The End of an Era – Next Steps for Adobe Flash

[Bot]

Today, Adobe announced that Flash will no longer be supported after 2020. Microsoft will phase out support for Flash in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer ahead of this date.

Flash led the way on the web for rich content, gaming, animations, and media of all kinds, and inspired many of the current web standards powering HTML5. Adobe has partnered with Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple, and many others, to ensure that the open web could meet and exceed the experiences that Flash has traditionally provided. HTML5 standards, implemented across all modern browsers, provide these capabilities with improved performance, battery life, and increased security. We look forward to continuing to work with Adobe and our industry partners on enriching the open web without the need for plug-ins.

We will phase out Flash from Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, culminating in the removal of Flash from Windows entirely by the end of 2020. This process began already for Microsoft Edge with Click-to-Run for Flash in the Windows 10 Creators Update. The process will continue in the following phases:

• Through the end of 2017 and into 2018, Microsoft Edge will continue to ask users for permission to run Flash on most sites the first time the site is visited, and will remember the user’s preference on subsequent visits. Internet Explorer will continue to allow Flash with no special permissions required during this time.
• In mid to late 2018, we will update Microsoft Edge to require permission for Flash to be run each session. Internet Explorer will continue to allow Flash for all sites in 2018.
• In mid to late 2019, we will disable Flash by default in both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer. Users will be able to re-enable Flash in both browsers. When re-enabled, Microsoft Edge will continue to require approval for Flash on a site-by-site basis.
• By the end of 2020, we will remove the ability to run Adobe Flash in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer across all supported versions of Microsoft Windows. Users will no longer have any ability to enable or run Flash.

This timeline is consistent across browsers, including Google, Mozilla, and Apple. We look forward to continuing our close collaboration with Adobe, other browser vendors, and the publishing community, as we evolve the future of the web for everyone.

— John Hazen, Principal Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Edge

Source

 

[frogboy]

Now the hackers will have to find sometthing else to exploit, which I am sure they will.

 

[Viking]

Now the hackers will have to find sometthing else to exploit, which I am sure they will.

Watch out for Brain.exe exploit.

 

[marg]

HTML is way better IMO. Adobe Flash has constant updates & they can't ever get it right. Good riddance to Adobe Flash.!

 

[Deletedmessiah]

HTML is way better IMO. Adobe Flash has constant updates & they can't ever get it right. Good riddance to Adobe Flash.!

I hate that you can't stop HTML5 videos from auto loading, without breaking the sites. Though this can be called a fault of browser makers.

 

[Winter Soldier]

Flash is based on closed source code added like external plugin in the browser, therefore it can not be verified and may contain flaws (and often... many flaws).

And today it is useless because HTML5 allows you to do the same in the native way, with an open standard and supported by every browser, and indeed today, in the standard there is also the management of the DRM (what is much disputed, of course, but at least now there are no more excuses to use proprietary plugin) in short, Flash has no more sense to exist.

 

[jogs]

But without Flash the Web wouldn't have been so wonderful. It may have some problems but for a long time it gave us a lot to enjoy. But as with everything it has now come to its end.

 

[Vasudev]

Finally I can save some 100 Megs every month on every PC w/o constant Adobe Flash Update after 2020. I got rid of IE11 on Win 10.

 

[ispx]

But without Flash the Web wouldn't have been so wonderful. It may have some problems but for a long time it gave us a lot to enjoy. But as with everything it has now come to its end.

thank you for acknowledging adobe's huge contribution to the virtual world unlike some other ungratefuls who chose to bash a fallen ally.

 

[Vasudev]

thank you for acknowledging adobe's huge contribution to the virtual world unlike some other ungratefuls who chose to bash a fallen ally.

I still enjoy flash games when I have time. But think in the shoes of a complete noob who will install a flash version w/o updating and gets hit by a malware or other vulnerabilities.
Yes they gave the web a new tool to create awesome websites but they could have fixed horrendous CPU and battery usage as well.

 

[kev216]

Security-wise, it's good to see Adobe has finally decided to put a date on it. It's good to see they still provide updates for about three more years, since a lot of websites (it's getting a lot less, but still) are using flash content. I hope they will all update to html5 soon.
On the other hand, we must not forget how important and life changing flash was. When the internet first came up, all you could see was text. With the invention of flash a whole new world on the web was created. From then on everything could move on the screen, really new things could be made, just using a simple plugin. It was really innovating that time. Not much software has this reputation I guess. Sadly flash became so popular that also more irritating things were using the technology like ads for example and the security holes it had due to it's big popularity made it die slowly.
But I hope that in 2020 also html5 will become better. In terms of resource usage, flash is still unbeatable in my opinion. If you just look on youtube, and you use flash player, you can watch a high quality video without problems on lower specs machines. Don't try to do the same with the html5 player using the VP9 codec. Your CPU on a that same slower machine is burning down.
No hate to html5, it's really fantastic you can do all this stuff out of the box without a single plugin, but there is still lot's of work to do in terms of resource usage.

 

[Atlas147]

Not really sure what runs flash anymore, most of the webpages have phased out flash ahead of this announcement just due to the amount of vulnerabilities reported.
The only webpage I know still runs flash is my driving center's learning portal.

 

[212eta]

With HTML5, Adobe Flash won't be missed...

 

[Urusen]

I gonna mi$$ you flash.

 

[Node]

thank you for acknowledging adobe's huge contribution to the virtual world unlike some other ungratefuls who chose to bash a fallen ally.

Their contribution was good but hiring a team of engineer's to at least code a bit more securely would've been nice. But I'm glad to see the death of the software is arriving upon us; won't have to deal with the constant issues caused by it now.