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Adobe Flash Is Officially Dead After 25 Years With Content Blocked Starting Today (macrumors.com) 81

Posted by BeauHD from the officially-official dept.
When a user attempts to load a Flash game or content in a browser such as Chrome, the content now fails to load and instead displays a small banner that leads to the Flash end-of-life page on Adobe's website. While this day has long been coming, with many browsers disabling Flash by default years ago, it is officially the end of a 25-year era for Flash, first introduced by Macromedia in 1996 and acquired by Adobe in 2005. Mac Rumors reports: "Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems," the page reads. Adobe has instructions for uninstalling Flash on Mac, but note that Apple removed support for Flash outright in Safari 14 last year.

Adobe first announced its plans to discontinue Flash in 2017. "Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content," the company explained. Adobe does not intend to issue Flash Player updates or security patches any longer, so it is recommended that users uninstall the plugin.
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Adobe Flash Is Officially Dead After 25 Years With Content Blocked Starting Today More

Adobe Flash Is Officially Dead After 25 Years With Content Blocked Starting Today

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  • Shit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I needed to use a flash application today!!! Why didn't they tell anyone about this??

  • But nothing of value was lost.

    • Tell that to IKEA, their planners all run on Flash, at least a month ago did.

      • Not sure what you're talking about, but IKEA's planners didn't use Flash 5 years ago when I moved house, and doesn't appear to use it now either. It's just a run of the mill web page with about 10000 div elements powered by a shitton of javascript.

      • IKEA probably had two versions. The page checked if you had Flash installed. If you did, it ran the Flash version. If you didn't, it ran the HTML5/Canvas version instead. Nothing really mysterious here.

        ---

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dj245 ( 732906 )

          IKEA probably had two versions. The page checked if you had Flash installed. If you did, it ran the Flash version. If you didn't, it ran the HTML5/Canvas version instead. Nothing really mysterious here. ---

          Nope. The PAX planner used Flash, and only Flash, until very recently. I used it in late 2019 and it refused to do anything but insist that I enable Flash. It seems they do have an updated version now.

          • Not according to the user thegarbz above. Of course, saying "it's true in my case so it must be true for every case" doesn't prove either viewpoint is correct.
      • Then that's their problem.

        From a security standpoint Adobe Flash was a nightmare. No matter how many patches they did, it just couldn't be properly secured. The only reason it managed to hang around so long is that it was something a lot of web people learned due to it's early widespread release. I've known corporations that flat out banned it from being installed on company assets, as in it's treated like a virus. You want to know what ultimately killed flash? Corporate Information Security offices bann

    • Re:RIP In Peace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @07:55PM (#60935524)

      Other than choice.

      Tell me something is dangerous all you want, but if I choose to use it, that's my responsibility. Some things need to be preserved for historical reasons, and kill switches should never be tolerated.

      • This. Unsupported is one thing, but adding a timebomb is another.

        At least some of us have locked in time sandboxes to play in.

    • False.

      Lots of neat content from the early web days were lost. Some of my fondest memories of the 90s internet are from finding cool little games or animations at a time when animated gifs were the height of coolness. Not just Newgrounds stuff, but all over the web you'd run into interesting content. Granted, Flash as replacement for HTML interfaces was borderlune criminal, but in retrospect it doesn't seem that much worse than the current trends of full page scrolling images and other nonsense. And HTML5, d

  • On the bright side (Score:5, Funny)

    by wyattstorch516 ( 2624273 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @07:30PM (#60935428)
    I'm sure Udemy will be having a sale on all Flash development courses soon.

  • RIP (Score:1)

    by prouni ( 7621454 )
    I was a (very) young man when Flash was born (it was called Shockwave then) and now here I am, witnessing its death. Not that it will be missed that much, it was considered bloated, slow and buggy even in the early 2000s. Still, it's a piece of internet history. RIP

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 )

      The top three worst plugins of the young web era.

