27 ms·

Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

931 points by cft 11y ago

erichurkman 11y ago
Good, just leave it there.
thomasrossi 11y ago
it was about time!
shurcooL 11y ago
I made it my new year's resolution in 2015 to have Flash disabled. For my use case, it works great. Longer battery, less heat, and the internet still works. I do turn it on (enable) every now and then for some sites, but very few/infrequently and turn it off right after.
- tajen 11y ago
  I have all plugins disabled by default on my Chrome. I assume it's mostly Flash. It's very little disruption, actually: * Plugins can be enabled using one click; * The "Copy shortcut" widgets are disabled by default. Too bad, 2 clicks instead of one. * Some videos are disabled on some news website. Too bad they won't be able to auto-play. * I very rarely encounter websites (less than once in a month) where invisible plugins are required, so I need to restart the page with all plugins activated. I think Google's Not-a-robot Captcha has difficulties with that, if I remember well.
w342 11y ago
Linux still struggles with HTML5 and flash
- viraptor 11y ago
  Flash - sure, since Adobe doesn't really care that much. But HTML5? That's in browser's hands and support depends on your browser choice only. Did you mean any specific codec for video playback, or something else?
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    EME is not present on Linux yet I think. I don't really mind this however it does mean no Netflix without Google Chrome..
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      EME is there, but you don't have the CDM. Outside HTML5 scope, though.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        How to disable?
- vog 11y ago
  What does this have to do with HTML5? Why on earth should Firefox ship a different HTML5 engine for Linux than for the other OSes? To me, it doesn't make a lot sense to assume Firefox provides a better HTML5 implementation for all other operating systems. With all due respect, this comment seems to be more of an overall anti-Linux sentiment.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Actually, Firefox uses the platform decoders to decode patented codecs like H264 or AAC. So the operating system does play a role. I also think it's not unreasonable to believe that hardware accelerated H264 decoding works less well on Linux.
    - vog 11y ago
      Good catch. So replacing "HTLM5" with "video codes", this may have a point. But I'm still wondering, as we have very good decoders from projects like FFmpeg and VLC. (Not sure which of all those decoders are used by Firefox.) These are platform independent and to my experience better than the platform specific libraries. For example, I often hear that people install VLC under Windows because it decodes lots of video formats better than the natively available Windows Media Player. So the native Windows libraries probably aren't that good. Also, at least the FFmpeg project explicitly states that they don't care about patent FUD, so we can safely assume they don't cripple their decoders in the fear of violating patents: https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html
      - TD-Linux 11y ago
        Firefox can actually use ffmpeg as a decoder. It would be a great option for supporting a lot of these formats. However, Mozilla can't ship it enabled, because the patent problem is very real. See, for example, all of the Play Store apps that got C&D letters from Dolby for using ffmpeg's implementation of AC3. Firefox does ship a lot of other video and audio codecs though, such as vorbis, opus, theora, vp8, and vp9. It's recommended to use these for HTML5 when possible because they can be easily supported everywhere.
cousin_it 11y ago
When all browsers disable Flash, a ton of old artistic content will become unaccessible. I'm thinking specifically about Homestuck animations and minigames, but other people will have their own favorites. Is there a good transition plan?
- easytiger 11y ago
  Nope. no reasonable alternative to flash has proven viable. Which is crazy.
  - Sammi 11y ago
    Canvas, WebGL, Javascript? If it's because you enjoy the Adobe Flash tooling, then Adobe is doing exporting to both Canvas and WebGL now. http://www.adobe.com/inspire/2014/02/flash-html5-canvas.html http://www.adobe.com/inspire/2014/02/flash-html5-canvas.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash/how-to/flashpro-export-webgl.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash/how-to/flashpro-export-webgl.h...
    - cousin_it 11y ago
      If I make an animation or game using these technologies today, will it work unchanged ten years from now?
      - Sammi 11y ago
        Do modern web browsers still render standard compliant web content from 10 years correctly today? (Yes they do)
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - easytiger 11y ago
      I dont like the tooling, but the fact is trying to do some of the things flash currently doe will turn a macbook pro into a melting mess
rockdoe 11y ago
Seems like only a temporary block. Mozilla isn't brave enough to put it out of its misery like it belongs. Still some big sites using it though, like Twitch.
- eterm 11y ago
  My firefox has been blocking flash for a while (I've not updated it, so it doesn't load the old version.). The only site I switch to Chrome for has been twitch. For anything else html5 video has been generally working. I've noticed a lot fewer annoying adverts too which is a bonus.
- vultour 11y ago
  If Mozilla finally managed to implement the encoding Twitch uses for mobile devices, I'd finally be able to uninstall that pile of shit. Sadly it's a licensing issue.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Yes, Twitch is using HLS, which is patented. The rest of the industry is moving to DASH-via-JS-and-MSE. Even Steam Broadcasts use MSE now.
codewithcheese 11y ago
I've been trying to solve this on Ubuntu 14.10. There does not seem to be an update path. I've installed the deb on https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ which does not resolve it.
- dchest 11y ago
  "All versions of Adobe’s Flash Player plugin are currently deactivated by default, until Adobe releases an updated version to address known critical security issues." There's no updated version yet.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  AddOns->Plugins->Ask to Activate
zeeed 11y ago
I hope this will be another push for content creators to abolish flash in the long term.
- Aardwolf 11y ago
  I hope this will not make more content creators choose that annoying unity3D plugin thing that doesn't support linux for games.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Didn't they ditch that in favor of full HTML5?
    - charriu 11y ago
      I think the plugin is still available as an export target - at least the website doesn't say anything different.
  - ars 11y ago
    > that doesn't support linux for games. There is support: http://pipelight.net/cms/installation.html http://pipelight.net/cms/installation.html For me on debian it was install and it worked without even restarting the browser.
    - Aardwolf 11y ago
      I tried it once, it also allowed the latest Flash, but then full screen got broken, and also Flash showing file dialogs got broken.
    - throwaway2048 11y ago
      this is not support, its basicly running the plugin inside wine, with all the attendant issues that invokes.
      - ars 11y ago
reidrac 11y ago
I find amusing that visiting that same page triggers the 'Firefox has prevented the outdated plugin "Adobe Flash" from running on support.mozilla.org.' warning.
stevenh 11y ago
The Flash plugin update fixing the RCE bugs is scheduled to be released tomorrow by Adobe, after which the block will be lifted.
sown 11y ago
I just noticed notice in the browser window. I didn't recall seeing it earlier so when I saw this headline, I clicked on the link. I chuckled when I saw this: http://i.imgur.com/CHqRSEZ.png http://i.imgur.com/CHqRSEZ.png :)
- proactivesvcs 11y ago
  Do you want to enable 'Adobe Flash' for the site adobe.com? [Never for this site]
xwintermutex 11y ago
What about Java?
- sidewinder128 11y ago
  Java plugin you mean right the one that runs on browsers?. Java itself is a huge topic including JDK, compilers, runtimes, server side etc.
  - mahouse 11y ago
    Of course he means that, do you know the thread you are posting to?
    - sidewinder128 11y ago
