By now, you’ve probably heard that Adobe’s Flash Player is going the way of the dinosaur. Except, wait… No, it’s not. It’s still around, and it still works.
No, wait… Yeah, it’s dead. No it’s not. Yes it is.
You could be forgiven if, like most of us, you’re really, really confused about what’s happening with the Flash Player.
Okay, so, seriously: WHAT THE HECK is going on with Flash?
Is it alive? Is it dead? Is it a zombie?!
Is Flash Dead?
No. About a year ago, Mozilla announced that they would no longer “support” Flash player in Firefox. But, as you may have noticed if you use Firefox, it still works.
The reason is that they “disabled” it, but not really. You may have gotten some kind of popup at some point, and of course you said, “Yes! Use Flash. Stop bothering me!!!”
Recently, Google announced that Chrome will not be supporting Flash by the end of 2016. Since Chrome is used by about 50% of the internet, this is a big deal. BUT… The Flash player will continue to work for 10 special sites (be still my beating heart), including YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and Yahoo.
Yahoo? Seriously?!
BUT… There’s another little tidbit to pay attention to: Even though Flash will be “disabled” except for the 10 Special Sites, you will still be able to manually approve the use of Flash on ANY web site, and Chrome will remember your setting.
So, in short, Flash will not be disappearing, and it will still work in Chrome even in 2017.
At least for now. Or, at least for then… Well, you get the idea.
Is Flash Dying?
Yes, slowly…
Back in 2010, Steve Jobs famously remarked that Flash is dying and that it was a relic from a bygone era of PCs and mice.
Well, as we all know today, Jobs has shuffled off this mortal coil, and you and I have not. We also know that the PC (that’s “Personal Computer”) is still going strong. Last time I checked, so were computer mice…
But then, Steve Jobs’ amazing genius consisted solely of getting other people to make sort-of-good stuff that he then convinced everyone was revolutionary. THAT was his “genius”. Predicting the future? Not so much… Creating the future? Not so much… After all, he managed to “create himself out” of the future we are currently residing in. He died relatively young.
Anyway, most of the Flash Hoopla is centered around Jobs/Apple’s poo-pooing of Flash way back when.
Well, there is also the fact that Flash Player does have a lovely, long list of security holes. There’s also that little detail that things like videos can be played today without Flash. Instead, using HTML5, your browser can play a video with less CPU power and less battery usage on average. That’s a good thing.
So, sure, Flash is obviously on it’s way out – slowly. More and more sites use HTML5 + JavaScript to do the fancy stuff Flash used to do.
But Flash isn’t gone or dead just yet.
There is also the fact that Flash is not really supported on mobile browsers. Flash + Smartphone or Flash + Tablet is kind of a no-go. Still, you’ve got a puter, and it still works there…
Security holes in Flash? Oh my word!
Yeah, I know, it’s shocking.
Since you still probably have Flash installed, and you still probably will for awhile, you should do one of two things:
- Reboot your puter regularly. When you do, Adobe will automatically check for and notify you of updates to the Flash Player. Install, done!
- Visit Adobe’s Flash Version page, which will tell you if you’re up to day or not. If not, download the update! Just be sure to UNcheck the Optional Offers. I wouldn’t run McAfee software on my puter if somebody paid me…
If you use Chrome, you are most likely using the built-in version of Flash that comes with Chrome automagically. In that case, just keep Chrome up to date, and BOOYAH! Your Flash Player is also kept up to date. Wasn’t that easy?
Just for good measure: You can also check your YouTube settings and tick the box for “use HTML5 videos when possible”. HTML5 video is better, after all!
TL;DR
© The Simpsons, Fox Broadcasting Company
For those of you who are not as cool as people who are not me, TL;DR = Too long; Didn’t read.
Apparently, in addition to predictions of the premature deaths of still-common technologies, stupid acronyms are also all the rage. I had to look up TL;DR three times before I could remember what it meant – that’s just how stupid it is. Mind you, I’m an engineer, and I LOVE acronyms…
But, I digress.
In my day, we just called it a “Summary”. Everyone knows what that means.
But, I’m still digressing.
