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Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1
- jakob223 11y agoI use chrome with all plugins disabled unless I right-click to run them, and the only one that I regularly have to enable is the PDF viewer. I find it a much more enjoyable (and faster) browser experience and have no need for an ad blocker because flash ads are the only ones that really annoy me. I think it's a great idea to disable non-essential flash by default.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoIsn't part of the point here that flash ads are mostly going to migrate to HTML5 and then having click-to-run on flash won't be blocking hardly any ads?
- zastrowm 11y agoDisabling all plugins by default is a much better experience, especially for ads with sound. You can also opt-out the PDF viewer out of the click-to-play by visiting chrome://plugins/ and always allowing.
- kin 11y agoGood riddance. Sometimes I forget to turn ad-block back on after testing stuff. Thanks Google.
- dredmorbius 11y agoTip: use different user profiles. A "stock", "raw", or "testing" profile for unfiltered use. Though better sandboxing would be my choice.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoOne should test with certain blocking enabled as well surely?
- dredmorbius 11y agoSee previous reply. You get both.
- kin 11y agoWouldn't switching between different profiles be the same effort as enabling/disabling?
- dredmorbius 11y agoExtensions are specific to profiles. Rather than toggle a bunch of extensions on and off, just switch profiles.
- arghbleargh 11y agoSo... can somebody explain what the difference between "essential" and "non-essential" Flash content is, and how Chrome can tell the difference?
- jakob223 11y agoAccording to the article, it's based on whether it's the "main" object on the page. Size and centeredness both play a role, I'd guess.
- dredmorbius 11y agoSo, say, a browser plugin which renamed "main" elements to, oh, say, "notmain", would have the effect of killing autoplay. Though for Flash that's already possible. It's HTML5 that's bugging the shit out of me now.
- icebraining 11y agoFor Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-autoplay/efdhoaajjjgckpbkoglidkeendpkolai?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-auto... For Firefox, I think you can just set media.autoplay.enabled = false in about:config.
- dredmorbius 11y agoThanks, I'd not seen an HTML5 video blocker previously.
- kuschku 11y ago> "essential" Flash content (such as embedded video players) are allowed to automatically run, while non-essential Flash content, much of that being advertisements, will be automatically paused. Can’t we just throw out all flash?
- adventured 11y agoOn Google's network, I presume, they can throw resources at screening for malevolent flash ads better. There's no chance of anti-trust issues there, it's an easy to argue case of consumer protection. Besides that, any court would recognize flash as a dying technology, and the context wouldn't be worth the waste of time. Anti-trust has a drastically higher bar than this.
- kuschku 11y agoI just checked, the actual reason is that Google auto-converts. And I was more asking if the EU might add it to the current trial, but considering it was just badly phrased, guaranteed not.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoYou're free to disable flash on your own system right now. Always have been.
- bduerst 11y agoSure. Now I'm enabling it again just to access a website that requires flash because we haven't thrown it out yet. /web standards
- archon810 11y agoThe irony is that while they recommend converting ads to html5 (or auto convert them with swiffy), the performance goes to shit as well, arguably even worse than flash would have been, at least on mobile. - http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/25/google-now-automatically-converts-flash-ads-to-html5/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/25/google-now-automatically-c... - https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=467709 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=467709 - https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/MtcZGJprWje https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/MtcZGJprWje
- harigov 11y agoJust out of curiosity - could there be issues other than just performance here? For ex., could it be that Flash based ads can identify user/device contributing to privacy issues?
- cpeterso 11y agoFlash provides much more identifiable fingerprinting information (e.g. detailed information about your system fonts) and looser "Flash cookie" (Local Shared Objects) restrictions than JavaScript. https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes
- exodust 11y agoDid you read their conclusions? Javascript is most certainly a method for fingerprinting, regardless of Flash presence. "Browser developers should also consider what they can do to reduce fngerprintability, particularly at the JavaScript API level." "We identified only three groups of browser with comparatively good resistance to fngerprinting: those that block JavaScript, those that use TorButton, and certain types of smartphone." Not having Flash doesn't mean you're immune to fingerprinting. That said, it would be nice if Adobe prevented system font lists via Flash.
- cpeterso 11y ago
- cyberjunkie 11y ago"Google's reasoning for the move is largely performance-based, apparently" Now if only they can start optimizing Chrome urgently, that'd be just great!
- monksy 11y agoNow 16gb isn't enough to run Chrome? Why am I feeling that Crysis may be more reasonable than Chrome?
- _pmf_ 11y ago> "Google's reasoning for the move is largely performance-based, apparently" Yeah, because WebGL never crashes the browser (not even the kind of small demos that seems to be all it's used for).
- onion2k 11y agoI've been developing WebGL content for the past 18 months and, so far, it hasn't crashed from any WebGL issues. And that's with my code which is pretty awful most of the time.