      he could meant JDK, the server runtime many things in Java. and I know the thread Im posting. you do not need to tell me. You do not need to mention it like that.
- Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
  Already happened 2.5 years ago: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2013/01/29/putting-users-in-control-of-plugins/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2013/01/29/putting-users-i...
jetskindo 11y ago
Flash always have security issues and Adobe do their best to fix them. On the consumer side of things, flash is not so bad. Sure search engines couldn't read it but there is amazing content generated through it. The content is,what matters and unfortunately the Web is littered with abusive flash objects auto playing videos, audio, full screen ads and those won't simply go away with flash. At least with flash I can easily disable it. But those auto playing html5 videos and audios ads are just as annoying. Now I need plug ins to disable native capability. It's only a matter of time until all ads move to the medium and we find ourselves complaining.
- thomasrossi 11y ago
  It's not really a matter of ads, ads move the internet so they will always be there. It's a matter of security, flash has always been a source of flaws to be exploited. Like.. always, sometimes "trying their best" was really not effective.
hendry 11y ago
One option was to go down the Click-to-Play route which offers a HORRIBLE UX. Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default. Disabling Flash however, Youtube actually seamlessly falls back to HTML video. Well done. But I can't help but think, outside the Youtube world (BBC for e.g.). LOTS is going to break. I wouldn't take this tact with my parents or clients.
- barrkel 11y ago
  I much rather click to play over autoplay of videos, including on Youtube. My browsing workflow involves a lot of middle-clicking links to open them up in background tabs. Autoplaying video is major annoyance in this context.
  - 7Z7 11y ago
    This is something that Safari on OS X gets so right, that I've long been amazed (and annoyed when I have to use other browsers) that the other browsers don't copy the functionality. In Safari, if you tab out a new page, it will load the content but pause it until you show the page. So you can tab out a bunch of video pages and they each only autoplay when you tab through them. Wanting the same functionality on Chrome seemed to involve plugins or clicking (which has now turned into right clicking and choosing play).
- magicalist 11y ago
  > Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default No since January[1]. Maybe you have an old cookie set or something? [1] http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults...
  - jhasse 11y ago
    From the link: "and in beta versions of Firefox" Maybe he's still using a Firefox stable version a few months old?
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
HugoDaniel 11y ago
Unfortunately in this case avoiding the problem won't make it go away. Many old sites will stop working (my first site was done in flash) as well as many games that are still heavily played today by millions of people. Also flash IDE provides a good introduction to programming for self-taught kids these days: many of them still do their first code in flash after clicking on "that strange icon next to photoshop". Overall this is a good example of prolonged trusting a binary blob. IMO we will always tend to do what is more comfortable and we should strive for openness and transparency in the tools that most people rely for everyday. The problem persists as long as there are people installing the plugin or "enabling" it. We need a real open-source alternative to flash player.
- JonAtkinson 11y ago
  > We need a real open-source alternative to flash player. We quietly built the alternative to Flash over the last 10 years. It's called the web. A standard document in the web browser can play audio, video, display vector graphics, utilise OpenGL, supports direct drawing via Canvas, and it is deeply scriptable with a mature, open programming language. What else do you need?
  - fuzzix 11y ago
    Copy to clipboard, apparently. (Github project pages have a flash application to handle this)
    - realityking 11y ago
      Good news, we're getting there. In Chrome 43 and (probably) Firefox it's supported: http://caniuse.com/#search=clipb http://caniuse.com/#search=clipb (see note 3) However the API is god awful.
      - jumpwah 11y ago
        Isn't this like a huge security risk?
mrweasel 11y ago
I uninstalled Flash a few days ago, because I didn't want to deal with the updates anymore. Since Flash was unbundled from Mac OS X it has become a pain to update. I simply don't understand why I need to go to the Adobe site to get the updates. Flash isn't super relevant anymore anyway, the main thing it's used for on my computer is Flash tracking cookies, and I can do without those. I do wonder how some of the tracking and retargeting companies will deal with the decline of Flash though. We asked a partner to stop using Flash for tracking, their response was that it's the best way to doing user tracking. Hopefully they'll change their mind soon.
- franciscop 11y ago
  The only other place where I've found that flash is relevant is in auto-play videos, so now with flash installed but disabled is basically removing the auto-play 'feature', which is really neat.
  - robin_reala 11y ago
    <video autoplay> ? http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-media-autoplay http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-medi...
- JackWebbHeller 11y ago
  The update process is horrendous. Redirect to Adobe's website, follow a 3-step 'wizard' - where Step 2 is a placebo 10-second loading bar saying it is "initialising" - and Step 3 is an advertisement for installing other crap from Adobe. After all that you have to download a DMG, close all your applications and reinstall from scratch. Why not just build in an auto-update in the background and be done with it...
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    On Windoze, I always go to google for "flash player distribution3" and install the MSI packages for enterprise deployment. That keeps me from the malware bundle.
  - 11y ago
orf 11y ago
I uninstalled Flash about a year ago and haven't looked back since. Funnily enough only Facebook used to give me issues.
- rplnt 11y ago
  I have Chrome with flash installed (not that it gave me any choice), but other than that I haven't had flash for maybe two years. If I need to play Flash, I just open Chrome for that. Facebook is one of the last common offenders with its flash videos on desktop version. I can't comprehend why...
velcro 11y ago
Bugs are always bad (and security bugs even more so) - but I've always felt that Flash gets a disproportional amount of hate/hype in the media. To some degree it should be normal that the more widespread a technology is - the more it gets targeted for security exploits. If you run the popular browsers/plugins against the National Vulnerability Database, you'd get the following results (as of January 2014): - Internet Explorer 366 total vulnerability issues (314 high severity) - Google Chrome 235 total vulnerability issues (154 high severity) - Adobe Flash 207 total vulnerability issues (169 high severity) - Mozilla Firefox 190 total vulnerability issues (86 high severity) - Oracle Java 161 total vulnerability issues (69 high severity) [source] https://nvd.nist.gov/ https://nvd.nist.gov/
- yRetsyM 11y ago
  Yes, but Flash alone doubles the attack vector of a browser - that's nothing to be sneezed at. I think it's particularly poignant when you look at the high severity metric.
  - tiplus 11y ago
    I am not sure the attack vector argument is 100% valid here, as flash replacement technologies constantly add attack vectors to modern browsers, too. Many traditional Flash features are now covered by webGL accelerated browser functionality, like accelerated 2D canvas elements. My guess would be that this browser-gpu bridge creates a whole zoo of GPU driver related security issues which attackers might focus on once flash is completely obsolete. (My money is on a remote code execution vulnerability in the Firefox Adobe DRM module.)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- onion2k 11y ago
  So Flash is second in terms of number of high severity bugs and first in terms of the percentage of bugs that are high severity, only being beaten by Internet Explorer. By your evidence the hate for Flash is quite justifiable.
