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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

#241

Post by snuxoll »

digi_owl wrote: post #175
jfuhrman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that's downright weird, given that Chrome use a different plugin API and thus get Flash bundled. Even Windows has Flash via the updater. Just about the only browser that use the old API is Firefox.

Shock, the only browser that still uses NPAPI is the descendant of the one that invented it!

Really, at this point I think Mozilla is more interested in just getting rid of plugins than trying to implement an alternative to NPAPI - why put all the effort in to support something like PPAPI when plugins should be dead within the decade anyway?

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

#242

Post by mhurron »

ultramancool wrote: post #237
mhurron wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is getting annoying to have to go into about:config with every release to turn things I don't want off. Off should be default. Let those that want to use these features turn them on if they want. Or better yet, ship a damn extension.

It's a real pain, but they want the less sophisticated users to be able to take advantage of all the latest stuff and if Chrome or IE is shipping with it enabled, they have to compete. Well, that explains WebRTC at least. As for the other stuff... I'm a Pocket user, but I have no idea why that needed to be integrated into the browser, seems like an insane decision to me. I hope they got a good pay day out of that. Sa…

Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested. It also might clue in Mozillas devs that if they want people to turn it on, a setting in about:config isn't the only place you should be putting the button.

Off by default is neither removing user choice, nor is it preventing Mozilla from saying they ship with feature X. It is the right way to present it.

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

#243

Post by natch »

marksc wrote: post #198

Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see…

The web page explains:

"To prevent these add-ons from running, click Restart Firefox."

Why doesn't the dialog box have that same explanation? Did you (mozilla) think the two button options "Restart Later" and "Restart Firefox" won't confuse people?

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

#244

Post by rorykoehler »

marksc wrote: post #198

Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see…

FWIW This is how I have all my browsers setup anyways. Autoplay ruined my web experience so I turn off all plugins and white list as necessary.

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

#245

Post by jordigh »

marksc wrote: post #198

Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see…

Is Shumway a possible replacement for Scratch 2's flash implementation? They seem to think that there are some flash things that just can't be done without flash:

    Unimplementable Features on iOS: Image effects for whirl, fisheye,
    mosaic, and pixelate. Sound and video input for loudness, video
    motion, and touching colors from the video.
https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5

I really like Scratch, but it's a pity that it's implemented on a platform so many people think should no longer exist.

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

#246

Post by gluelogic »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #192
untog wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in video publishing have had to deal with the iPhone since 2007. This is nothing new.

what, re-implementing their tech on a multitude of different browsers on desktop machines that previously worked fine? I'm just pissed because IMO flash is being removed before the cross platform media objects in html5 have been implemented in full across all the browsers.

Flash isn't being removed by Mozilla. They have just placed a kind of "Are you sure you want to run this?" prompt on flash content.

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

#247

Post by drzaiusapelord »

marksc wrote: post #198

Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see…

I was advocating for this yesterday in /r/sysadmin and this morning it was a pleasant surprise to hear that this actually happened. I imagine you're getting all sorts of complaints from advertisers and others, but its the right move. The web is simply dangerous and having an unaccountable closed source binary happily running anything served to it is just crazy.

I'd love it if you kept it like this and implemented a flash whitelist function. Flash needs to be treated like Java: its legacy tech that should be used only via whitelisting. Google is too embedded into the marketing and advertising world to ever consider doing this in Chrome. Its really up to you guys, per usual, to save the web.

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

#248

Post by ultramancool »

mhurron wrote: post #242
ultramancool wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a real pain, but they want the less sophisticated users to be able to take advantage of all the latest stuff and if Chrome or IE is shipping with it enabled, they have to compete. Well, that explains WebRTC at least. As for the other stuff... I'm a Pocket user, but I have no idea why that needed to be integrated into the browser, seems like an insane decision to me. I hope they got a good pay day out of that. Sa…

Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested. It also might clue in Mozillas devs that if they want people to turn it on, a setting in about:config isn't the only place you should be putting the button. Off by default is neither removing user choice, nor is it preventing Mozilla from saying they ship with feature X. It is the right way to present it.

> Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested.

It lets more sophisticated users choose. Less sophisticated users however will more likely switch to a different browser the moment a site doesn't work before poking through settings.

I think a better way than a separate setting would be to go in the direction of many software firewalls and present it to the user as a choice when an application requests it as many browsers currently do with the location APIs. This would provide individual domain-level control over what permissions sites are granted by you. I don't know why this sort of policy seems to be restricted only to the location APIs...

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

#249

Post by pcwalton »

jordigh wrote: post #245
marksc wrote: post #198

Mark from Mozilla here. To be clear, by "blocked" Flash we really mean enforced click-to-activate. User choice is always a #1 priority at Mozilla. We regularly block vulnerable plugins. What made this block different was that we did it before Adobe made an update available. Now that Adobe has released an update, it is no longer true that every version of Flash Player is blocked in Firefox. However, we're glad to see…

Is Shumway a possible replacement for Scratch 2's flash implementation? They seem to think that there are some flash things that just can't be done without flash: Unimplementable Features on iOS: Image effects for whirl, fisheye, mosaic, and pixelate. Sound and video input for loudness, video motion, and touching colors from the video. https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5 I really like Scratch, but it's a pity that i…

You should be able to implement those effects with either simd.js or a WebGL shader, no?

(Assuming you can get the pixel data; but getting the pixel data from HTML content is actually a security nightmare…)

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

#250

Post by windsurfer »

netfire wrote: post #228
justizin wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I noticed after making my Flash click-to-activate a while back. That seems like a HUMONGOUS tunnel to create in order to allow copy to clipboard, and fairly irresponsible on GitHub's part. What developer doesn't know how to copy to clipboard?

Github claims that the flash version is "currently the only reliable way to put data in the clipboard". This seems to indicate that they looked at the native browser option and found it unacceptable for their use case. https://github.com/blog/1365-a-more-transparent-clipboard-bu...

That blog is from 2013. Github now does browser sniffing to see if it can use native APIs instead of flash: https://gist.github.com/jonrohan/81085b119d16cdd7868a
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