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Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

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Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#151

Post by nine_k »

rythie wrote: post #112
shocks wrote: post #64

I've had pretty much zero consequences from disabling Flash globally in all my browsers. Where is Flash still essential?

I've been disabling by default for a few weeks, though many sites still use it, for example: - Facebook (videos) - Twitter (bizarrely uses it for gifs in Firefox) - YouTube - BBC news - The Independent and most of UK press - Basically any site with embedded video - even github prompts because of that copy+paste feature I have no interest in Flash games or adverts, so it's annoying that these big sites all still use F…

Flash-less Youtube works well for me for at least a year now. Vimeo required more effort but also used to work.

Many embedded videos often don't, though.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#152

Post by Sephr »

mccr8 wrote: post #86
Sephr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be on Google's ad network to use swiffy (the conversion tool that they are using), it's open source.

Is the conversion tool actually open source? The Swiffy Wikipedia page says "There is a server-side component (source currently not public) that converts SWF to an intermediate representation serialized as JSON.".

Oh sorry, I was thinking of shumway. Swiffy isn't open source, but it is free at least, so third party ad networks can still use it.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#153

Post by cpeterso »

exodust wrote: post #62
cpeterso wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash provides much more identifiable fingerprinting information (e.g. detailed information about your system fonts) and looser "Flash cookie" (Local Shared Objects) restrictions than JavaScript. https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes

Did you read their conclusions? Javascript is most certainly a method for fingerprinting, regardless of Flash presence. "Browser developers should also consider what they can do to reduce fngerprintability, particularly at the JavaScript API level." "We identified only three groups of browser with comparatively good resistance to fngerprinting: those that block JavaScript, those that use TorButton, and certain types…

That is true. Not having Flash does not mean you're immune to fingerprinting, but having Flash does mean more (a lot more) unique fingerprinting data is available to trackers.

I wonder if browsers' plugin sandboxes could block Flash from calling the OS API to enumerate system fonts.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#154

Post by cpeterso »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #117
ablation wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few player embeds on the pages I visit still default to Flash, rather annoyingly. That's been my experience at least.

You're supposed to use an to embed these days, but some sites still use the flash-only / .

no-flash is a Firefox extension (written by a Mozilla employee) to rewrite Flash-only object embeds to use YouTube's HTML5 player:

https://github.com/hfiguiere/no-flash/

Mozilla may include this functionality in Firefox directly:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769117

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#155

Post by zwetan »

acdha wrote: post #128
userbinator wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arguably even worse than flash would have been I'm not surprised. As someone who has worked with it (and even written pieces of a simple Flash renderer), SWF was designed to be an extremely compact format and is far simpler to parse and render than the HTML + CSS + SVG + JS replacement that's being promoted. In that respect, all the complaints about Flash and mobile battery life should be attributable to the mere pre…

The part about the file format is quite true but it's not the only thing to compare since there are so many features in either runtime and Flash has been used for so many different things. The most relevant example here was the way Adobe made only half-hearted attempts to optimize video playback, which is where I saw the battery life discussion really get started as more people noticed that playing H.264 video back i…

half-hearted attempts to optimize video playback ?

the Flash Player plugin can render hardware accelerated video since v10.2 (released early 2011).

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/02/flash-player-10-2...

"For example, using Flash Player 10.2 with Stage Video hardware acceleration, we’ve tested a Mac Mini released two years ago and a low-powered GPU-enabled Windows netbook playing smooth full HD 1080p video using less than 8% of the CPU; more powerful computers use even less."

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#156

Post by mjevans »

darkstalker wrote: post #146
shocks wrote: post #64

I've had pretty much zero consequences from disabling Flash globally in all my browsers. Where is Flash still essential?

Several livestream sites (like twitch.tv) depend on flash.

Only if you're not using a superior playback option, like livestreamer.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#157

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

cpeterso wrote: post #154
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're supposed to use an to embed these days, but some sites still use the flash-only / .

no-flash is a Firefox extension (written by a Mozilla employee) to rewrite Flash-only object embeds to use YouTube's HTML5 player: https://github.com/hfiguiere/no-flash/ Mozilla may include this functionality in Firefox directly: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769117

Mobile Safari did this from very early on! (iPhone OS 2 or earlier) Though they didn't use YouTube's official HTML5 player.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#158

Post by userbinator »

zwetan wrote: post #155
acdha wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about the file format is quite true but it's not the only thing to compare since there are so many features in either runtime and Flash has been used for so many different things. The most relevant example here was the way Adobe made only half-hearted attempts to optimize video playback, which is where I saw the battery life discussion really get started as more people noticed that playing H.264 video back i…

half-hearted attempts to optimize video playback ? the Flash Player plugin can render hardware accelerated video since v10.2 (released early 2011). http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/02/flash-player-10-2... "For example, using Flash Player 10.2 with Stage Video hardware acceleration, we’ve tested a Mac Mini released two years ago and a low-powered GPU-enabled Windows netbook playing smooth full HD 1080p video us…

Jobs' original criticism of Flash was in 2010, when HW accel was not yet available. It might've lead Adobe to do it, however.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#159

Post by NathanCH »

rythie wrote: post #112
shocks wrote: post #64

I've had pretty much zero consequences from disabling Flash globally in all my browsers. Where is Flash still essential?

I've been disabling by default for a few weeks, though many sites still use it, for example: - Facebook (videos) - Twitter (bizarrely uses it for gifs in Firefox) - YouTube - BBC news - The Independent and most of UK press - Basically any site with embedded video - even github prompts because of that copy+paste feature I have no interest in Flash games or adverts, so it's annoying that these big sites all still use F…

Twitch as well. That's a big one for me.

Re: Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default on September 1

#160

Post by acdha »

zwetan wrote: post #155
acdha wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about the file format is quite true but it's not the only thing to compare since there are so many features in either runtime and Flash has been used for so many different things. The most relevant example here was the way Adobe made only half-hearted attempts to optimize video playback, which is where I saw the battery life discussion really get started as more people noticed that playing H.264 video back i…

half-hearted attempts to optimize video playback ? the Flash Player plugin can render hardware accelerated video since v10.2 (released early 2011). http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/02/flash-player-10-2... "For example, using Flash Player 10.2 with Stage Video hardware acceleration, we’ve tested a Mac Mini released two years ago and a low-powered GPU-enabled Windows netbook playing smooth full HD 1080p video us…

> the Flash Player plugin can render hardware accelerated video since v10.2 (released early 2011).

I'm aware of that but the quality of the actual implementations still varies widely. I've done the comparison periodically since that was released and their quoted figures have never reproduced on any Flash video player which is actually used on the web (YouTube, Vimeo, jwplayer and a few other open-source projects, the custom players used by various big media companies, etc.).

On OS X or Windows XP-8.1, on multiple devices, it's consistently been the same: Flash = fan on high, HTML5 = fans off. Flash's settings show hardware acceleration enabled but there's either a really restrictive hardware check quietly disabling it or absolutely nobody ever managed to ship a player using Stage Video, including the companies quoted in that press release.

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