shocks 11y ago
I uninstalled/disabled flash on all my systems a few months ago, and have noticed barely any impact on my browsing. The only site I can think of that doesn't work is BBC News.
AndrewDucker 11y ago
I have that setting already set - Flash is set to "Ask to Activate", which means it only runs on sites that I actually want it to run on. Which prevents a lot of autoplaying videos, and also pages sometimes taking a long time to load on slow connections.
- billpg 11y ago
  They've implemented "ask to activate" badly by making it cover the whole page instead of per-element. They did it the right way in the past. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c41 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c41
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Is it possible to activate Vimeo when using flashblock yet? Which is a reasonable question in this context: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c1
kozukumi 11y ago
God will Flash just die already. Firefox is my primary browser and I run it without Flash. On the very odd occasion I need it I have IE in protected mode which has Flash built in. If a site does use Flash I will seek an alternative though as I hate it that much. On a side note Firefox without Flash is so much smoother. IMHO it is the fastest and most stable browser when it doesn't have Flash bogging it down.
- paganel 11y ago
  > God will Flash just die already. 5 to 7 years ago I would have said the same thing, I hated Flash with a passion. But now, when it's almost gone for good, I see that it had its reasons. For example the new Google Street View is many times slower and lags so much as to give me motion sickness (when it's not blocking my browser) compared to the previous version, which was Flash-based, and which used to work like a charm.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    The new Google Maps is also dramatically slower, laggier, and buggier than the old version which was a regular web app built to work on browsers from 2005. I think the terribleness of recent Google web front-ends (not only Maps and Street View but also Search, Mail, Groups, Gplus, etc.) is mostly a product of incompetent management process internal to Google, rather than an indictment of web technology generally.
    - batou 11y ago
      I genuinely agree with you here. I've gone back to a desktop mail client (Thunderbird) and moved away from the web for this sort of thing myself. As far as the web goes, I am very impressed at openstreetmap. That is fast, accurate and has more useful mapping data than anything else rather than fancy overlays and imaging.
      - Crito 11y ago
        While on vacation recently, I had to switch from Google Maps to OSMAnd. OSM map data was just as good for my purposes at least (arguably better), but the real motivating factor was just how fucking pathetic Google Maps on Android has become. Just having it find my location became a chore. I'd be walking down the street looking at my phone the whole block, waiting for it to get my location. Many times it would show my location (with several miles of uncertainty) as being somewhere that I had not been for more than several hours. Other times it would just never find the location at all, not even having any idea what country, let alone city, I was in. I downloaded OSMAnd and the province map data, and it was able to find my location within mere seconds every time. It was able to do it fast enough that if I clicked the power button as I was pulling my phone out of my pocket, it would have my position before my phone was in front of my face. Unfortunately OSMAnd does not do transit routing, so I was attempting to use both at the same time. This gave me a direct comparison between how fast both were able to find my position, and how accurately. OSMAnd blows Google Maps away. I often resorted to typing in my "from" location in Google Maps, just so that I could use it to find routes for me while it was stalling on finding my location itself. My location permissions were all correct. I tried wiping the application settings, with no luck. On the last day of my vacation I uninstalled all the google maps updates on my phone, and tried the version that shipped with it. It worked just fine. If anybody else ever gets annoyed at Google Maps being unable to find their location in a timely manner, I highly recommend they try OSMAnd. It saved my vacation. As a bonus, it even behaves sensibly when on a boat.
jsingleton 11y ago
From the page: "All versions of Adobe’s Flash Player plugin are currently deactivated by default, until Adobe releases an updated version to address known critical security issues." This implies that it will be reactivated soon and this isn't a permanent block. It looks like the same mechanism that blocks old and vulnerable versions of plugins like Silverlight. That said, I've not installed flash in years. I use Firefox as my main browser with no plugins and IE/Chrome have it embedded (both auto-update with no system restart required).
xmj 11y ago
I've been maintaining the FreeBSD port of the Flash 11 linux software for a year or so. The one thing I have learned during that time is: How to write a good VuXML entry. I agree with the general sentiment of removing Flash, and will do my part in convincing others that FreeBSD (and, derived, PC-BSD and FreeNAS) should probably consider setting an expiration date for Flash, then at that date delete it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gendoikari 11y ago
Overall, it's a good thing. Flash is a proprietary technology from the past. Lets move on guys...
- btzll 11y ago
  Let's move on to Silverlight!
  - giancarlostoro 11y ago
    If only that were the case, but they're abandoning Silverlight. It was actually much more stable for me under Linux than Flash ever was sadly, but they stopped developing Moonlight as well.
- Quarrelsome 11y ago
  To what? Last I checked the browsers haven't implemented a proper means of doing cross-platform video publishing (video + audio) reliably yet.
acd 11y ago
Flash is also shipped by default and enabled in Google Chrome. Here is how to deactivate it You need to go to chrome plugins and disable it chrome://plugins/
- SXX 11y ago
  Keep in mind that flash plugin that bundled with Chrome using PPAPI and running inside sandbox. So some exploits don't affect that version all due to different architecture and to escalate privileges some Chrome sandbox exploit would be needed as well.
darkhorn 11y ago
I wish Facebook and YouTube won't use Flash at all.
- psychometry 11y ago
  They don't; that's HTML5 video.
bopf 11y ago
This is terrible for anyone who relies on Flash to get any kind of interactivity going inside the FB timeline. It would have been better if FF would just display a warning and then let the user decide if they want the Flash content blocked or displayed. Obviously it would be even better yet if FB would finally allow interactive HTML 5 content in its timeline.
TheWoodsy 11y ago
This is priceless http://i.imgur.com/3uNsIF2.png http://i.imgur.com/3uNsIF2.png
- CmonDev 11y ago
  The final act of HTML5 delusion - it becomes "ready" because we say it's "ready". It's just someone forgot to ask Flash (game) developers' opinion. Not that it matters, right?
  - ddalex 11y ago
    And since when you have to please everybody ? Flash developers are a minority, and they have no power to influence the market. The sooner Adobe abandons the dead horse, the better for all of us. Kevin has gone away for years now, and Adobe's force is not based on Flash anymore (disclaimer: I own Adobe stock)
    - Quarrelsome 11y ago
      Its not like html5 has all of the features required to replace flash cross platform. These changes force developers, especially those that work in video publishing to implement a variety of implementations for each device whereas flash gave us one platform that technically works on everything but is now disabled intentionally.
      - robalfonso 11y ago
        From the outside looking in, I have to imagine this has been on the industries radar for a while. I mean flash has had some pretty steady hate for a while, coupled with advances with other mechanisms becoming increasingly robust. It may create more work but surely work that was not unexpected.
      - timboslice 11y ago
        I can't wait for HLS support http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/hls/ http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/hls/
