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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

#141

Post by DavideNL »

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…

> If you run the popular browsers/plugins against the National Vulnerability Database...

That's misusing statistics, you can't determine how secure something is by just summing up the number of vulnerabilities - equally weighing/comparing browsers with a plugin etc.

By the way, Apple's opinion on Flash in 2010:

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance. Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

Source: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

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

#142

Post by rprospero »

exodust wrote: post #105
vultour wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When i wanted to start programming one of the things I tried was flash. I absolutely couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on even with tutorials, it's garbage.

That's strange, I found Flash programming very accessible. There's a huge amount of good learning material out there, and plenty of shortcuts and components you can use to do quite complex things. Flash components were really interesting, and made it easier for non-programmers, or designers to manipulate a user-friendly "API" of sorts within Flash. This was very powerful. Hugely underrated and conventionality forgott…

In terms of accessibility, my first two "serious" coding projects in high school were an interactive library map and a Latin flashcard quiz game written in Flash and Perl, respectively. At the end of the projects, I decided to focus my efforts on the more intuitive of the two languages, Perl.

Granted, it's just an anecdote, but I wonder what I missed that made others find Flash so accessible.

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

#143

Post by dingaling »

JonAtkinson wrote: post #57
HugoDaniel wrote: post #32

Unfortunately in this case avoiding the problem won't make it go away. Many old sites will stop working (my first site was done in flash) as well as many games that are still heavily played today by millions of people. Also flash IDE provides a good introduction to programming for self-taught kids these days: many of them still do their first code in flash after clicking on "that strange icon next to photoshop". Over…

> 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?

> We quietly built the alternative to Flash over the last 10 years. It's called the web.

The 'Web' can't play video or audio, the 'Web' needs plug-ins to do so. Plug-ins like H264 decoders and Flash.

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

#144

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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.

> 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.

That is primarily because of the flash ads being dumped. An ad/flash/js blocker achieves much the same and then some by further reducing the latency to collect everything needed to render.

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

#145

Post by anon1385 »

braythwayt wrote: post #131
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…

Yes but Flash vulnerabilities are incremental vulnerabilities. So just counting high severity vulnerabilities, the chart is IE: 314. IE with Flash: 483. Chrome: 154: Chrome with Flash: 323. Firefox: 86. Firefox with Flash: 255. And of course, you can add a third column for Java and a fourth column for browser with Flash and Java. I have no idea what their bugs-per-line-of-code are, perhaps they have the finest code o…

>But from a surface area perspective, installing Flash makes you more vulnerable, period.

So does turning on Javascript. Yet the popular opinion these days is that disabling Javascript makes you a luddite. Mozilla even hid the option for it in Firefox.

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

#147

Post by degenerate »

fao_ wrote: post #109
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…

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…

Not ABP, ublock origin. Faster and not-for-profit: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance

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

#150

Post by jfuhrman »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #98
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…

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 bundles things like Chrome, Mcafee etc.

That's the real reason they don't want a auto-update. Google pays them a lot for bundling Chrome(I think it's around $1 per install). They keep breaking the auto-update on purpose so that they can make a ton of money by bundling other software. Same with Java updates.

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