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Chrome The Internet

Chrome 69 is Coming: Not Just a New Look But Flash's Life is About To Get Even Harder (zdnet.com) 108

Posted by msmash from the flash-needs-to-die dept.
Google's curvy tab Material Design update for Chrome will arrive in version 69 of the browser due out in September. From a report: Google flags the upcoming changes in its Enterprise release notes for Chrome 69, which gives a brief mention under browser interface changes to a "new design across all operating systems." Chrome 69, penciled in for stable release on September 4, will also get native Windows 10 notifications, which have been rolling out to users over the past month. Chrome 69 will also progress the long-running project to deprecate Flash Player, which Adobe has announced will reach end of life in 2020. Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple have similar deprecation timelines for Flash on their desktop browsers. Once ubiquitous, Flash content is now hardly used at all by Chrome users, though Google won't fully remove support until Chrome 87 in 2020. At present, if a user enables Flash for a particular site, they don't need to approve it if they visit the site again. However, in Chrome 69, every time users restart Chrome, they'll need to give permission for sites to use Flash.
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Chrome 69 is Coming: Not Just a New Look But Flash's Life is About To Get Even Harder More

Chrome 69 is Coming: Not Just a New Look But Flash's Life is About To Get Even Harder

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  • Good for its time (Score:3)

    by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @09:05AM (#57173602) Homepage
    Flash was good for its time, but its time was long ago.

    • Re:Good for its time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @10:34AM (#57174248)

      Back in the 1990's and early 2000's HTML didn't have too many (popular) vector graphics options, the options that were available were trenched in the Browser Wars between Netscape and Internet Explorer. Flash worked for different browsers, across different platforms including Windows, Macs and a young Linux. Later iterations played nice with DRM which extended its usefulness beyond Home Star Runner. It really took HTML5 standard to start to take down Flash. With early Apple iPhone Safari browser being an early adopter of HTML5, and Firefox and Chrome browsers getting a lot of interests as well. Especially with all the delays in getting windows 7 out and IE 6 staying the standard for way too long.

      Flash itself wasn't bad, just it wasn't a standard, and for the web we should follow standards.

      • Re:Good for its time (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @11:06AM (#57174512)

        Flash itself wasn't bad, just it wasn't a standard, and for the web we should follow standards.

        Flash became ubiquitous because web designers were begging the W3C to add scripting and multimedia capability to HTML. But the W3C dragged its feet. Initially, too many members had the idealistic notion that the WWW should remain "pure" for the exchange of scientific papers and personal websites like Berners-Lee originally envisioned, not become a place for glitzy marketing copies. So they refused to add audio and video support to HTML. Later it got sidetracked pushing everything in "the next version", which got delayed as more things got pushed into it. There was a 15 year gap between HTML 4.01 and HTML 5. Web developers started using Flash to accomplish what the W3C failed to implement in the HTML standard.

        And if you really want to cry about following standards on the web, you should try reading the history of PHP [wikipedia.org]. It's probably the most organic successful project out there - kludges built upon kludges, patches upon patches. As someone who came from structured languages with well thought-out error checking, I was absolutely horrified when I learned PHP.

        • Trying to remain "pure" translate to not wanted to learn new stuff.

          For scientific papers, Vector graphics and animation is a useful aid in expressing and showing off data.
          People tend to favor a particular sense for learning.
          Some people are audio and when they hear it they under stand it better.
          Other are visual, and some are tactile. I am sure some people may be olfactory and taste based learning, but those would make structured learning difficult and often unpleasant.

          But HTML as term as a paper with links

        • Flash became ubiquitous because web designers were begging the W3C to add scripting and multimedia capability to HTML. But the W3C dragged its feet.

          While you are not wrong, there is more to it than this. Specifically, "designers" wanted pixel perfect renders of their vision rather than allowing the web browser decide how to do layout. It is one of the things that turned me off of designing web sites for those morons.

    • No (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Flash was good for its time, but its time was long ago.

      The only thing flash was good for were sites like Joe Cartoon. Otherwise it was abused from day one by marketing assholes and flash only sites.

      The best selling point about the original iPhone was that it didn't support flash, unfortunately it was AT&T only.

    • No, sorry, you're wrong, Flash was never good at any time, it was always a blight on the internet. Remember Flash menus?

    • Flash was great. Never had to worry about autoplaying video or audio back then because it was so easy to make flash be click-to-play. Web pages ran so much faster because the unnecessary decorations were separated into the flash part which we could decide whether or not to load. These days with all of flash's former job being done in javascript we have to disable javascript entirely if we want to be safe, we can't choose particular elements to then enable, and a lot of the internet doesn't work without java

    • Flash was good for its time, but its time was long ago.

      It is still used by the BBC (England). I have issues with watching their videos.

  • Nice
    • Chrome 69 sounds like a freaky adult site for seniors.

    • Chrome 69 is going to suck twice as much.

    • 68 (Score:2)

      by nuckfuts ( 690967 )
      I'm a fan of the "68". You do me and I owe you one.
    • noice

  • Native Windows 10 notifications is a plague and another way to spam the user. Worse than pop-ups.

  • Nice new look and probably the right time to make Flash usage more difficult.