- dogma1138 11y agoI've had WebGL crashes quite often on YouTube. Allot of the WebGL demos are also either forcing a WebGL crash from time to time or just hang browsers due to performance. You can say allot about Flash but atm it's performance and stability are better than WebGL in it's current state. The problem with WebGL is that it pretty much inherited the mess of OpenGL every driver version on every GPU can implement different feature set of it (similar to the extension mess of OpenGL in Nvidia and ATI minidrivers at the time) which results in Browsers having to maintain blacklist/whitelists[1] for a very large array of hardware and software combinations (Chrome currently isn't maintaining a driver version based list other than a cut off date for certain drivers which also causes problems if you are running old hardware and the best drivers for it are considered out of date by Google). WebGL it self is also not implemented in the same manner across different browsers Chrome and FF for example have quite a different blacklist/whitelist for WebGL, I don't know if this because of different in browser implementation or because of they are simply encountering different issues and adjusting accordingly. The worse thing I've encountered so far is WebGL on switchable graphics (e.g. Nvidia Optimus) enabled laptops, some features might switch the GPU arbitrarily even mid execution which causes the whole thing to implode.. [1]https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/gpu/+/master/config/software_rendering_list_json.cc https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/gpu/+/master/... Whats worse is that WebGL can actually crash your graphics driver and if it's bad enough than Windows can't recover the kernel mode driver it's a complete kernel panic. This doesn't happen often but if you want to do it you can do it sadly too easily, Chrome/FF chase known DOS cases with WebCL quite well but they really don't catch all of them and if that feature isn't blacklisted for your setup well you can crash a machine with a single pixel draw ;) And the introduction of WebCL would probably lead to some of the nastiest RCE vulnerabilities you can imagine soon enough you are allowing people to execute general purpose code directly on the metal and interact with Kernel mode components. There are already GPU rootkits out there soon enough they'll find an infection vector trough WebGL or WebCL and it will be a very unpleasant period.
- phamilton 11y agoFor anyone interested in the definition of "essential", see the source code: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/content/renderer/pepper/plugin_instance_throttler_impl.cc https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/... (See constants) and https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/content/renderer/pepper/plugin_power_saver_helper.cc https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/... (See ShouldThrottleContent) TLDR, essential content is either: 1) On the same domain as the page 2) Considered "Large" (at least 298 x 398, certain aspect ratio, minimum total area), with an exception for tiny content (likely transport plugins).
- michaelbuckbee 11y agoThe only other regular 'tiny content' thing I can think of is ZeroClipboard (which puts an invisible flash movie over a button so you can click 'copy') as Javascript clipboard actions still aren't broadly supported [2]. ZeroClipboard is used by Github and lots of other sites for the little buttons next to repo URLs, etc. 1 - https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard 2 - http://caniuse.com/#search=clipboard http://caniuse.com/#search=clipboard
- kfor 11y agoI think this is actually a benefit for consumers, but this just seems like an invitation to an antitrust suit.
- vacri 11y agoChrome has invented Flashblock (2004) :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashblock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashblock
- pjmlp 11y agoI can already disable flash ads. Good luck disabling HTML 5 ads without browser plugins support.
- dredmorbius 11y agoI've gotten high mileage by blocking OVPs directly. I'm advocating doing this to encourage video providers to NOT enable autoplay on video. 0.0.0.0 www.autofixinfo.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 c.brightcove.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 player.theplatform.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 link.theplatform.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ci-2862d2c8d6-68f418d2.http.atlas.cdn.yimg.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 video-img2.thedailymeal.net # Autoplay audio 0.0.0.0 ht1.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht2.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht3.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht4.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht5.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht6.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht7.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht8.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video 0.0.0.0 ht9.cdn.turner.com # Autoplay video Protip: install dnsmasq which allows you to block entire domains rather than listing hosts independently. (Note: corrected s/VPN/OVP, see followup.)
- jlgaddis 11y ago>* I've gotten high mileage by blocking VPNs directly.* Uh... oh! You meant CDNs? I'd suspect there'd be a lot of collateral damage if you block entire CDNs, no?
- dredmorbius 11y agoAs I discovered while looking for targets of opportunity, the term of art is apparently "online video provider", or OVP (not "VPN" as I'd first written, thinking "video provider network". "Tips for Choosing an Online Video Platform (OVP)" http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Tips-for-Choosing-an-Online-Video-Platform-(OVP)-90061.aspx http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar... Yes, there's collateral damage. I'll take it. If needs be, I'll hop into /etc/hosts and unblock for a moment.
- sharmadwivid 11y agoThis is awesome!!! Now no more unwanted stuff while browsing.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dogma1138 11y agoI got plugins disabled by default in Chrome for ages now (right click run plugin when needed). Before that on FF i had an add on that disabled autorun for flash also (very similar to how chrome does it with plugins gotta right click to load it). But if Google does it only for none Google adnetworks that's going to be a huge lawsuit. The article doesn't really clarify why would it work on Google own networks because they convert to HTML5 or because they will white list their own stuff. TBH we could've gotten rid of Flash years ago, Google was actually a big supporter for Flash, it was very important for them at some point in time, Google Chat, Gmail Extensions, Google Wave, and most importantly getting high bit rate video on YouTube off the ground (DXVA, OpenGL support was critical for YouTube and every other streaming site out-there), and heck Google promoted Flash on Android until JB as their big gotcha over Apple..