So, in SUMMARY:
Just keep using Flash if you want, but be sure it’s up to date by visiting this page. Update manually if necessary. If using Chrome, keep it up to date. And don’t sweat the rest. DONE!
Flash needs an airbag since it crashes so often.
You wrote “automagically”. Probably a typo.
I will look into that HTML5 I didn’t know about.
Automatically + Magically = Automagically. 🙂
Flash..
Let me tell You a story…
Once before time there were one real big bastard called St..e Jobs. This idiot were making fun of the whole world just for his own benefits. Anyway one day he asked a friend of him called Adobe to help him with his bullsh*ts he have done, but he got rejected because the friend were in agreement for his job with another dude called Microsoft. Then the bastard in anger swore to took revenge even from his grave.
He created a special division of internet trolls to create a “weave against Adobe”, he spend nearly a billion to fund anything which is close to fight against it, and at some point he released that this guy Adobe is owning a small tool which is runing practically any kind of freedom on it.
Since the bastard were a greedy one, and he wanted to dominate completely he decided to move his all efforts toward it – to crash it.
At this time a couple of nothing suspecting dudes were trying to solve the uber crappy issues of the most crappy part of web – HTML4..
By a lot of efforts they came with next version – HTML5 which were well subsided by the bastard. Once it came near something the bastard took it and managed it as he prefer. Then he start spreading a fake acusses that Flash is slower than HTML5, Flash is like a swish cheese, Flash is like.. well the worst thing you could ever imagine. None of those were actually even 1% true. Finally it turns out that HTML5 is the worst thing which happened to the progress of the internet and web, but this is yet to be revealed, since it is still known by less than 0.01% of web thinktanks, since not much thinktanks left around able to think clearly.
So.. the bastard won even from his grave.
He took away the free part of web – the flash games – a billions free to play and enjoy, eyecandy, smooth and shine prices of programming running on all platforms.
He took away the smooth video which could be managed the way the user wanted.
He took away the quality of presentations with mindless number of options and possibilities.
He took away the freedom of representing context trough a number of complex firewalls in the oppressed countries.
He took away our freedom – Flash. The best thing which were happened to web since invention of the browser itself..
Sorry. But everything you know about Flash is wrong and made up. Think clear!
Great analysis, and I totally agree! I knew Flash was being hobbled by special interests. (Google & Jobs) But everyone’s thrilled to get rid of it because they believe the anti-Flash propaganda. Hope they’re happy when we’re living in an autocracy of Google, Apple, Amazon, Verizon, Comcast, National Grid, Monsanto (Bayer) plus a few banks & foreign multinationals. 😛
It’s been years and flash is still better than HTML5 by a long shot. All one could once do effortlessly through vector shapes and a few Kb now takes hours of rendering time and many megabytes of space.
In HTML everything sure goes very fast and almost never crashes. that “almost” is because if you keep things extremely simple, then it will work. If you try something more artistic it either will not be displayed or it’ll break.
My first website, back in the late 90s had more animations than my current one and was much lighter.
Flash is dying, definitely, in fact if you look around the web creativity is dying as well
“Flash is dying, definitely, in fact if you look around the web creativity is dying as well”
/thread
Every site now runs amazing fast on underpowered thin-clients (sic smartphones), and yet every site looks the same. Paste, flat, minimialistic, vapid and ultimately boring.
Let alone, HTML+ES/JS+Node STILL cant do what Flash could do 5 years ago. And worse, now your downloading 20 files to your 1GB of mobile bandwidth instead of one. But hey at least you still have a battery….
Flash is a Zombie and won’t die. I don’t like flash at all, update system is so awful and annoying that I want to kill my self before Flash dies. When I saw flash content on any page I better go to the another page fast.
Don’t like it and don’t use it. Ransom virus is better thing on your computer than flash player.
Why flash don’t die? Please let us to live normal life without you!
I can’t believe how everyone fell for this anti-Flash, pro-Html propaganda, but they surely did. Flash is faster, more lightweight and more flexible than the resource hog HTML, which stutters, freezes & limits resolution on youtube to an illegible blur. All because Google & their buddies don’t want us to have a choice.
I guess ruining Youtube wasn’t enough for them, smh
The Flash was really annoying I’m so glad it’s dead!