Firefox 69 Will Disable Adobe Flash Plugin by Default (zdnet.com)

Mozilla will take the next major step in disabling support for the Adobe Flash plugin later this year when it releases Firefox 69. From a report: Firefox 69 will be Mozilla's third last step to completely dropping support for the historically buggy plugin, which will reach end of life on December 31, 2020. Flash is the last remaining NPAPI plugin that Firefox supports. Mozilla flagged the change, spotted by Ghacks, in a new bug report that notes "we'll disable Flash by default in Nightly 69 and let that roll out". Firefox 69 stable will be released in early September, according to Mozilla's release calendar.

Comments

Version 69 "decouples" two things

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Not exactly what the Internet would have expected.

Flash

[Joce640k]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Re: Flash

[sound vision]

It's actually not bad for making vector-based animations with interactive components. I believe that was its intended purpose. The issues came when people started using it to design entire web sites.

User choice

[imidan]

This is a good step. It's great that browser makers are generally not beholden to people like advertisers for money, so they can make more user-friendly decisions. I'd like to see more, though.

I don't want autoplay anything in my browser. Especially audio and video. I use a plugin that aims to disable a lot of autoplay, but it doesn't always work. Why not have a browser flag that tells sites "I don't want autoplaying multimedia content"? I know crappy sites with video ads would ignore it, but more legitimate sites could respect it, potentially allowing them to save on bandwidth by not sending content to me that I don't want. I know I can stop it all by turning off JS entirely, but it's so integrated into so much of the web now that even simple sites barely work without it.

It's a little different from "do not track" in that even legitimate sites have monetary incentive to track me regardless of how I set that flag. What incentive do they have to stream videos to me that I don't want to watch?

Maybe I'm just in the minority in not wanting everything to be a video. Maybe the issue is that the sites have no motivation to obey "no autoplay" because it would cost developer time to satisfy a very small group of visitors.

Re:User choice

[markdavis]

>"Maybe I'm just in the minority in not wanting everything to be a video. [...] I don't want autoplay anything in my browser."

You might be in the minority, but you are FAR from alone. I *detest* ANY type of media autoplay- regardless of the type or if it is muted or not. And I think most users are very annoyed by any type of autoplay, but perhaps not motivated enough to fight it (especially if muted). Firefox is the only browser (I know of) so far that allows blocking autoplay of muted video (and no addon/plugin needed):

media.autoplay.default=1
media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed=false
media.autoplay.allow-muted=false

Although it will break some sites (I find in practice it is a rare thing, though). The Firefox UI currently includes no way to set the first two of the above, you must use about:config.

>"Maybe the issue is that the sites have no motivation to obey "no autoplay" because it would cost developer time to satisfy a very small group of visitors."

Or they are so arrogant and controlling they want to FORCE their crap down your throat regardless of your preferences, requests, or situation. I don't want my browsing experience to ever be like DVR-less "TV" or "Radio".

Re:User choice

[tepples]

I use a plugin that aims to disable a lot of autoplay, but it doesn't always work.

I'm interested in what your plug-in can and can't block. How many of these tests still play?

I know I can stop it all by turning off JS entirely

CSS animated filmstrips, such as this and this, still play with video autoplay, GIF autoplay, and JavaScript all turned off.

Where now?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, where do i go if i want a browser with flash support.

Sure, disable flash by default. But as many things that involves computers, there's always people that have a use for it and/or want to access old content. I want a browser that has flash enabled. All the big vendors disabled it now. It feels they do not want to leave the choice to the user.
Having an up-to-date browser with flash is a better option than sticking to firefox 68 with flash and without updates.

Re:Where now?

[RickyShade]

Use oldversion.com, put an alternate browser install to run along next to your main one.

Re:I consider this a good thing for developers

[Luckyo]

The "excuse" is quite simple. Flash works, and implementation has been paid for. Unless you are willing to pay for new implementation, you don't get to tell people that they can't use their existing implementation "because reasons".

It's honestly baffling how many people are so ignorant of the most basic concepts of "budgeting" and "sunk costs". No wonder so many are living paycheck to paycheck.

Remedy is worse than the disease

[Espectr0]

Disease: Flash.
Can autoplay videos. Easy to workaround: block the plugin, even on a per-site basis.

Remedy: HTML5 videos
Can autoplay videos. Cannot be blocked. Some partial solutions include hidden config settings in browsers, and it may break sites.

A slim minority of ads aren't hostile

[tepples]

Unlike your naive world of 2007, here in the future all ads are in fact user hostile

I agree with you that the vast majority of web ads are user-hostile. This includes any ad hosted by a third-party ad network or ad exchange, as those have a habit of stalking users across multiple websites to infer their interests in order to give advertisers the feeling of more control over what viewers see their ads. Ad networks and ad exchanges do this because interest-based advertising reportedly pays out three times as much per view as context-based advertising.

But "all" is stretching it. I don't see how ads that are hosted by a website's publisher, such as the display ads on Daring Fireball and Read the Docs, are user-hostile. Newspapers and magazines got along fine with this model for decades, despite web publishers complaining that they could never make money that way.

I agree, but not sure about change of wording...

[SuperKendall]

Ok, I'll grant that strictly static text ads are not user hostile (since in the category of "hostile" I was think trackers and other cookie related nefariousness).

So I'd amend that slightly to say any ad that required any interactive component at all, from Flash to Javascript, to function...

The ads that you mention are so rare in nature though that I hesitate to not say "all" as it encompasses pretty much anything most people would ever encounter.

Just like you could possibly say not all falls from great heights are fatal, but enough are that you may as well just say all so no-one gets the wrong idea.

What about when we need Flash?

[darth_borehd]

How do we play or use Flash when we have to? I understand it is old, but there was a lot of content made for it. Some of it needs to still be used or enjoyed.

Re:What about when we need Flash?

[thegarbz]

Isolated virtual machine running Windows XP behind 3 firewalls installed only in RAM, and when you're done throw out the RAM sticks. Alternatively burn the building down. Safety first.