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Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

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

#121

Post by throwaway7767 »

programmernews3 wrote: post #70
kozukumi wrote: post #50

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.

The spotify web player unfortunately requires flash as well.

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

#122

Post by visarga »

paublyrne wrote: post #74
velcro wrote: 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…

They do get more bad press than perhaps others should. There is already a perception about Flash that it is not a great product, which feeds into this. Reasons are varied. - Performance has not been good on Macs (my 2007 Macbook Pro literally burned my legs when running anything flashy) - Flash updates mechanism seems a little spammy. - Long-term perception of Adobe as a maker of a somewhat buggy, somewhat bloated so…

... and makes pages load faster.

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

#123

Post by bopf »

This is terrible for anyone who relies on Flash to get any kind of interactivity going inside the FB timeline. It would have been better if FF would just display a warning and then let the user decide if they want the Flash content blocked or displayed. Obviously it would be even better yet if FB would finally allow interactive HTML 5 content in its timeline.

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

#124

Post by tim333 »

sbarre wrote: post #118
fao_ wrote: 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. 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.

It seems to work ok if you install it for them - I now tend to do that for non tech users who I help out. Though usually uBlock rather than AdBlock Plus. It's scary if you go to a download site these days how many fake download buttons there are near the real one if you don't do something like that.

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

#125

Post by josteink »

przemoc wrote: post #73
jacobolus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Google Maps is also dramatically slower, laggier, and buggier than the old version which was a regular web app built to work on browsers from 2005. I think the terribleness of recent Google web front-ends (not only Maps and Street View but also Search, Mail, Groups, Gplus, etc.) is mostly a product of incompetent management process internal to Google, rather than an indictment of web technology generally.

FWIW, Google Maps are generally noticeably slower and laggier in Firefox when compared to Chrome.

The old Google Maps were orders of magnitudes faster than the current one in all browsers.

Despite Google's claim to the contrary, they obviously no longer care about performance for some of their web-products.

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

#126

Post by gorgak »

tim333 wrote: post #124
sbarre wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It seems to work ok if you install it for them - I now tend to do that for non tech users who I help out. Though usually uBlock rather than AdBlock Plus. It's scary if you go to a download site these days how many fake download buttons there are near the real one if you don't do something like that.

i also use ublock (but ublock origin) because of that whitelist deal that adblock did with er people what make ads.

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

#127

Post by zurn »

vog wrote: post #54
TD-Linux wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox can actually use ffmpeg as a decoder. It would be a great option for supporting a lot of these formats. However, Mozilla can't ship it enabled, because the patent problem is very real. See, for example, all of the Play Store apps that got C&D letters from Dolby for using ffmpeg's implementation of AC3. Firefox does ship a lot of other video and audio codecs though, such as vorbis, opus, theora, vp8, and vp9.…

> However, Mozilla can't ship it enabled Just a minor nitpick: Under Linux, people don't download from Mozilla but have it installed by default. If not, they install via package manager and not via download from Mozilla. So it's not Mozilla making that decision, but the respective Linux distros. But of course they have the same problem. I believe a good compromise would be to check if ffmpeg is installed on the syste…

Mozilla does not allow Firefox trademark use for distro customized builds.

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

#128

Post by kijin »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #108
proactivesvcs wrote: post #98

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…

Flash also comes with McAffee (or some other bundleware). I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why they haven't made a proper auto-updater is because of that. That they'd miss out on those miniscule profits they get from that.

Yeah, I've been wondering why Adobe sticks to a "visit our website and manually download the new version" update model in this day and age. I think you found the answer.

If you keep ignoring the update prompt, Flash will quietly update itself after 45 days. That's long enough for every interested party to pwn your machine.

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

#129

Post by spiralganglion »

baumgarn wrote: post #116
paganel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 l…

Strongly agree.

The company I work for makes interactive/animated training media. While I work as a coder doing mostly server-side stuff, I can vouch for the power that the Flash authoring environment provided. It was rather similar to something like Unity, with a tightly integrated scenegraph and coding environment. For our team of animators who (by necessity, not by choice) picked up some coding chops on the job, it was a huge blessing.

Moving everything over to web technology has been extremely painful for exactly one reason: lack of a decent authoring workflow for interactive animations. There's nothing that can even touch Flash in this regard.

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

#130

Post by richardw »

velcro wrote: 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…

Cost/benefit seems higher for Flash/Java than browsers. You really need a browser, but you don't really need a [fancy thing that can't be done in JS]. As another commenter said, it doubles your attack surface and for little benefit.

Flash game enthusiasts would probably disagree, but most of us can probably do without it given the risk.

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