Killing off Flash and the impact that would have

HTML5 standard is no were near what Flash is able to deliver, though some browsers are able to 'speed up' JavaScript execution a lot.

The biggest 'thing' about Flash today is all the major web media players ( YouTube, Blip, e.t.c. ) use it, and it is still the best way to deliver an interactive / 'content heavy' web page.

Flash has been a dead end ever since the iPhone came out with zero flash support. The mobile web is so important now, that no new/big service relies on flash any more. Uninstall it and mostly old/historic content will break.

If desktop browsers disable it by default, but allow you to enable it per-site (like how we're asked if we'd like to allow pop-ups these days), it won't really be a big deal.

Modern browsers do deal with JS quite well. You can run UE4 or Unity games in a plug-in-less browser these days!
Plus moving forward, it looks like bytecode for the web might finally happen with WebAssembly, which finally solves the Java/Flash/Silverlight/etc problem.

For ongoing compatibility, Adobe should build a WebAssembly version of the Flash runtime, so old flash content can run safely in new browsers :lol:

Firefox now likes to block it by default... (I updated it because it started to pester, then it got blocked again by the next day, so I don't have much hope left for it by this point)

The biggest problem right now is video streaming, since doing it over HTML5 is kind of a crapshot, and many sites only have Flash players for video streaming. So, kill Flash and you'll kill most sites that stream video and aren't YouTube (and even YouTube won't show every video using the HTML5 player). You'd need to find a way around this. Everything else that matters is probably safe by now.

This is all kind of meaningless. You can run Flash scripts in HTML5 using things like Shumway (WIP). There are

The calls are to end the Adobe plugin, not the programming language or API. The latter are mighty okay. Things like WebAssembly will just make it even easier to compile SWF into fast code on the fly in the browser without going anywhere near Adobe's security-hole-ridden implementation.

This is the age where you can compile Unreal3 and run it in a freakin' browser.

HTML5 standard is no were near what Flash is able to deliver, though some browsers are able to 'speed up' JavaScript execution a lot.

The biggest 'thing' about Flash today is all the major web media players ( YouTube, Blip, e.t.c. ) use it, and it is still the best way to deliver an interactive / 'content heavy' web page.

But many of them also use HTML5 as an alternative (like youtube for example)

HTML5 + WebGL is fine on the PC where virtual memory is measured in gigabytes and you've got 8x4GHz cores. Less so if you've got a computer that is a few years old. It also runs great on browsers that update themselves continuously with new software, less so on anything other than the Big Three cores (Trident, Gecko, and Webkit).

HTML5 + WebGL is not so great on phones and tablets. The same sites that work great on a PC are often a slide show on devices, that is if it runs at all and doesn't crash the browser. Even those based on Webkit and Gecko still struggle to handle fancy pages, especially those with tons of expansive style sheets and extensive script-loaded content.

In spite of all its problems, flash can (and often is) compiled into something that can run native on desktop computers and on mobile devices. On iOS when you couldn't run flash inside a browser, you could build it into a standalone app for the platform.

Perhaps Flash has reached its maximum development lifecycle, that its developers are having more and more nightmares patching the behemoth. Just like Microsoft and its Windows, at some point Adobe has to rewrite/rebrand Flash.

I am obviously speculating this as I don't work at Adobe, nor do I know the state of Flash development. However, the patterns of a degrading behemoth program have starting to emanate -- too big with too many holes. Who knows how many developers have engraved their fingerprints on the Flash's source code.

But many of them also use HTML5 as an alternative (like youtube for example)

Yeah but not all, I'm still waiting for Nico Nico to support HTML5 for example =/

But many of them also use HTML5 as an alternative (like youtube for example)

Yeah but not all, I'm still waiting for Nico Nico to support HTML5 for example =/

Live streaming is probably the biggest thing keeping Flash alive at this point, because browser support for HLS is so spotty.

Firefox now likes to block it by default...

So does Chrome. Also a lot of people on corporate networks with draconian security policies have had Flash blocked for years.

The biggest 'thing' about Flash today is all the major web media players ( YouTube, Blip, e.t.c. ) use it

But they don't default to it. If you want to view Flash in Youtube now you have to deliberately change to it in your settings. They started supporting a HTML5 option back around when iPhone launched and then just started defaulting to it about 6 years ago.

HTML5 + WebGL is not so great on phones and tablets.

But then neither was Flash. Even when Google was praising the Android because it supported it and the iPhone didn't, it was still very hit and miss.

On iOS when you couldn't run flash inside a browser, you could build it into a standalone app for the platform.

You could but at the time you reached the threshold bundle size that was permitted OTA (A do nothing Air to iOS program is 12MB). I think machinarium just managed to squeeze onto the iPhone.

Flash is still useful as a toolset and API. Adobe just need to drop the runtime and make it so all flash content just compiles to minified javascript.

The problem we have is that Flash has been hated on for at least the last 15 years to various degrees but currently nothing which would replace it is in a fit state to do so.

JavaScript remains a power hungry box of crazy.
WebGL is a mess.
The day all web browsers agree on what a standard is I suspect a portal to a hell dimension will open so the devil can appear to complain about it freezing over.

The web remains an utter clusterfuck of a mess of broken standards which are showing no signs of being fixed because everyone is too busy running onwards to the next circlejerk of a cool thing to use...

Honestly, the fact anything 'works' on a day to day basis is a continued source of a amusement and surprise for me.

I uninstalled Flash for the last time 6 months ago when it managed to bluescreen my PC for the first time in years. There have been a few videos that wouldn't play.. but it's rare..

Putting the vulnerability aside, I still like flash for it's "stability" with heavy contents. It crashes when it gets that heavy, but compared to html5 benchmarks I've ran on video streaming sites it's still less buggy, I hope html5 will soon come to a term where it's as stable as flash once was with heavy loads.

Another thing is that people who learned flash and perfected their skills would find themselves jobless/useless. Historical flash game websites will have to do a complete makeover as well.

Flash died years ago. That some people have their head in the sand and haven't noticed... that is kind of worrying.

Flash-only content has never been available on iOS. The flash player for Android was deprecated years ago. All of the major streaming services (i.e. Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video) use Silverlight in favour of flash. Corporate networks/policies have blocked the flash player on and off for about as long as I can remember. And so on...

Could Adobe salvage the situation? Maybe. Open-sourcing the flash plugin would be a good start. It would have been a better start 5 years ago. That way flash could be vetted for security holes by a trusted 3rd party, and each platform could employ their own release cycle. Will they do that? Probably not.

Honestly it seems a bit pointless to target JUST flash, when there are so many other problem programs out there. I agree that flash needs to go, but flash needs to be the first of many rejected technologies if the intention is to build secure systems. Been arguing for years with people that even things like memory mapped IO device drivers need to go, and any program deployed as binary needs to go, and "secure" programs need to all be formally validated vs code contracts, and '"unsecure" programs need to be sand-boxed to the hilt, and and and.

Burning adobe to the ground is a good first effort, but it shouldn't be the last effort.

Flash needs to be killed yesterday.

Thank god people are getting serious about this. Also, can we please eradicate adobe acrobat, and embedded Microsoft office plugins/extensions?

The real problem is that out of all of the technologies used on the web, Flash is the LEAST shitty. Everything else is worse.

The real problem is that out of all of the technologies used on the web, Flash is the LEAST shitty. Everything else is worse.

Apparently except when it comes to governments and high-paid hackers installing spyware onto your PC. The recent disclosure of a large cache of previously unknown flash-based exploits (plus flash's long history of security holes) means that browser vendors really don't have an option but to disable it right now.