, we've innovated to meet those needs. Where a format didn't exist, we invented one -- such as with Flash and Shockwave. And over time, as the web evolved, these new formats were adopted by the community, in some cases formed the basis for open standards, and became an essential part of the web. But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we've seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins. Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners -- including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla -- Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats."
In a blog post, the company wrote: "Adobe has long played a leadership role in advancing interactivity and creative content -- from video, to games and more -- on the web. Where we've seen a need to push content and interactivity forward, we've innovated to meet those needs. Where a format didn't exist, we invented one -- such as with Flash and Shockwave. And over time, as the web evolved, these new formats were adopted by the community, in some cases formed the basis for open standards, and became an essential part of the web. But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we've seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins. Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners -- including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla -- Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats."
Because it works spectacularly, and the video quality is superb. I'd go so far as to say it is the gold standard by which all other internet video experiences are measured. Whatever they do from here will be a step backward, I assure you. Why fix it when it ain't broke.
Now, if the many sites that still assume it's present and default to it over HTML5 could finally start working properly when Flash isn't available, the Internet will be a much better place. I'm looking at you [crappy TV news channel websites of your choice goes here].
So, the same as the last decade or two then? That DOES seem like something about which we should be concerned. Has anybody alerted the media??!!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This is a Pyrrhic victory at best. The alternatives often aren't any better, and in many ways are worse.
At least with Flash we had the ability to just not install the plugin, or to remove it or disable it if it were installed, and then we wouldn't be forced to endure it.
But that's not always the case with these built-in technologies. It's even worse with some of the JavaScript-based ones. It can become much harder, if not impossible, to separate "good" JavaScript from "unwanted" JavaScript for any given page. At least when Flash was used we could just block that part of a web page, without necessarily breaking the entire site. Having to dick around with an extension like NoScript to partially block scripts often doesn't work, especially when a site combines useful and unwanted JavaScript code into a single script.
WebAssembly is particularly insidious. While minified or obfuscated JavaScript can be difficult enough to decipher, WASM's binary encoding makes it even harder to figure out what remotely-served code executing in the browser will actually try to do. It's like Java applets all over again.
It's much the same for the embedded audio and video capabilities of modern browsers. They can be useful when they're wanted, but this also leaves them open to abuse (such as when used for advertising purposes).
We've gone from getting screwed in one way to getting screwed in a slightly different way, and neither of these screwings feels good.
Flash should be discontinued next year. OK, this year. :)
Kids will accept whatever I decide to give them. Why do you let kids run your life?