Flash loses final appeal: Adobe sentences its web tech to death

[Eugene]

Source: CNet

Flash loses final appeal: Adobe sentences its web tech to death

The pioneering software paved the way for YouTube and countless games, but Adobe will kill Flash in 2020. Here's what it means for you.

by Stephen Shankland
July 25, 2017 9:01 AM PDT

The Flash Player has been there for you all along, inside your browser, making it possible for you to play online games, stream radio station music and watch YouTube videos. But after a two-decade run, Adobe is killing it off.

Countless nails have been hammered in Flash's coffin in recent years, most notably by Apple's Steve Jobs and also by Adobe itself. Now, though, there's a date for the funeral: Dec. 31, 2020.

Flash has been a website workhorse -- online gaming site Kongregate has more than 100,000 Flash games -- but don't fret over the demise of the pioneering software. It's more appropriate to rejoice, since the software today is a security risk and major source of browser crashes.

Indeed, Adobe's move is momentous enough that the biggest names in web tech -- Apple, Google, Facebook, Mozilla and Microsoft -- coordinated announcements to tell us what's going on and to reassure us all that it's going to be fine.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.cnet.com/news/adobe-kills-flash-web-browser-tech-2020/

[Binkie The Clown]

1. Good riddance. I've have nothing but trouble with Flash. n/t

[riversedge]

6. So, have I. I thought is was my old computer -very old but still functioned well except

when Flash was running and then it crashed a lot. Well 6 weeks ago I finally saved enough to buy new laptop and found to my dismay that that now my new computer freezes up if Flash is running.

[KT2000]

2. replaced with subscription service?

I bet that is in the works.

[teach1st]

3. The replacement is HTML5 and WebGL

I'm pretty sure it would be hard to charge for HTML5, which is a markup language.

[KT2000]

8. Good! n/t

[PoliticAverse]

4. Someone please get the memo to all the websites still requiring it. n/t

[hunter]

5. Here's the link to Adobe announcement...

https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html

My main concern about this would be the loss of archived flash based sites that will never be updated to to newer web technologies, some of them because the original author is dead. For example, some photographers used flash to resist casual right-click-save downloading of their work. A few scientists, engineers, and other technical people used flash for animations.

On the other hand automatic conversion technology is being developed on several fronts. Archive.org already has emulators that let you play old MSDOS games on your browser using an HTML5 Javascript virtual PC. Emulating a Flash player is a very similar endeavor.

For authors who wish to upgrade their own sites, Mozilla has published a "migration guide" here:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Plugins/Flash_to_HTML5

I never had much use for flash, probably because I'm paranoid, and because the most irritating advertising was flash based. I wouldn't even install the flash player on my primary desktop PC. That may have saved me some grief, I don't know.

[PoliticAverse]

7. There are still major websites requiring flash to view embedded video. Some of us don't have flash..

installed anymore for good reasons.

[Blue_Tires]

9. why is flash bad again?

[PoliticAverse]

10. See...

https://www.wired.com/2015/07/adobe-flash-player-die/