    Here are the technical updates in M69: https://blog.chromium.org/ [chromium.org]
    - New CSS features
    - Some new APIs including a new Keyboard API that looks like it will be useful for games
    - Improvements to service workers
    - And more

    Looks like a good update.

  • As much as we hate flash and java (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Michael Evanchik ( 4931417 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @09:17AM (#57173680)
    There has to be a mode that can be globally to whitelist domains in an easy fashion for corporate users. As for the end users. Here lies the problem. They cannot rely on just a pop up to "allow". At minimum, the user will have to always allow once. o wait thats what the article says. Im smart. Anyway, this should also apply to Java.

  • There is a line (Score:1, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 )

    There is a line between keeping users safe and essentially singling out a technology for destruction.

    However, in Chrome 69, every time users restart Chrome, they'll need to give permission for sites to use Flash.

    Google is more or less deciding that anyone delivering anything with flash will not be permitted to give their users a good experience. Some would argue singling out the flash and java plugins for special treatment at all crossed this line; though I would argue gross negligence on the part of Adobe and Sun/Oracle kinda forced that.

    I really doubt flash would have been killed off so soon if Apple had not st

    • they should not be "goodie-goodies" deciding to be obstructionists and making things the browser can do to be difficult.

      someone needs to bring the hammer down on this mentality.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        They are not being 'goodie goodies', they are being pragmatically capitalist. Flash and Java are bad for their bottom line. The good of the users has nothing to do with this.

        • your point is invalid since the browser still runs it

    • The attack started the moment Adobe made the Mac version of Flash a slow pile of crap.

      • I would say it was crappier on the Mac platform but it was crappy on any platform including Windows. What drove Apple to move away from it was Adobe not addressing two major issues that Jobs had with it on mobile: stability and battery performance. Apple always said that they would have put Flash on the iPhone if Adobe addressed them but Adobe never did.

    • Re: There is a line (Score:5, Informative)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @11:36AM (#57174744)

      You make it out like Flash was a paragon of computing before Apple while twirling its moustache decided to kill it off for all computer users everywhere. Flash was terrible. It crashed often. It consumes lots of computing power. It had so many security holes that it seemed like I was patching daily.

      Flash however was one of the few cross platform things you could use back in the day. When it worked, it would work roughly the same whether on Windows or Mac. However the death knell wasnâ(TM)t just Apple. Better cross platform technologies like HTML5 is making Flash less relevant.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        The quality of flash isn't the point. My point is flash is basically gone not because others delivered superior solutions that people preferred; but because a few gate keeps decided to sabotage the environment it runs in.

        • Re: There is a line (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          No. Flash is gone because it sucked.

          Flash killed itself. It has nobody to blame but itself.

        • Flash died because internet consumption moved from desktop to mobile, where Adobe was never able to deliver reasonable battery life and performance and soon gave up.

        • Are you seriously arguing that Flashâ(TM)s decreased usage over the years had nothing to do with its performance? That it was avoided not because of the constant security holes? Instead youâ(TM)re arguing that Apple did it in with its less than 5% on the computing platform and its minority share on the smartphone market? Thatâ(TM)s laughable at best.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by _merlin ( 160982 )

        However the death knell wasn't just Apple. Better cross platform technologies like HTML5 is making Flash less relevant.

        HTML5 animation had far worse performance than Flash when Apple started their mission to kill it. With the whole HTML5/JavaScript mess, we can no longer easily block annoying shit like we could when it had to use embed/object tags. WebAssembly is just like Java all over again, except there are multiple implementations in the browsers themselves rather than a plugin to run the bytecode.

      • Apple while twirling its moustache

        Oh. So that's why the hipsters love mustaches so much now!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Flash cuts into their advertising revenue, so yeah, it is getting added to the other browser features that they really want to get people off of.

      Never forget that Chrome's design decisions prioritize Google revenue, not user needs.

    • Adobe officially decided to kill flash over a year ago, and unofficially decided years earlier. At this point, the only responsible thing to do is make it progressively more inconvenient so that people won't be using an abandoned bundle of security holes.

    • I agree, and I find it interesting that a huge majority of people who support "Free as in Freedom" have been begging major vendors to ban Flash.

      I don't love Flash, but I do want the choice to keep using it. I get creeped out when people tell me I shouldn't be able to use a particular technology for my own good.

  • First Chrome, now also Skype, realizes that I type in english, underlines what is wrong, but does not use the english dictionary fro spelling correction ...

    Every Mac application, uses the build in text input system, which automatically realizes which language I use and offers spelling correction with the appropriated dictionary, but Chrome must roll its own inferior version, and Skype is even worth.

  • But Flash's Life is About To Get Even Harder

    Superman is back to being able to run as fast as him now.

  • Nice (Score:1)

    by vipvop ( 34876 )

    Nice

  • Look, if I want to enable Flash content on some sites (usually internal) why are you fighting me and making my life harder? I already said to allow it. If you don't allow me to add a permanent exception, you're a dick.

  • Seriously? There's no way this title wasn't thought out. LOL! :D

  • Dinner for Two!

  • It's like the article was excited about the name/number and wanted to say Chrome 69 as many times as possible.

    Chrome 69.

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