kailuowang 11y ago
AFAIK, the only way for javascript on a website to copy something into your clipboard is through Flash. It might be a good thing to prevent such functionality, but I wonder if Firefox took this into consideration.
- longwave 11y ago
  That is simply not true, there are some limitations though these are being removed in newer browsers: http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard
silon7 11y ago
They should have made it load slower than Java a long time ago.
vamur 11y ago
Good riddance. Hopefully, they not only deactivate it but remove Flash and Java altogether. These two have been nothing but constant security and performance issues. And without Flash, Firefox can finally work on GTK3.
manishsharan 11y ago
Is Shumway ready for production use as a drop in replacement for flash ?
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Last time i tried it it could not even handle Youtube.
0x0 11y ago
Adobe promising an update "during the week of July 12th"... That was last week. Or are they for some reason counting last week's Sunday as part of this week?!
- amyjess 11y ago
  Last week's Sunday was July 5. The week of July 12 is this week.
  - 0x0 11y ago
    Not where I'm from :)
- phs2501 11y ago
  They are an American company and America typically counts Sunday as the start of the week.
edpichler 11y ago
Anyone knows if it is technically possible to have the old "copy to clipboard" function without Flash?
- someguy1233 11y ago
  There's a native cross-browser API that's slowly becoming more compatible from Javascript. http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard
marksc 11y ago
Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see the conversation this has sparked. Personally I align with Alex Stamos regarding Flash, in the thinking that a formal EOL would be great. I'd also like to use this space to make a shameless plug for Shumway, a project set on building a faithful an efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance. Ending Flash doesn't need to mean an end for Flash media. http://www.areweflashyet.com/shumway/ http://www.areweflashyet.com/shumway/ Edit: typo
- farawayea 11y ago
  This is great. Let's continue: remove pocket, remove hello
  - hartator 11y ago
    I wouldn't mind these two as assumed business decisions. But please stop the hypocrisy. It's just hurting Mozilla image without fooling anyone.
  - glogla 11y ago
    Hello is just few (hundred?) lines of Javascript giving UI to WebRTC. Unless you want to remove WebRTC and that's just stupid.
    - ultramancool 11y ago
      Removing registration on Hello servers and WebRTC altogether is not stupid if you give a shit about your privacy, look at the leaks WebRTC provides, local IPs which are great for fingerprinting, real IPs from behind VPN, etc. It's one big gaping privacy nightmare so far, so it's pretty reasonable to have it disabled, until this gets sorted out at least. Fortunately it can be toggled off in about:config easily. Set loop.enabled = false to disable hello, set media.peerconnection.enabled = false to disable WebRTC. If you don't want pocket, set browser.pocket.enabled = false. You can even make yourself one big user.js file to fix the bad ideas that have been added to Firefox lately. Mozilla still has a good thing going for them, and that is user choice. However stupid the defaults get.
nkassis 11y ago
Anyone know if Google Finance has said anything about their charts moving away from Flash?
- cbhl 11y ago
  If you search for a stock symbol in Google Web Search (instead of Google Finance) you'll get a SVG-and-JavaScript chart that has fewer features. If you don't need the specific features in the Google Finance chart, that might be a good alternative. (Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on Google Finance. My own opinion, yada yada.)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Bahamut 11y ago
Looks like Chrome now deactivates Flash by default now too - it says "Adobe Flash Player was blocked because it is out of date" & I get directed to this link https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6258784 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6258784 Edit: Ah, looks like I needed to update Chrome with the fix.
erickhill 11y ago
I wonder how the ad networks/agencies will respond to this if it becomes the norm across future competing browsers? Flash ads (including video) can be horrid on CPUs, but they also often have higher CPMs than static, "cheaper" ads. Firefox seems to be blocking flash entirely. They’re also doing it in a way that the ad networks can’t tell, unlike Chrome. In other words, if I disable Flash in Chrome, the ads normally fall back to (cheaper) non-flash ads. On Firefox, I’m getting blank gray boxes. For sites that depend on advertising to survive, hopefully the ad networks will update their inventory with alternative non-intrusive ads a.s.a.p. so this type of (admittedly much needed) evolution doesn't suck too many content providers down.
Walkman 11y ago
Steve Jobs won finally.
milankragujevic 11y ago
If only Firefox actually supported my AMD APU, then I wouldn't have to use Flash for YouTube and such. I actually force YouTube to play using the Flash player, as with HTML5 the video freezes and is very choppy. My mother is using Linux Mint, and for her the reverse is true, Flash is horrible and HTML5 is smooth and fast. edit: I use Windows 8.1.
nkurz 11y ago
I find "Click to Play" makes for a better browsing experience, and think this is a fine move for Firefox. Interestingly, Google Chrome recently moved in the opposite direction, and removed support for having Flash off by default and activating with a single click. Instead, they consider Flash to be "important plug-in content". While they allow you to have it off by default, rather than "click to play", they now require that you right click then pull down to "run this plugin" each time you want to activate: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/xPcpRBzyPcc%5B126-150%5D https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/xPcpRB... I presume this is because they want to discourage people from having Flash off by default, since this would mean they would miss too many Flash ads. I took this as an opportunity to try out some different browsers, and found that Opera met my needs slightly better than Firefox. If you are looking for an alternative to Firefox or Chrome, or just want to see what's out there, you might want to check it out too: http://www.opera.com/ http://www.opera.com/ ps. As an example of the new Google interface strategy, to show all the responses on the Google Chrome Help Forum link above rather than being forced to click on each one, you can press the 'o' key some random number of times until they appear: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gec-answers-frequently-asked-questions/nwfdaR9x85E https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gec-answers-f...
- gmurphy 11y ago
  Chrome moved to context click + menu because left click is clickjackable, so doesn't help very much with the security issues.
  - nkurz 11y ago
    I've seen this argument, but don't believe that removing the option for click-to-play improves security. I'd could believe this theory if the default was simulataneously changed to have Flash default to off, but as it is, the result is that more users will choose to keep the default where Flash always on. Surely automatic activation is even less secure than a potentially hijackable click-to-play?
    - gmurphy 11y ago
nathanvanfleet 11y ago
Sounds nice, but sometimes I'm on a page in Safari (with Click To Flash active) and I can't get a page to load at all after "clicking to flash" once. I think there must be some additional flash file that I don't get the chance to click or some moment that passed so it can't load.
elchief 11y ago
If you want to make your Chrome Flash click-to-play: Enter chrome://plugins/ in your address bar, find "Adobe Flash Player", uncheck "Always allowed to run". You'll then have to right-click flash content to play it.
CodeSheikh 11y ago
Death to Flash.
DenisM 11y ago
So, my multi-file upload flash button stop working today? Bummer... Any suggestions for a simple milt-file upload JS library? Something that works on new browsers, and falls back to flash on old browsers.
andyl 11y ago
I like the change. Firefox seems faster. Better to opt-in to Flash as-needed.

