6 ms·

Usage of Flash on websites fell to 20%, down from 25.3% one year ago.

15 points by MarionG 14y ago

ck2 14y ago
No longer use it in Firefox. One less security hole to worry about. Google singlehandedly solved this for me with youtube by encoding about 80% of the videos in WebM - you just add "ipad" to your useragent for youtube.com using http://neko.tsugumi.org/UAControl.html http://neko.tsugumi.org/UAControl.html Sadly cannot play any vimeo in firefox without flash though :-( Windows XP users will not be able to use the firefox fallback solution for MP4 either (Windows Media Foundation).
- recuter 14y ago
  Both YouTube and Vimeo (and I'm sure others) have an "HTML5" opt-in thing that you can set. Vimeo is more problematic, true. And not all videos have been re-encoded yet but it is getting there.
  - belorn 14y ago
    Only if you have an google account. With the user agent, you can now get this feature without one.
- sp332 14y ago
  You can just go to http://youtube.com/html5 http://youtube.com/html5 to opt-in without changing your user-agent.
  - ck2 14y ago
    I've tried that, doesn't work for me. Maybe because I block cookies on google services, but I've seen others complain too.
    - sp332 14y ago
      Yeah, I'm sure it's a cookie setting.
ghshephard 14y ago
I wonder if there is a "tipping point" at which so few sites have flash, that popular browsers will no longer feel the need to support it, resulting in an ecosystem where web sites that want to present themselves to a broad audience have to use some other delivery mechanism - resulting in a rapid drop to 0%. I'm wondering if the iPad marketshare (in a few years) would be sufficient enough to push the market over the edge.
- jfim 14y ago
  There's still a lot of Flash that is used to compensate for things that are not doable without it. For example, Github has Flash; try right clicking on the "Copy this repository's URL to the clipboard" button on any git repo. That, unfortunately, won't go away soon.
  - jstanley 14y ago
    That can totally go away. What about plain text which you just select and copy? If copying text is hard, I think actually cloning the repository after you've copied it's URL is an insurmountable challenge.
    - smackfu 14y ago
      Yes, that would be an alternate workaround for a missing feature in HTML, although not quite as good.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    Maybe this is a dumb question: Why doesn't someone (e.g. Google/Apple/Mozilla) just make a list of the uncontentious things like that which Flash can do and HTML or javascript can't, and then fast track those things to be put in HTML or javascript? Obviously it would require some writing of code, but it seems like it would be a good cause that a lot of people could get behind, including organizations that have coders and/or money. I'm just kind of surprised it hasn't happened already.
    - 14y ago
zdw 14y ago
Putting aside the technical issues, this is an awesome development, if you're blind or require a screen reader or other alternate input/consumption device to use the Web. Flash sites nearly always had extremely horrible usability for that part of the population.
pnewell4 14y ago
I would be curious to know how much of this 20% is for actual content vs. usage for web sockets, copy-to-clipboard, etc.

15 points by MarionG 14y ago

ck2 14y ago

No longer use it in Firefox. One less security hole to worry about. Google singlehandedly solved this for me with youtube by encoding about 80% of the videos in WebM - you just add "ipad" to your useragent for youtube.com using http://neko.tsugumi.org/UAControl.html http://neko.tsugumi.org/UAControl.html Sadly cannot play any vimeo in firefox without flash though :-( Windows XP users will not be able to use the firefox fallback solution for MP4 either (Windows Media Foundation).

recuter 14y ago
Both YouTube and Vimeo (and I'm sure others) have an "HTML5" opt-in thing that you can set. Vimeo is more problematic, true. And not all videos have been re-encoded yet but it is getting there.
- belorn 14y ago
  Only if you have an google account. With the user agent, you can now get this feature without one.
sp332 14y ago
You can just go to http://youtube.com/html5 http://youtube.com/html5 to opt-in without changing your user-agent.
- ck2 14y ago
  I've tried that, doesn't work for me. Maybe because I block cookies on google services, but I've seen others complain too.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Yeah, I'm sure it's a cookie setting.

ghshephard 14y ago

I wonder if there is a "tipping point" at which so few sites have flash, that popular browsers will no longer feel the need to support it, resulting in an ecosystem where web sites that want to present themselves to a broad audience have to use some other delivery mechanism - resulting in a rapid drop to 0%. I'm wondering if the iPad marketshare (in a few years) would be sufficient enough to push the market over the edge.

jfim 14y ago
There's still a lot of Flash that is used to compensate for things that are not doable without it. For example, Github has Flash; try right clicking on the "Copy this repository's URL to the clipboard" button on any git repo. That, unfortunately, won't go away soon.
- jstanley 14y ago
  That can totally go away. What about plain text which you just select and copy? If copying text is hard, I think actually cloning the repository after you've copied it's URL is an insurmountable challenge.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Yes, that would be an alternate workaround for a missing feature in HTML, although not quite as good.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  Maybe this is a dumb question: Why doesn't someone (e.g. Google/Apple/Mozilla) just make a list of the uncontentious things like that which Flash can do and HTML or javascript can't, and then fast track those things to be put in HTML or javascript? Obviously it would require some writing of code, but it seems like it would be a good cause that a lot of people could get behind, including organizations that have coders and/or money. I'm just kind of surprised it hasn't happened already.
  - 14y ago

zdw 14y ago

Putting aside the technical issues, this is an awesome development, if you're blind or require a screen reader or other alternate input/consumption device to use the Web. Flash sites nearly always had extremely horrible usability for that part of the population.

pnewell4 14y ago

I would be curious to know how much of this 20% is for actual content vs. usage for web sockets, copy-to-clipboard, etc.