- dao- 11y agoBut if Google does it only for none Google adnetworks that's going to be a huge lawsuit. The article doesn't really clarify why would it work on Google own networks because they convert to HTML5 or because they will white list their own stuff. It's because their ad network converts stuff, at least that's the only way I can read these sentences: Google said advertisers who are worried about having their ads switched off should consider converting their Flash artwork to HTML5. According to the cyber-goliath, "most Flash ads uploaded to [Google] AdWords are automatically converted to HTML5." So, in other words, if you're not on Google's ad network, you're locked out of Chrome – unless you also switch to HTML5 artwork.
- dogma1138 11y agoI've read it, but I've also read the "most" part in it so it wasn't clear what will they do with Flash adds that cannot be converted. The opening subtitle can be also interpreted both ways, in fact most people would say that "If your ads aren't on web giant's network, they better be HTML5 – or they're dead to Chrome." means that Google will block Flash from every source but Google.
- Sephr 11y agoYou don't need to be on Google's ad network to use swiffy (the conversion tool that they are using), it's open source.
- ablation 11y agoI hope that Google takes the next, bigger step and kills its YouTube Flash player. The HTML5 one is superior in almost every way and so many browsers now support HTML5[1]. It would be a really meaningful statement. This is just a bit 'meh'. [1] http://html5readiness.com/ http://html5readiness.com/
- chrismarlow9 11y agoWhat irritates me is that flash is required for google music. I really like google music over all the other radio services, plus I have some music in my lib, but I've resorted to just looking up albums on youtube. If it's an absolute must have for some technical reason, a desktop client would be nice as an alternative.
- lucaspiller 11y agoAnd Google Finance... It is rather ironic half of their sites are going to break, unless they conveniently add an exception.
- wutbrodo 11y ago> It is rather ironic half of their sites are going to break, unless they conveniently add an exception. Those sites aren't going to break, even without adding any exceptions. There's no definition of "essential" that would exclude Flash content on Google Finance. As mentioned above, the exact heuristics they're using are: "TLDR, essential content is either: 1) On the same domain as the page 2) Considered "Large" (at least 298 x 398, certain aspect ratio, minimum total area), with an exception for tiny content (likely transport plugins)."
- Jordrok 11y agoOne might say that it's convenient that there's an exception for "essential" content...
- 11y ago
- dang 11y agoUrl changed from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/28/google_says_flash_ads_out_september/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/28/google_says_flash_ad..., which points to this.
- shocks 11y agoI've had pretty much zero consequences from disabling Flash globally in all my browsers. Where is Flash still essential?
- hrbrtglm 11y agoFlash is essential for harmony of your twosome life if you share your computer with your girlfriend who plays facebook games.
- brobinson 11y agoJust have her use Chrome for that. I don't have Flash installed, and I just copy and paste a URL into Chrome if some website's video player requires Flash with no HTML5 fallback.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThere are millions of flash games that my kids would not appreciate losing access to; YouTube still uses flash by default I think; iPlayer (BBC program player) and news websites still mainly [or exclusively] use flash.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoYouTube uses flash if it thinks you have flash. Otherwise if no flash installed or plugin disabled it defaults to HTML5 (Firefox on GNU/Linux and Mac)
- EarthLaunch 11y agoEmbrace, extend, extinguish? I remember when Chrome first integrated Flash into its browser rather than requiring it to be a separate install.
- Menge 11y ago> Embrace, extend, extinguish? Only the 3rd properly applies to Chrome and Flash. Chrome didn't embrace an API they could extend; they shipped a plugin providing an ~ABI of a foreign/closed API then still had to make atomic decisions like this one.
- HazonS 11y agoTaking Flash away is always a good new for privacy and security :) Anyway, is not sufficient. Why would google take a good but not sufficient approach? IMO because of marketing issues: get some hackers and tech savvy people to evangelize that they are improving their privacy issues. I suppose google doesn't need flash/super cookies, "so lets take them out, we look good, and we still have the same entropy to get to know the user"
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dannyzb 11y agoGreat ! Another browser that cannot play HLS video ! We're left with converting each stream to 3 separate formats ( HLS,DASH264 and RTMP ) to stream on all browsers .. What solution do they offer for that ?
- illumen 11y agoIs this anti competitive?
- jcl 11y agoThat occurred to me, too. It certainly hurts any competing ad networks who don't have a Flash-to-HTML5 converter ready. On the other hand, I think Chrome is the only major browser that ships with the ability to play Flash, so one could argue that it is just altering the benefit that Google has been providing to all Flash providers for years.
- skynetv2 11y agobut will continue to autoplay html5 ads provided by Google ad network? Or does Google ad network explicitly prohibit auto play?
- taco_emoji 11y agoWish they would do this for animated GIFs...