931 points by cft 11y ago

erichurkman 11y ago

Good, just leave it there.

thomasrossi 11y ago

it was about time!

shurcooL 11y ago

I made it my new year's resolution in 2015 to have Flash disabled. For my use case, it works great. Longer battery, less heat, and the internet still works. I do turn it on (enable) every now and then for some sites, but very few/infrequently and turn it off right after.

tajen 11y ago
I have all plugins disabled by default on my Chrome. I assume it's mostly Flash. It's very little disruption, actually: * Plugins can be enabled using one click; * The "Copy shortcut" widgets are disabled by default. Too bad, 2 clicks instead of one. * Some videos are disabled on some news website. Too bad they won't be able to auto-play. * I very rarely encounter websites (less than once in a month) where invisible plugins are required, so I need to restart the page with all plugins activated. I think Google's Not-a-robot Captcha has difficulties with that, if I remember well.

w342 11y ago

Linux still struggles with HTML5 and flash

viraptor 11y ago
Flash - sure, since Adobe doesn't really care that much. But HTML5? That's in browser's hands and support depends on your browser choice only. Did you mean any specific codec for video playback, or something else?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  EME is not present on Linux yet I think. I don't really mind this however it does mean no Netflix without Google Chrome..
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    EME is there, but you don't have the CDM. Outside HTML5 scope, though.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      How to disable?
vog 11y ago
What does this have to do with HTML5? Why on earth should Firefox ship a different HTML5 engine for Linux than for the other OSes? To me, it doesn't make a lot sense to assume Firefox provides a better HTML5 implementation for all other operating systems. With all due respect, this comment seems to be more of an overall anti-Linux sentiment.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Actually, Firefox uses the platform decoders to decode patented codecs like H264 or AAC. So the operating system does play a role. I also think it's not unreasonable to believe that hardware accelerated H264 decoding works less well on Linux.
  - vog 11y ago
    Good catch. So replacing "HTLM5" with "video codes", this may have a point. But I'm still wondering, as we have very good decoders from projects like FFmpeg and VLC. (Not sure which of all those decoders are used by Firefox.) These are platform independent and to my experience better than the platform specific libraries. For example, I often hear that people install VLC under Windows because it decodes lots of video formats better than the natively available Windows Media Player. So the native Windows libraries probably aren't that good. Also, at least the FFmpeg project explicitly states that they don't care about patent FUD, so we can safely assume they don't cripple their decoders in the fear of violating patents: https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html
    - TD-Linux 11y ago
      Firefox can actually use ffmpeg as a decoder. It would be a great option for supporting a lot of these formats. However, Mozilla can't ship it enabled, because the patent problem is very real. See, for example, all of the Play Store apps that got C&D letters from Dolby for using ffmpeg's implementation of AC3. Firefox does ship a lot of other video and audio codecs though, such as vorbis, opus, theora, vp8, and vp9. It's recommended to use these for HTML5 when possible because they can be easily supported everywhere.

cousin_it 11y ago

When all browsers disable Flash, a ton of old artistic content will become unaccessible. I'm thinking specifically about Homestuck animations and minigames, but other people will have their own favorites. Is there a good transition plan?

easytiger 11y ago
Nope. no reasonable alternative to flash has proven viable. Which is crazy.
- Sammi 11y ago
  Canvas, WebGL, Javascript? If it's because you enjoy the Adobe Flash tooling, then Adobe is doing exporting to both Canvas and WebGL now. http://www.adobe.com/inspire/2014/02/flash-html5-canvas.html http://www.adobe.com/inspire/2014/02/flash-html5-canvas.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash/how-to/flashpro-export-webgl.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash/how-to/flashpro-export-webgl.h...
  - cousin_it 11y ago
    If I make an animation or game using these technologies today, will it work unchanged ten years from now?
    - Sammi 11y ago
      Do modern web browsers still render standard compliant web content from 10 years correctly today? (Yes they do)
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - easytiger 11y ago
    I dont like the tooling, but the fact is trying to do some of the things flash currently doe will turn a macbook pro into a melting mess

rockdoe 11y ago

Seems like only a temporary block. Mozilla isn't brave enough to put it out of its misery like it belongs. Still some big sites using it though, like Twitch.

eterm 11y ago
My firefox has been blocking flash for a while (I've not updated it, so it doesn't load the old version.). The only site I switch to Chrome for has been twitch. For anything else html5 video has been generally working. I've noticed a lot fewer annoying adverts too which is a bonus.
vultour 11y ago
If Mozilla finally managed to implement the encoding Twitch uses for mobile devices, I'd finally be able to uninstall that pile of shit. Sadly it's a licensing issue.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Yes, Twitch is using HLS, which is patented. The rest of the industry is moving to DASH-via-JS-and-MSE. Even Steam Broadcasts use MSE now.

codewithcheese 11y ago

I've been trying to solve this on Ubuntu 14.10. There does not seem to be an update path. I've installed the deb on https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ which does not resolve it.

dchest 11y ago
"All versions of Adobe’s Flash Player plugin are currently deactivated by default, until Adobe releases an updated version to address known critical security issues." There's no updated version yet.
rockdoe 11y ago
AddOns->Plugins->Ask to Activate

zeeed 11y ago

I hope this will be another push for content creators to abolish flash in the long term.

Aardwolf 11y ago
I hope this will not make more content creators choose that annoying unity3D plugin thing that doesn't support linux for games.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Didn't they ditch that in favor of full HTML5?
  - charriu 11y ago
    I think the plugin is still available as an export target - at least the website doesn't say anything different.
- ars 11y ago
  > that doesn't support linux for games. There is support: http://pipelight.net/cms/installation.html http://pipelight.net/cms/installation.html For me on debian it was install and it worked without even restarting the browser.
  - Aardwolf 11y ago
    I tried it once, it also allowed the latest Flash, but then full screen got broken, and also Flash showing file dialogs got broken.
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    this is not support, its basicly running the plugin inside wine, with all the attendant issues that invokes.
    - ars 11y ago

reidrac 11y ago

I find amusing that visiting that same page triggers the 'Firefox has prevented the outdated plugin "Adobe Flash" from running on support.mozilla.org.' warning.

stevenh 11y ago

The Flash plugin update fixing the RCE bugs is scheduled to be released tomorrow by Adobe, after which the block will be lifted.

sown 11y ago

I just noticed notice in the browser window. I didn't recall seeing it earlier so when I saw this headline, I clicked on the link. I chuckled when I saw this: http://i.imgur.com/CHqRSEZ.png http://i.imgur.com/CHqRSEZ.png :)

proactivesvcs 11y ago
Do you want to enable 'Adobe Flash' for the site adobe.com? [Never for this site]

xwintermutex 11y ago

What about Java?

