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Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

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111–120 of 398 posts

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#111
post #94

Overall, it's a good thing. Flash is a proprietary technology from the past. Lets move on guys...

Let's move on to Silverlight!

If only that were the case, but they're abandoning Silverlight. It was actually much more stable for me under Linux than Flash ever was sadly, but they stopped developing Moonlight as well.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#112

God will Flash just die already. Firefox is my primary browser and I run it without Flash. On the very odd occasion I need it I have IE in protected mode which has Flash built in. If a site does use Flash I will seek an alternative though as I hate it that much. On a side note Firefox without Flash is so much smoother. IMHO it is the fastest and most stable browser when it doesn't have Flash bogging it down.

The problem is the long tail of sites or site features that don't work without flash and users who rely on those sites or site features. I've heard Facebook video and last.fm streaming don't work without Flash for eg.

I was surprised about last.fm not working without flash but it turned out to be ad blocker problem.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#113
post #14

I hope this will be another push for content creators to abolish flash in the long term.

I hope this will not make more content creators choose that annoying unity3D plugin thing that doesn't support linux for games.

Good new for you. In September 2015 Google going to completely remove NPAPI support from Chrome. So Unity3D plugin will no longer work in Chrome and likely noone will use it for new projects.

http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npa...

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#114

God will Flash just die already. Firefox is my primary browser and I run it without Flash. On the very odd occasion I need it I have IE in protected mode which has Flash built in. If a site does use Flash I will seek an alternative though as I hate it that much. On a side note Firefox without Flash is so much smoother. IMHO it is the fastest and most stable browser when it doesn't have Flash bogging it down.

The problem is the long tail of sites or site features that don't work without flash and users who rely on those sites or site features. I've heard Facebook video and last.fm streaming don't work without Flash for eg.

Tidal and Deezer are others which require flash. Both have desktop apps, however.. Tidal's desktop app is awful and laggy to the extent I prefer using the web interface; Deezer's Windows app lacks some features compared to the web player.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#115
post #44

I uninstalled Flash a few days ago, because I didn't want to deal with the updates anymore. Since Flash was unbundled from Mac OS X it has become a pain to update. I simply don't understand why I need to go to the Adobe site to get the updates. Flash isn't super relevant anymore anyway, the main thing it's used for on my computer is Flash tracking cookies, and I can do without those. I do wonder how some of the track…

On the Mac, it's easy, I use Chrome as my Flash jail. I use Safari all the time and the few times I need Flash I fire up Chrome and it's there. Don't have to worry about Flash hacks or Chrome battery drainage.

Been doing the same for years now. Don't see why people are still discussing it.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#116
post #65

God will Flash just die already. Firefox is my primary browser and I run it without Flash. On the very odd occasion I need it I have IE in protected mode which has Flash built in. If a site does use Flash I will seek an alternative though as I hate it that much. On a side note Firefox without Flash is so much smoother. IMHO it is the fastest and most stable browser when it doesn't have Flash bogging it down.

> God will Flash just die already. 5 to 7 years ago I would have said the same thing, I hated Flash with a passion. But now, when it's almost gone for good, I see that it had its reasons. For example the new Google Street View is many times slower and lags so much as to give me motion sickness (when it's not blocking my browser) compared to the previous version, which was Flash-based, and which used to work like a ch…

Flash should still have its legitimation as an authoring tool. I think the direct approach in which you can throw together a scene or an animation has its value. The tools you use influence design decisions. Of course, technology wise, we should be happy without it. But if you always start a project with coding first, it limits your thinking. I fancy all the nice webgl demos and data visualizations, but they mostly lack a meaningful human perspective. Authoring tools like Flash and Director did provide a different feedback loop, not a data point of view but a narrative one.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#117
post #107

Flash is also shipped by default and enabled in Google Chrome. Here is how to deactivate it You need to go to chrome plugins and disable it chrome://plugins/

Keep in mind that flash plugin that bundled with Chrome using PPAPI and running inside sandbox. So some exploits don't affect that version all due to different architecture and to escalate privileges some Chrome sandbox exploit would be needed as well.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#118
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of experience of end users and they are forever telling me that they get so many different "Update this", "Update that" windows that they can no longer distinguish real from fake. Some of them have been tricked by fake web site pop-ups as a result, others ignore legitimate update messages. I do not blame them. Internet Explorer and Google Chrome get updated in a way that most end users find to be simple…

I have a lot of experience of end users and they are forever telling me that they get so many different "Update this", "Update that" windows that they can no longer distinguish real from fake. Some of them have been tricked by fake web site pop-ups as a result, others ignore legitimate update messages. I do not blame them. One solution to this is to use AdBlock Plus. When a site permits adverts that threaten a comput…

This is not a feasible solution for the average end user.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#119
post #42

Bugs are always bad (and security bugs even more so) - but I've always felt that Flash gets a disproportional amount of hate/hype in the media. To some degree it should be normal that the more widespread a technology is - the more it gets targeted for security exploits. If you run the popular browsers/plugins against the National Vulnerability Database, you'd get the following results (as of January 2014): - Internet…

So by disabling Flash by default, Mozilla can theoretically reduce vulnerabilities by half :-) Seems like a good choice to me!

Also, getting rid of the constant update dialogs and crapware installed with Flash will improve the overall user experience.

Re: Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need a real open-source alternative to flash player. We quietly built the alternative to Flash over the last 10 years. It's called the web. A standard document in the web browser can play audio, video, display vector graphics, utilise OpenGL, supports direct drawing via Canvas, and it is deeply scriptable with a mature, open programming language. What else do you need?

> What else do you need? I need all of those things to look exactly the same in each and every browser, instead of corrupted icons or broken navigation because the developer tested it in Chrome for Windows but neglected, say, Iceweasel for Debian. I have yet to find a non-flash game capable of doing that. And if the alternative is "we should discard this closed binary that works in every platform in favor of this fre…

Well then you don't want an open source Flash, because that will undoubtedly be different to the official one in the same way that browsers are different to each other.
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