Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#1

Post by cpeterso » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

Google is banning Flash from its display ads
theverge.com

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#2

Post by diminish » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

Flash ads were a good way to target desktop office day time users for some conversion needs. Anyway had to go ..

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#3

Post by Animats » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:25 PM UTC

I've blocked Google ads for so long I didn't realize they had been allowing Flash ads.

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#4

Post by smaili » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

I wonder if people may begin to go back to older browsers for surfing once ads have completely transitioned to HTML5 :-)

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#5

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

smaili wrote: post #4

I wonder if people may begin to go back to older browsers for surfing once ads have completely transitioned to HTML5 :-)

With people shifting their layouts over to Flexbox, relying on "box-sizing: border-box", "display: table-xxx" and friends, older browsers will mess up the layout beyond belief. IIRC some older browsers even failed to apply an entire CSS file if they couldn't parse a single rule - good luck with ::before, ::after, ::nth-child and friends.

CSS, unfortunately, isn't really backwards compatible unless you invest a LOT of effort into testing and development.

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#6

Post by manigandham » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

This is great progress. Google being the biggest ad network and going with a complete ban is probably the only way to move things forward but glad to see it finally being done.

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#7

Post by chc4 » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

Silly question: Do people not use Click-to-play? I thought it was enabled in browsers by default now, or at least Firefox.

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#8

Post by pippy » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

One thing HTML5 lacks is the ability to combine all assets into one file. This makes Flash particularly handy for advertisements. Safari almost got there with its .Webarchive format, and Mozilla experimented with a file format but it didn't get anywhere.

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#9

Post by wlesieutre » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #5

smaili wrote: post #4

I wonder if people may begin to go back to older browsers for surfing once ads have completely transitioned to HTML5 :-)

With people shifting their layouts over to Flexbox, relying on "box-sizing: border-box", "display: table-xxx" and friends, older browsers will mess up the layout beyond belief. IIRC some older browsers even failed to apply an entire CSS file if they couldn't parse a single rule - good luck with ::before, ::after, ::nth-child and friends. CSS, unfortunately, isn't really backwards compatible unless you invest a LOT of…

Good riddance. Those older browsers are also going to be full of unpatched security holes, and if websites don't work people will eventually quit using them.

Re: Google is banning Flash from its display ads

#10

Post by austinheap » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 10:54 PM UTC

pippy wrote: post #8

One thing HTML5 lacks is the ability to combine all assets into one file. This makes Flash particularly handy for advertisements. Safari almost got there with its .Webarchive format, and Mozilla experimented with a file format but it didn't get anywhere.

Isn't that mostly moot with HTTP 2.0 multiplexing?