sidewinder128 11y ago
Java plugin you mean right the one that runs on browsers?. Java itself is a huge topic including JDK, compilers, runtimes, server side etc.
- mahouse 11y ago
  Of course he means that, do you know the thread you are posting to?
  - sidewinder128 11y ago
    he could meant JDK, the server runtime many things in Java. and I know the thread Im posting. you do not need to tell me. You do not need to mention it like that.
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
Already happened 2.5 years ago: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2013/01/29/putting-users-in-control-of-plugins/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2013/01/29/putting-users-i...

jetskindo 11y ago

Flash always have security issues and Adobe do their best to fix them. On the consumer side of things, flash is not so bad. Sure search engines couldn't read it but there is amazing content generated through it. The content is,what matters and unfortunately the Web is littered with abusive flash objects auto playing videos, audio, full screen ads and those won't simply go away with flash. At least with flash I can easily disable it. But those auto playing html5 videos and audios ads are just as annoying. Now I need plug ins to disable native capability. It's only a matter of time until all ads move to the medium and we find ourselves complaining.

thomasrossi 11y ago
It's not really a matter of ads, ads move the internet so they will always be there. It's a matter of security, flash has always been a source of flaws to be exploited. Like.. always, sometimes "trying their best" was really not effective.

hendry 11y ago

One option was to go down the Click-to-Play route which offers a HORRIBLE UX. Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default. Disabling Flash however, Youtube actually seamlessly falls back to HTML video. Well done. But I can't help but think, outside the Youtube world (BBC for e.g.). LOTS is going to break. I wouldn't take this tact with my parents or clients.

barrkel 11y ago
I much rather click to play over autoplay of videos, including on Youtube. My browsing workflow involves a lot of middle-clicking links to open them up in background tabs. Autoplaying video is major annoyance in this context.
- 7Z7 11y ago
  This is something that Safari on OS X gets so right, that I've long been amazed (and annoyed when I have to use other browsers) that the other browsers don't copy the functionality. In Safari, if you tab out a new page, it will load the content but pause it until you show the page. So you can tab out a bunch of video pages and they each only autoplay when you tab through them. Wanting the same functionality on Chrome seemed to involve plugins or clicking (which has now turned into right clicking and choosing play).
magicalist 11y ago
> Especially on Youtube which still uses Flash by default No since January[1]. Maybe you have an old cookie set or something? [1] http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults...
- jhasse 11y ago
  From the link: "and in beta versions of Firefox" Maybe he's still using a Firefox stable version a few months old?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago

HugoDaniel 11y ago

Unfortunately in this case avoiding the problem won't make it go away. Many old sites will stop working (my first site was done in flash) as well as many games that are still heavily played today by millions of people. Also flash IDE provides a good introduction to programming for self-taught kids these days: many of them still do their first code in flash after clicking on "that strange icon next to photoshop". Overall this is a good example of prolonged trusting a binary blob. IMO we will always tend to do what is more comfortable and we should strive for openness and transparency in the tools that most people rely for everyday. The problem persists as long as there are people installing the plugin or "enabling" it. We need a real open-source alternative to flash player.

JonAtkinson 11y ago
> We need a real open-source alternative to flash player. We quietly built the alternative to Flash over the last 10 years. It's called the web. A standard document in the web browser can play audio, video, display vector graphics, utilise OpenGL, supports direct drawing via Canvas, and it is deeply scriptable with a mature, open programming language. What else do you need?
- fuzzix 11y ago
  Copy to clipboard, apparently. (Github project pages have a flash application to handle this)
  - realityking 11y ago
    Good news, we're getting there. In Chrome 43 and (probably) Firefox it's supported: http://caniuse.com/#search=clipb http://caniuse.com/#search=clipb (see note 3) However the API is god awful.
    - jumpwah 11y ago
      Isn't this like a huge security risk?

mrweasel 11y ago

I uninstalled Flash a few days ago, because I didn't want to deal with the updates anymore. Since Flash was unbundled from Mac OS X it has become a pain to update. I simply don't understand why I need to go to the Adobe site to get the updates. Flash isn't super relevant anymore anyway, the main thing it's used for on my computer is Flash tracking cookies, and I can do without those. I do wonder how some of the tracking and retargeting companies will deal with the decline of Flash though. We asked a partner to stop using Flash for tracking, their response was that it's the best way to doing user tracking. Hopefully they'll change their mind soon.

franciscop 11y ago
The only other place where I've found that flash is relevant is in auto-play videos, so now with flash installed but disabled is basically removing the auto-play 'feature', which is really neat.
- robin_reala 11y ago
  <video autoplay> ? http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-media-autoplay http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-medi...
JackWebbHeller 11y ago
The update process is horrendous. Redirect to Adobe's website, follow a 3-step 'wizard' - where Step 2 is a placebo 10-second loading bar saying it is "initialising" - and Step 3 is an advertisement for installing other crap from Adobe. After all that you have to download a DMG, close all your applications and reinstall from scratch. Why not just build in an auto-update in the background and be done with it...
- mschuster91 11y ago
  On Windoze, I always go to google for "flash player distribution3" and install the MSI packages for enterprise deployment. That keeps me from the malware bundle.
- 11y ago

orf 11y ago

I uninstalled Flash about a year ago and haven't looked back since. Funnily enough only Facebook used to give me issues.

rplnt 11y ago
I have Chrome with flash installed (not that it gave me any choice), but other than that I haven't had flash for maybe two years. If I need to play Flash, I just open Chrome for that. Facebook is one of the last common offenders with its flash videos on desktop version. I can't comprehend why...

velcro 11y ago

Bugs are always bad (and security bugs even more so) - but I've always felt that Flash gets a disproportional amount of hate/hype in the media. To some degree it should be normal that the more widespread a technology is - the more it gets targeted for security exploits. If you run the popular browsers/plugins against the National Vulnerability Database, you'd get the following results (as of January 2014): - Internet Explorer 366 total vulnerability issues (314 high severity) - Google Chrome 235 total vulnerability issues (154 high severity) - Adobe Flash 207 total vulnerability issues (169 high severity) - Mozilla Firefox 190 total vulnerability issues (86 high severity) - Oracle Java 161 total vulnerability issues (69 high severity) [source] https://nvd.nist.gov/ https://nvd.nist.gov/

yRetsyM 11y ago
Yes, but Flash alone doubles the attack vector of a browser - that's nothing to be sneezed at. I think it's particularly poignant when you look at the high severity metric.
- tiplus 11y ago
  I am not sure the attack vector argument is 100% valid here, as flash replacement technologies constantly add attack vectors to modern browsers, too. Many traditional Flash features are now covered by webGL accelerated browser functionality, like accelerated 2D canvas elements. My guess would be that this browser-gpu bridge creates a whole zoo of GPU driver related security issues which attackers might focus on once flash is completely obsolete. (My money is on a remote code execution vulnerability in the Firefox Adobe DRM module.)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
onion2k 11y ago
So Flash is second in terms of number of high severity bugs and first in terms of the percentage of bugs that are high severity, only being beaten by Internet Explorer. By your evidence the hate for Flash is quite justifiable.

shocks 11y ago

I uninstalled/disabled flash on all my systems a few months ago, and have noticed barely any impact on my browsing. The only site I can think of that doesn't work is BBC News.

