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Firefox makes click-to-activate Flash the default

support.mozilla.org

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

#151

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 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.

ah yes good point! I've used a different install method for so long I forgot that. So again, tantamount to crime.

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

#152

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.

ah yes good point! I've used a different install method for so long I forgot that. So again, tantamount to crime.

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

#154
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…

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.

The first version they bought and re-branded. The second version was developed in house using the purchased technologies. It's sad the stuff developed in house seems to be worse.

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

#156
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…

Another point that hasn't been raised yet: Flash is a much smaller software than a browser, how come it has more bugs ? It certainly speaks for it's internal code quality.

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

#157

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?

> 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.

That's like saying “The ‘Web’ can't display images, the ‘Web’ needs plug-ins to do so. Plug-ins like libjpeg or giflib”.

Right now, you can put a or tag on a page and it will work in something like 95% of the browsers in use. That's already better than Flash and going up as IE8 users upgrade to newer versions of IE or install Chrome/Flash.

Sure, you can't rely on users not recompiling their browser to disable it but you also can't rely on 100% support for anything on the web – users disable image loading, plugins, stylesheets or JavaScript, install incredibly overzealous ad-blockers, use ISPs which tamper with page contents, etc.

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

#158

This is priceless http://i.imgur.com/3uNsIF2.png

The final act of HTML5 delusion - it becomes "ready" because we say it's "ready". It's just someone forgot to ask Flash (game) developers' opinion. Not that it matters, right?

And since when you have to please everybody ? Flash developers are a minority, and they have no power to influence the market.

The sooner Adobe abandons the dead horse, the better for all of us. Kevin has gone away for years now, and Adobe's force is not based on Flash anymore (disclaimer: I own Adobe stock)

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

#159

AFAIK, the only way for javascript on a website to copy something into your clipboard is through Flash. It might be a good thing to prevent such functionality, but I wonder if Firefox took this into consideration.

That is simply not true, there are some limitations though these are being removed in newer browsers: http://caniuse.com/#feat=clipboard

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

#160

This is priceless http://i.imgur.com/3uNsIF2.png

The final act of HTML5 delusion - it becomes "ready" because we say it's "ready". It's just someone forgot to ask Flash (game) developers' opinion. Not that it matters, right?

I did the "click to activate" option for flash in firefox. I like it. (Safari and chrome can do this too). This way if flash is activated when really needed.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/set-adobe-flash-click-p...

I feel your pain. The university site I'm working on has flash protein visualizations. We're finally moving visualizations to js. We'll get there, but with flash being kinda turned off, users will have to turn it back on manually or our pages won't work till rid of flash.

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