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Chrome Google Security The Internet Technology

Google Starts Using HTML5 By Default Instead of Flash For Some Chrome Users (venturebeat.com) 40

Posted by BeauHD from the coming-to-a-browser-near-you dept.
Google announced in a blog post today that it will be rolling out a feature over the next few months that starts disabling Flash and displaying HTML5 content instead on certain websites. Google notes, "This change disables Adobe Flash Player unless there's a user indication that they want Flash content on specific sites, and eventually all websites will require the user's permission to run Flash." VentureBeat reports: Google has deployed the change for half of the people who are using Chrome 56 beta, which rolled out yesterday, Google technical program manager Eric Deily wrote in a blog post. Then, "in the next few days," Deily wrote, the feature will be active for 1 percent of users of Chrome 55 stable. And by February 2016 it will be live for all users in Chrome 56 stable, Deily wrote. The idea is to lessen the dependence on a web component that can cause a drag on CPU and memory usage and shorten battery life as a result. Flash also has a track record of security issues.
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Google Starts Using HTML5 By Default Instead of Flash For Some Chrome Users More

Google Starts Using HTML5 By Default Instead of Flash For Some Chrome Users

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  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phydeaux314 ( 866996 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @10:29PM (#53457137)

    Getting rid of Flash as a default, loaded-as-needed plugin is a good thing. I mean, it's one of the biggest sources of malware these days - it really shouldn't be allowed to run by default, especially when alternatives exist.

    • Getting rid of Flash as a default, loaded-as-needed plugin is a good thing. I mean, it's one of the biggest sources of malware these days - it really shouldn't be allowed to run by default, especially when alternatives exist.

      Yet some stuff on YouTube still doesn't work when I run Chromium (sans PepperFlash).

      Google have your people call your people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dahamma ( 304068 )

        That's the best part, Youtube is on the list of default whitelisted sites (along with Netflix, Hulu, Yahoo, Facebook, and half dozen others making up 90% of the Flash video streaming usage...)

        Basically it will totally inconvenience (aka reduce traffic to) the small guys and reinforce the big ones. I wouldn't be surprised if the whitelist concept generates a class action antitrust lawsuit...

  • Better idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ThatsNotPudding ( 1045640 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @10:29PM (#53457139)
    They really want to kill Flash? Bury any search results in the back pages *if* they rely on Flash.
    • Much more effective. There still so many mainstream sites like the Weather Channel that use only flash and are now unusable in chrome. Doing this will put the onus on the site if they want to keep their standings and push quicker adoption. Not doing it just leads people to use an insecure browser that runs flash and circumvents the whole reason that Google pushed Flash out in the first place.

  • wish they'd hurry up (Score:3)

    by JackSpratts ( 660957 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:06PM (#53457271) Homepage
    not sure i can wait until february 2016

  • What a Circus HTML5 is. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, 2016 @11:12PM (#53457297)

    There's a massive campaign to blame flash for all the Internets security and usability woes without revealing the real reason why every webbie hates flash.

    And that reason is, it's trivial to block and ignore. Because people don't want to run app's on a browser, it's a browser.

    I went to CNET today to read an article, 1/6th of my screen was taken up by, I shit you not, a re-position-able video player that plays ad's. Half the sites I go to now have pop-up's again and the screen dim's or blurs when it's up, or if I decide "I don't want to watch this stupid video I just want to skim the article and get the details" BAMMO, the video player minimizes to the right lower corner and takes up a third of the article text and plays it's crap anyway. Where's the blocker for that? I hit the stop button. Things are still running and loading in the background. I thought Stop meant Stop?

    Java and HTML5 are code-words for long-term projects that mean we're going to develop a way to run fully functional software on the client machine, but do it this time in such a way the client has zero control over it, and then we'll slowly start turning the entire internet and every browsable webpage into an indiscernible mash of fully-personalized psychovisual pornography designed to endorphin-dump the tiny market segment that hasn't become so jaded to advertising that they have had to develop a filter that even their families and friends have difficulty penetrating.

    Has HTML5 stopped cryptolocker from loading through java-enabled banner ad's? A MILLION TIMES WORSE than ANY Flash exploit, ever, is the aberration of catching a filesystem encrypting virus through a banner ad.

    This is a complete circus. We used to just be able to install flashblock. Now I need to run the f-ing browser in a VM to have any guarantee of safety and security, or completely disable java and run a half dozen plug-in's, several of which as a method of working, report what sites I visit to whomever. Webbies and advertisers need to go through a rehabilitation clinic.

  • From the summary: "And by February 2016 it will be live for all users in Chrome 56 stable, Deily wrote."

    So I guess it's been live for about ten months now?

  • Chrome/Chromium use Google NaCl (=Native Client) + Pepper that jail Adobe Flash to be harmless no matter how insecure it is otherwise.

    Do the editors know this >.< about the articles they approve?

  • the wording you should use is "differently ables Flash"

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