AndrewDucker 11y ago

I have that setting already set - Flash is set to "Ask to Activate", which means it only runs on sites that I actually want it to run on. Which prevents a lot of autoplaying videos, and also pages sometimes taking a long time to load on slow connections.

billpg 11y ago
They've implemented "ask to activate" badly by making it cover the whole page instead of per-element. They did it the right way in the past. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c41 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c41
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Is it possible to activate Vimeo when using flashblock yet? Which is a reasonable question in this context: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=886792#c1

kozukumi 11y ago

God will Flash just die already. Firefox is my primary browser and I run it without Flash. On the very odd occasion I need it I have IE in protected mode which has Flash built in. If a site does use Flash I will seek an alternative though as I hate it that much. On a side note Firefox without Flash is so much smoother. IMHO it is the fastest and most stable browser when it doesn't have Flash bogging it down.

paganel 11y ago
> God will Flash just die already. 5 to 7 years ago I would have said the same thing, I hated Flash with a passion. But now, when it's almost gone for good, I see that it had its reasons. For example the new Google Street View is many times slower and lags so much as to give me motion sickness (when it's not blocking my browser) compared to the previous version, which was Flash-based, and which used to work like a charm.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  The new Google Maps is also dramatically slower, laggier, and buggier than the old version which was a regular web app built to work on browsers from 2005. I think the terribleness of recent Google web front-ends (not only Maps and Street View but also Search, Mail, Groups, Gplus, etc.) is mostly a product of incompetent management process internal to Google, rather than an indictment of web technology generally.
  - batou 11y ago
    I genuinely agree with you here. I've gone back to a desktop mail client (Thunderbird) and moved away from the web for this sort of thing myself. As far as the web goes, I am very impressed at openstreetmap. That is fast, accurate and has more useful mapping data than anything else rather than fancy overlays and imaging.
    - Crito 11y ago
      While on vacation recently, I had to switch from Google Maps to OSMAnd. OSM map data was just as good for my purposes at least (arguably better), but the real motivating factor was just how fucking pathetic Google Maps on Android has become. Just having it find my location became a chore. I'd be walking down the street looking at my phone the whole block, waiting for it to get my location. Many times it would show my location (with several miles of uncertainty) as being somewhere that I had not been for more than several hours. Other times it would just never find the location at all, not even having any idea what country, let alone city, I was in. I downloaded OSMAnd and the province map data, and it was able to find my location within mere seconds every time. It was able to do it fast enough that if I clicked the power button as I was pulling my phone out of my pocket, it would have my position before my phone was in front of my face. Unfortunately OSMAnd does not do transit routing, so I was attempting to use both at the same time. This gave me a direct comparison between how fast both were able to find my position, and how accurately. OSMAnd blows Google Maps away. I often resorted to typing in my "from" location in Google Maps, just so that I could use it to find routes for me while it was stalling on finding my location itself. My location permissions were all correct. I tried wiping the application settings, with no luck. On the last day of my vacation I uninstalled all the google maps updates on my phone, and tried the version that shipped with it. It worked just fine. If anybody else ever gets annoyed at Google Maps being unable to find their location in a timely manner, I highly recommend they try OSMAnd. It saved my vacation. As a bonus, it even behaves sensibly when on a boat.

jsingleton 11y ago

From the page: "All versions of Adobe’s Flash Player plugin are currently deactivated by default, until Adobe releases an updated version to address known critical security issues." This implies that it will be reactivated soon and this isn't a permanent block. It looks like the same mechanism that blocks old and vulnerable versions of plugins like Silverlight. That said, I've not installed flash in years. I use Firefox as my main browser with no plugins and IE/Chrome have it embedded (both auto-update with no system restart required).

xmj 11y ago

I've been maintaining the FreeBSD port of the Flash 11 linux software for a year or so. The one thing I have learned during that time is: How to write a good VuXML entry. I agree with the general sentiment of removing Flash, and will do my part in convincing others that FreeBSD (and, derived, PC-BSD and FreeNAS) should probably consider setting an expiration date for Flash, then at that date delete it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

gendoikari 11y ago

Overall, it's a good thing. Flash is a proprietary technology from the past. Lets move on guys...

btzll 11y ago
Let's move on to Silverlight!
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  If only that were the case, but they're abandoning Silverlight. It was actually much more stable for me under Linux than Flash ever was sadly, but they stopped developing Moonlight as well.
Quarrelsome 11y ago
To what? Last I checked the browsers haven't implemented a proper means of doing cross-platform video publishing (video + audio) reliably yet.

acd 11y ago

Flash is also shipped by default and enabled in Google Chrome. Here is how to deactivate it You need to go to chrome plugins and disable it chrome://plugins/

SXX 11y ago
Keep in mind that flash plugin that bundled with Chrome using PPAPI and running inside sandbox. So some exploits don't affect that version all due to different architecture and to escalate privileges some Chrome sandbox exploit would be needed as well.

darkhorn 11y ago

I wish Facebook and YouTube won't use Flash at all.

psychometry 11y ago
They don't; that's HTML5 video.

bopf 11y ago

This is terrible for anyone who relies on Flash to get any kind of interactivity going inside the FB timeline. It would have been better if FF would just display a warning and then let the user decide if they want the Flash content blocked or displayed. Obviously it would be even better yet if FB would finally allow interactive HTML 5 content in its timeline.

TheWoodsy 11y ago

This is priceless http://i.imgur.com/3uNsIF2.png http://i.imgur.com/3uNsIF2.png

CmonDev 11y ago
The final act of HTML5 delusion - it becomes "ready" because we say it's "ready". It's just someone forgot to ask Flash (game) developers' opinion. Not that it matters, right?
- ddalex 11y ago
  And since when you have to please everybody ? Flash developers are a minority, and they have no power to influence the market. The sooner Adobe abandons the dead horse, the better for all of us. Kevin has gone away for years now, and Adobe's force is not based on Flash anymore (disclaimer: I own Adobe stock)
  - Quarrelsome 11y ago
    Its not like html5 has all of the features required to replace flash cross platform. These changes force developers, especially those that work in video publishing to implement a variety of implementations for each device whereas flash gave us one platform that technically works on everything but is now disabled intentionally.
    - robalfonso 11y ago
      From the outside looking in, I have to imagine this has been on the industries radar for a while. I mean flash has had some pretty steady hate for a while, coupled with advances with other mechanisms becoming increasingly robust. It may create more work but surely work that was not unexpected.
    - timboslice 11y ago
      I can't wait for HLS support http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/hls/ http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/hls/

kailuowang 11y ago

AFAIK, the only way for javascript on a website to copy something into your clipboard is through Flash. It might be a good thing to prevent such functionality, but I wonder if Firefox took this into consideration.

longwave 11y ago
That is simply not true, there are some limitations though these are being removed in newer browsers: http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard

silon7 11y ago

They should have made it load slower than Java a long time ago.

vamur 11y ago

Good riddance. Hopefully, they not only deactivate it but remove Flash and Java altogether. These two have been nothing but constant security and performance issues. And without Flash, Firefox can finally work on GTK3.

manishsharan 11y ago

Is Shumway ready for production use as a drop in replacement for flash ?

digi_owl 11y ago
Last time i tried it it could not even handle Youtube.

