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They are not supported in most browsers. Most users are going to have a bad experience if they load a page with Flash, and it makes sense to down-rank pages tha

They are not supported in most browsers. Most users are going to have a bad experience if they load a page with Flash, and it makes sense to down-rank pages that will deliver a bad experience.

superkuh 6y ago
Most file types are not supported in browsers. Only a few are. A "download file" dialog is not a bad experience. Treating .swf like a normal file type would both be easier and better in all ways.
- spijdar 6y ago
  Flash will not be supported in any of the large browsers after December, limiting access to people who go out of their way to use both a fork that preserves NPAPI or whatever Chromium uses and manually install some version of Flash. I'm not aware of any search engines that index arbitrary files that the browser or some ubiquitous media viewer can't open. The most annoying I can think of is the occasional powerpoint files I've run across on google, and at least those are usually cached in a browser-friendly format. It'd be like indexing Adobe CS project files, and requiring a subscription to Adobe to open the search result.
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    There is a binary, Windows-native SWF player that still works 100% perfectly on Win 10. There is also one for OSX but with Apple's hatred for backwards compatibility I have no idea whether it still works or not It's a shame that Adobe has all but buried it, but it does work. Honestly its the only good way to view downloaded flash content nowadays, because it preserves all the hyperlinks and other nonlinearity that is lost on conversion to a video file. Strongbad emails, for example, have tons of hidden content activated by clicking hotspots during playback. (You can even hunt for them by hitting Tab)
    - navanchauhan 6y ago
      For macOS iSwiff ( https://echoone.com/iswiff/ https://echoone.com/iswiff/ ). Should hopefully work until the end of time
- ehsankia 6y ago
  > Most file types are not supported in browsers And does Google index/show any of them in a search result? You usually have to get them indirectly from pages, but the search links themselves never directly link to any unsupported file type AFAIK
  - p1mrx 6y ago
    I think you're right. Weird text formats like filetype:cpp work fine, but filetype:bmp does not, and that could be considered analogous to swf.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      And even then I think only when it's being served with "content-type: text/plain", which the browser clearly supports.

They are not supported in most browsers. Most users are going to have a bad experience if they load a page with Flash, and it makes sense to down-rank pages that will deliver a bad experience.

superkuh 6y ago

Most file types are not supported in browsers. Only a few are. A "download file" dialog is not a bad experience. Treating .swf like a normal file type would both be easier and better in all ways.

spijdar 6y ago
Flash will not be supported in any of the large browsers after December, limiting access to people who go out of their way to use both a fork that preserves NPAPI or whatever Chromium uses and manually install some version of Flash. I'm not aware of any search engines that index arbitrary files that the browser or some ubiquitous media viewer can't open. The most annoying I can think of is the occasional powerpoint files I've run across on google, and at least those are usually cached in a browser-friendly format. It'd be like indexing Adobe CS project files, and requiring a subscription to Adobe to open the search result.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  There is a binary, Windows-native SWF player that still works 100% perfectly on Win 10. There is also one for OSX but with Apple's hatred for backwards compatibility I have no idea whether it still works or not It's a shame that Adobe has all but buried it, but it does work. Honestly its the only good way to view downloaded flash content nowadays, because it preserves all the hyperlinks and other nonlinearity that is lost on conversion to a video file. Strongbad emails, for example, have tons of hidden content activated by clicking hotspots during playback. (You can even hunt for them by hitting Tab)
  - navanchauhan 6y ago
    For macOS iSwiff ( https://echoone.com/iswiff/ https://echoone.com/iswiff/ ). Should hopefully work until the end of time
ehsankia 6y ago
> Most file types are not supported in browsers And does Google index/show any of them in a search result? You usually have to get them indirectly from pages, but the search links themselves never directly link to any unsupported file type AFAIK
- p1mrx 6y ago
  I think you're right. Weird text formats like filetype:cpp work fine, but filetype:bmp does not, and that could be considered analogous to swf.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    And even then I think only when it's being served with "content-type: text/plain", which the browser clearly supports.