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Chrome 69 is Coming: Not Just a New Look But Flash's Life is About To Get Even Harder (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the flash-needs-to-die dept.

Google's curvy tab Material Design update for Chrome will arrive in version 69 of the browser due out in September. From a report: Google flags the upcoming changes in its Enterprise release notes for Chrome 69, which gives a brief mention under browser interface changes to a "new design across all operating systems." Chrome 69, penciled in for stable release on September 4, will also get native Windows 10 notifications, which have been rolling out to users over the past month. Chrome 69 will also progress the long-running project to deprecate Flash Player, which Adobe has announced will reach end of life in 2020. Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple have similar deprecation timelines for Flash on their desktop browsers. Once ubiquitous, Flash content is now hardly used at all by Chrome users, though Google won't fully remove support until Chrome 87 in 2020. At present, if a user enables Flash for a particular site, they don't need to approve it if they visit the site again. However, in Chrome 69, every time users restart Chrome, they'll need to give permission for sites to use Flash.

15 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Good for its time by XXongo · · Score: 2

    Flash was good for its time, but its time was long ago.

    1. Re:Good for its time by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Back in the 1990's and early 2000's HTML didn't have too many (popular) vector graphics options, the options that were available were trenched in the Browser Wars between Netscape and Internet Explorer. Flash worked for different browsers, across different platforms including Windows, Macs and a young Linux. Later iterations played nice with DRM which extended its usefulness beyond Home Star Runner. It really took HTML5 standard to start to take down Flash. With early Apple iPhone Safari browser being an early adopter of HTML5, and Firefox and Chrome browsers getting a lot of interests as well. Especially with all the delays in getting windows 7 out and IE 6 staying the standard for way too long.

      Flash itself wasn't bad, just it wasn't a standard, and for the web we should follow standards.

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      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Good for its time by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Flash itself wasn't bad, just it wasn't a standard, and for the web we should follow standards.

      Flash became ubiquitous because web designers were begging the W3C to add scripting and multimedia capability to HTML. But the W3C dragged its feet. Initially, too many members had the idealistic notion that the WWW should remain "pure" for the exchange of scientific papers and personal websites like Berners-Lee originally envisioned, not become a place for glitzy marketing copies. So they refused to add audio and video support to HTML. Later it got sidetracked pushing everything in "the next version", which got delayed as more things got pushed into it. There was a 15 year gap between HTML 4.01 and HTML 5. Web developers started using Flash to accomplish what the W3C failed to implement in the HTML standard.

      And if you really want to cry about following standards on the web, you should try reading the history of PHP. It's probably the most organic successful project out there - kludges built upon kludges, patches upon patches. As someone who came from structured languages with well thought-out error checking, I was absolutely horrified when I learned PHP.

  2. As much as we hate flash and java by mevanchik1695 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There has to be a mode that can be globally to whitelist domains in an easy fashion for corporate users. As for the end users. Here lies the problem. They cannot rely on just a pop up to "allow". At minimum, the user will have to always allow once. o wait thats what the article says. Im smart. Anyway, this should also apply to Java.

  3. Re:Fuck passive aggressive software! by afidel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bullshit, accessing the management interface for my VMWare cluster isn't introducing a virus vector. Yes, VMWare introduced an HTML5 management interface, but it sucks, it's slower, buggier, and lacks features found in the Flash interface. Do I like flash, no I do not but decisions made long ago and way above my pay grade mean that I need to use it to do my job, making it more annoying accomplishes NOTHING other than pissing me off for no good reason.

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    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  4. Re: There is a line by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

    I would say it was crappier on the Mac platform but it was crappy on any platform including Windows. What drove Apple to move away from it was Adobe not addressing two major issues that Jobs had with it on mobile: stability and battery performance. Apple always said that they would have put Flash on the iPhone if Adobe addressed them but Adobe never did.

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    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  5. Re:Fuck passive aggressive software! by afidel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The fat client doesn't work with 6.5.

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    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  6. Re: Chrome 69 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You know that all the browsers are doing this, right? They all have a similar roadmap of phase out. Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla all agreed on timelines and shared similar roadmaps - all on the same day for once.

  7. Re: There is a line by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Informative

    You make it out like Flash was a paragon of computing before Apple while twirling its moustache decided to kill it off for all computer users everywhere. Flash was terrible. It crashed often. It consumes lots of computing power. It had so many security holes that it seemed like I was patching daily.

    Flash however was one of the few cross platform things you could use back in the day. When it worked, it would work roughly the same whether on Windows or Mac. However the death knell wasnâ(TM)t just Apple. Better cross platform technologies like HTML5 is making Flash less relevant.

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    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  8. Re: There is a line by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

    Apple never had Flash on mobile. On the Mac it was terrible; it was just more terrible than the PC version. Flash was never great on any platform. It was tolerated because it was one of the few cross platform technologies at the time. The constant security flaws, the CPU performance was what did it in on all platforms not just Mac.

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    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  9. Re: There is a line by DarkOx · · Score: 2

    The quality of flash isn't the point. My point is flash is basically gone not because others delivered superior solutions that people preferred; but because a few gate keeps decided to sabotage the environment it runs in.

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    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  10. Re:Chrome 69 by StormReaver · · Score: 2

    Chrome 69 is going to suck twice as much.

  11. Re:There is a line by Gavagai80 · · Score: 2

    Adobe officially decided to kill flash over a year ago, and unofficially decided years earlier. At this point, the only responsible thing to do is make it progressively more inconvenient so that people won't be using an abandoned bundle of security holes.

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  12. Re: There is a line by Gavagai80 · · Score: 2

    Flash died because internet consumption moved from desktop to mobile, where Adobe was never able to deliver reasonable battery life and performance and soon gave up.

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  13. Re: There is a line by _merlin · · Score: 2

    However the death knell wasn't just Apple. Better cross platform technologies like HTML5 is making Flash less relevant.

    HTML5 animation had far worse performance than Flash when Apple started their mission to kill it. With the whole HTML5/JavaScript mess, we can no longer easily block annoying shit like we could when it had to use embed/object tags. WebAssembly is just like Java all over again, except there are multiple implementations in the browsers themselves rather than a plugin to run the bytecode.