0x0 11y ago

Adobe promising an update "during the week of July 12th"... That was last week. Or are they for some reason counting last week's Sunday as part of this week?!

amyjess 11y ago
Last week's Sunday was July 5. The week of July 12 is this week.
- 0x0 11y ago
  Not where I'm from :)
phs2501 11y ago
They are an American company and America typically counts Sunday as the start of the week.

edpichler 11y ago

Anyone knows if it is technically possible to have the old "copy to clipboard" function without Flash?

someguy1233 11y ago
There's a native cross-browser API that's slowly becoming more compatible from Javascript. http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard

marksc 11y ago

Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see the conversation this has sparked. Personally I align with Alex Stamos regarding Flash, in the thinking that a formal EOL would be great. I'd also like to use this space to make a shameless plug for Shumway, a project set on building a faithful an efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance. Ending Flash doesn't need to mean an end for Flash media. http://www.areweflashyet.com/shumway/ http://www.areweflashyet.com/shumway/ Edit: typo

farawayea 11y ago
This is great. Let's continue: remove pocket, remove hello
- hartator 11y ago
  I wouldn't mind these two as assumed business decisions. But please stop the hypocrisy. It's just hurting Mozilla image without fooling anyone.
- glogla 11y ago
  Hello is just few (hundred?) lines of Javascript giving UI to WebRTC. Unless you want to remove WebRTC and that's just stupid.
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    Removing registration on Hello servers and WebRTC altogether is not stupid if you give a shit about your privacy, look at the leaks WebRTC provides, local IPs which are great for fingerprinting, real IPs from behind VPN, etc. It's one big gaping privacy nightmare so far, so it's pretty reasonable to have it disabled, until this gets sorted out at least. Fortunately it can be toggled off in about:config easily. Set loop.enabled = false to disable hello, set media.peerconnection.enabled = false to disable WebRTC. If you don't want pocket, set browser.pocket.enabled = false. You can even make yourself one big user.js file to fix the bad ideas that have been added to Firefox lately. Mozilla still has a good thing going for them, and that is user choice. However stupid the defaults get.

nkassis 11y ago

Anyone know if Google Finance has said anything about their charts moving away from Flash?

cbhl 11y ago
If you search for a stock symbol in Google Web Search (instead of Google Finance) you'll get a SVG-and-JavaScript chart that has fewer features. If you don't need the specific features in the Google Finance chart, that might be a good alternative. (Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on Google Finance. My own opinion, yada yada.)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Bahamut 11y ago

Looks like Chrome now deactivates Flash by default now too - it says "Adobe Flash Player was blocked because it is out of date" & I get directed to this link https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6258784 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6258784 Edit: Ah, looks like I needed to update Chrome with the fix.

erickhill 11y ago

I wonder how the ad networks/agencies will respond to this if it becomes the norm across future competing browsers? Flash ads (including video) can be horrid on CPUs, but they also often have higher CPMs than static, "cheaper" ads. Firefox seems to be blocking flash entirely. They’re also doing it in a way that the ad networks can’t tell, unlike Chrome. In other words, if I disable Flash in Chrome, the ads normally fall back to (cheaper) non-flash ads. On Firefox, I’m getting blank gray boxes. For sites that depend on advertising to survive, hopefully the ad networks will update their inventory with alternative non-intrusive ads a.s.a.p. so this type of (admittedly much needed) evolution doesn't suck too many content providers down.

Walkman 11y ago

Steve Jobs won finally.

milankragujevic 11y ago

If only Firefox actually supported my AMD APU, then I wouldn't have to use Flash for YouTube and such. I actually force YouTube to play using the Flash player, as with HTML5 the video freezes and is very choppy. My mother is using Linux Mint, and for her the reverse is true, Flash is horrible and HTML5 is smooth and fast. edit: I use Windows 8.1.

nkurz 11y ago

I find "Click to Play" makes for a better browsing experience, and think this is a fine move for Firefox. Interestingly, Google Chrome recently moved in the opposite direction, and removed support for having Flash off by default and activating with a single click. Instead, they consider Flash to be "important plug-in content". While they allow you to have it off by default, rather than "click to play", they now require that you right click then pull down to "run this plugin" each time you want to activate: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/xPcpRBzyPcc%5B126-150%5D https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/xPcpRB... I presume this is because they want to discourage people from having Flash off by default, since this would mean they would miss too many Flash ads. I took this as an opportunity to try out some different browsers, and found that Opera met my needs slightly better than Firefox. If you are looking for an alternative to Firefox or Chrome, or just want to see what's out there, you might want to check it out too: http://www.opera.com/ http://www.opera.com/ ps. As an example of the new Google interface strategy, to show all the responses on the Google Chrome Help Forum link above rather than being forced to click on each one, you can press the 'o' key some random number of times until they appear: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gec-answers-frequently-asked-questions/nwfdaR9x85E https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gec-answers-f...

gmurphy 11y ago
Chrome moved to context click + menu because left click is clickjackable, so doesn't help very much with the security issues.
- nkurz 11y ago
  I've seen this argument, but don't believe that removing the option for click-to-play improves security. I'd could believe this theory if the default was simulataneously changed to have Flash default to off, but as it is, the result is that more users will choose to keep the default where Flash always on. Surely automatic activation is even less secure than a potentially hijackable click-to-play?
  - gmurphy 11y ago

nathanvanfleet 11y ago

Sounds nice, but sometimes I'm on a page in Safari (with Click To Flash active) and I can't get a page to load at all after "clicking to flash" once. I think there must be some additional flash file that I don't get the chance to click or some moment that passed so it can't load.

elchief 11y ago

If you want to make your Chrome Flash click-to-play: Enter chrome://plugins/ in your address bar, find "Adobe Flash Player", uncheck "Always allowed to run". You'll then have to right-click flash content to play it.

CodeSheikh 11y ago

Death to Flash.

DenisM 11y ago

So, my multi-file upload flash button stop working today? Bummer... Any suggestions for a simple milt-file upload JS library? Something that works on new browsers, and falls back to flash on old browsers.

andyl 11y ago

I like the change. Firefox seems faster. Better to opt-in to Flash as-needed.