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Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

theguardian.com

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Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#21

Post by ludamad »

juggernautq wrote: post #18

Please help me understand this obsession about building a secure software. I understand there are sensitive information like bank account, email address(maybe? if you are important). But most of stuff on your computer is crap for, I'd say, 99% of the users(me included). And for an average user the convenience trumps everything. All of this is fine if there is a perfect replacement for flash. No, there isn't. I don't…

One of the principles of security is conservative defaults. Flash is disabled by default because of a series of high-severity security flaws, and a basic understanding that not enough resources are being put in to actively secure the thing.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#22

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

codeshaman wrote: post #20

While I agree that it might be time for Flash (the proprietary plugin) to be retired, I'm totally against dancing on it's grave, as is the tone of this article. We have to respect it for what it brought to the world. Flash has enabled many technologies and companies, like online video (youtube?), music playback (....) , games, cartoons and so on. I remember how amazed I was by the perfection of the first flash websit…

> Flash has enabled many technologies and companies, like online video (youtube?), music playback (....) , games, cartoons and so on.

We had online video and online music before Flash. The tag.

> I remember how amazed I was by the perfection of the first flash website that I've seen. You could interact with spheres, it made high quality sounds and had cool animations and transitions. That was in Netscape Navigator 4.

> This was absolutely impossible with HTML back then. It's still pretty difficult to achieve the same results with HTML5 today.

It wasn't impossible with HTML back then. Both Microsoft and Netscape had (incompatible) DHTML implementations you could use to do this stuff. Heck, Windows 98's desktop linked to a showcase of this stuff. It was amazing.

No Flash required.

Now, this isn't to say Flash wasn't useful for doing these things more easily, but it never was the only way to do these things, just the most convenient.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#23

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

All of these can be done with HTML and JS, and (bar maybe clipboard) have worked for years:

> 1. One file distribution.

> AFAICT HTML5 has no real ability to do this

We've had this since the 90s, in the form of MIME HTML (.mhtml) files. We also have data: URIs, another approach, which has better browser support.

Nobody ever bothers with this stuff, but it is there and very easy to do. You can literally just open an HTML file in IE, press Ctrl+S and save an MHTML one with all the assets bundled into one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme

> 2. Easy streaming

This can actually be done in HTML as well, if you execute your JS when the DOM's ready, rather than when the page has loaded. jQuery users have done a very weak form of this for years. Again, though, nobody seems to bother.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/DOMConte...

> 3. Not running when not visible

> HTML5 has no way to stop an animation when offscreen.

HTML5's had the ability to detect if the window is visible or active for a long time now, but nobody uses it.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/User_expe...

> 4. Can copy to clipboard

Internet Explorer had this years ago, and you can do this with HTML5 too, it's now standard. Strangely, nobody uses it.

http://stackoverflow.com/a/30810322/736162

> And on top of that I can easily block flash. I can't block HTML5 so much :P

NoScript!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/?src...

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#24

Post by riffraff »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #23
greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

All of these can be done with HTML and JS, and (bar maybe clipboard) have worked for years: > 1. One file distribution. > AFAICT HTML5 has no real ability to do this We've had this since the 90s, in the form of MIME HTML (.mhtml) files. We also have data: URIs, another approach, which has better browser support. Nobody ever bothers with this stuff, but it is there and very easy to do. You can literally just open an H…

MHTML was _awesome_ when I was still using IE. It worked almost flawlessly (probably also cause sites were simpler) and I never understood why other browsers didn't support it.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#25

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

riffraff wrote: post #24
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these can be done with HTML and JS, and (bar maybe clipboard) have worked for years: > 1. One file distribution. > AFAICT HTML5 has no real ability to do this We've had this since the 90s, in the form of MIME HTML (.mhtml) files. We also have data: URIs, another approach, which has better browser support. Nobody ever bothers with this stuff, but it is there and very easy to do. You can literally just open an H…

MHTML was _awesome_ when I was still using IE. It worked almost flawlessly (probably also cause sites were simpler) and I never understood why other browsers didn't support it.

It's been an RFC since at least 18 years ago ([0], preceded by [1]), which makes it all the more odd that some browsers (Firefox particularly) don't support it.

There's been an open bug for 16 years :( [2] (and a counterpart for saving for 15: [3])

[0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2557

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2110

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18764

[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40873

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#26

Post by qntm »

juggernautq wrote: post #18

Please help me understand this obsession about building a secure software. I understand there are sensitive information like bank account, email address(maybe? if you are important). But most of stuff on your computer is crap for, I'd say, 99% of the users(me included). And for an average user the convenience trumps everything. All of this is fine if there is a perfect replacement for flash. No, there isn't. I don't…

Who are you to decide what on my computer is crap?

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#27

Post by chriswarbo »

greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

> 1. One file distribution.

What's wrong with using data URIs?

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#28

Post by cousin_it »

codeshaman wrote: post #20

While I agree that it might be time for Flash (the proprietary plugin) to be retired, I'm totally against dancing on it's grave, as is the tone of this article. We have to respect it for what it brought to the world. Flash has enabled many technologies and companies, like online video (youtube?), music playback (....) , games, cartoons and so on. I remember how amazed I was by the perfection of the first flash websit…

Yeah. Say what you will about the the bad old times of Dreamweaver and Flash, but back then, visual artists could actually contribute to the Web without going through "web programmer" gatekeepers. Unfortunately programmers have recaptured the power since then, declared the old technologies broken in ways that only programmers can understand, and brought nothing in return.

IMO that's not an accident. Many programmers would also love to kill off Excel, because it's messy and not a "proper database" or something. And if the rumors are true, HyperCard was killed because "you could do everything in Cocoa and ProjectBuilder instead". User-empowering tech always feels messy and unprincipled to programmers.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#29

Post by marcosdumay »

juggernautq wrote: post #18

Please help me understand this obsession about building a secure software. I understand there are sensitive information like bank account, email address(maybe? if you are important). But most of stuff on your computer is crap for, I'd say, 99% of the users(me included). And for an average user the convenience trumps everything. All of this is fine if there is a perfect replacement for flash. No, there isn't. I don't…

Yes, most of the stuff on anybody's computer is unimportant.

Now, let me ask. How important is that small part that you didn't talk about? Because it's on the exact same computer, and will be compromised together with the "most" trash that you don't care about.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#30

Post by 0x0 »

juggernautq wrote: post #18

Please help me understand this obsession about building a secure software. I understand there are sensitive information like bank account, email address(maybe? if you are important). But most of stuff on your computer is crap for, I'd say, 99% of the users(me included). And for an average user the convenience trumps everything. All of this is fine if there is a perfect replacement for flash. No, there isn't. I don't…

So YOU're the one with the hacked pc sending insane amount of botnet spam emails and DDOS attacks my way. Thanks, buddy, appreciate it :)

Maybe your PC is currently DDOS'ing github as well. If so then you are really doing a wonderful service to a lot of other people too!

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