      1. Realplayer (then called RealAudio player)
      2. Java applets
      3. Flash

      Can't decide whether Java applets were worse than having the realplayer virus.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by prouni ( 7621454 )
        RealPlayer was a lousy plugin but the video codec was pretty good. People used it to distribute bootleg TV series and movies before the introduction of Divx. It was especially popular with anime fans. Java applets were pretty much always terrible, but the the real cancer of the era was ActiveX imho. It was a security nightmare.

  • And the prophecy was fulfilled. (Score:4, Funny)

    by JackAxe ( 689361 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @07:44PM (#60935484)
    For the past 10 years, Steve Job's acolytes have been prophesizing that Flash will be dead, and when that day comes, their lord and savior will be reincarnated as a plug-in.
  • And Strong Bad, and Trogdor, and the Poopsmith...
    • And Samorost...

      • You can buy Samorost 2 & 3 on Steam and GOG. But I think the original is going to be hard to get without an old copy of the game and a flash player. Luckily there are some Flash emulators that work reasonably well for the older stuff.

  • Cheers of applause (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Waccoon ( 1186667 )

    Personally, I find it disgusting how many people are celebrating that the Wicked Witch is dead. The fact remains, another large corporation had decided to flip a kill switch and take something away by force.

    Anyone in the open source community who truly believes in freedom should not be happy with this. There's nothing wrong with turning something off by default, as most people will just use the defaults. When obsolete technology needs to be killed by force, you know it's all just business and political b

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by glitch! ( 57276 )

      Personally, I find it disgusting how many people are celebrating that the Wicked Witch is dead. The fact remains, another large corporation had decided to flip a kill switch and take something away by force.

      I accept your point. But while I don't disagree on your point of freedom, I have a short anecdote of anti-freedom. When Shockwave and/or Flash * took hold of parts of the web, I was disgusted. Some web sites were completely useless, because they required Shockwave/Flash. WTF?! Sure, javascript was sometimes required, and my browser could tolerate it. But there was NO, I repeat NO support for Macromedia crap in FreeBSD. Okay, some websites were just not available to me.

      Second point, I was working in the same

      • Re:Cheers of applause (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @10:30PM (#60935992)

        Sorry, but I can't support taking tools away from people, simply because people might abuse them. I vividly remember in the 90's when companies has web sites that were made 100% in Flash, and it totally pissed me off (I was surfing the web on HP-UX systems back then). Thankfully, there were plenty of sites that used Flash properly, for things like banner ads, which I could easily disable. When I saw a site that used Flash (or Silverlight) exclusively, I just went somewhere else.

        I also remember that campaign for web sites to block the IE6 browser, making sites inaccessible to users of IE6. The geek community thought that was hilarious and necessary, much like how people treat Java and Flash today. It was still wrong, and that pissed me off, too.

        During a conversation about Flash, he said that he did not give a shit about people who don't use Flash. Those web customers don't exist to him. WTF?!

        Funny, right now I have that issue with sites like Twitter, Instagram, and RottenTomatoes. Those sites have banned my web browser because it's not a popular name brand like Chrome or Firefox. When I try to visit those sites, they tell me my browser is not supported. Why? Because they don't believe in following standards, graceful degradation, and using document-centric design instead of application-centric design. It's no different than the Flash situation in to 90's. When I complain about this, people tell me to shut the fuck up and just use a "modern" browser. So, my main option, other than continuing to complain and draw attention to the issue, is to just stop visiting those sites and support alternatives. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

        Web developers, in general, are fucking idiots. That's why I no longer do if for a living and try to forget it ever happened.

    • You've had over four years of warning. I'm not sure how anyone could be upset by this *today*. Have you going around mad for the last four years, still not over it?

      > Anyone in the open source community who truly believes in freedom should not be happy with this.

      Open source people should be mad that a proprietary closed-source development environment has been shut down in favor of open standards? After being notified four years in advance?

      Personally, as one open source developer, I'm not terribly upset

      • Because I have to deal with this bullshit despite having yelled at management for the last 4 years. Not my "call." They should have offered a final version for people who still wanted or needed to use it. Put a big ugly warning or something, but to just kill switch it isn't right at all.

        • The big ugly warning was added a year or two ago.
          After that, each time you load a Flash site you had to go re-enable Flash for that particular visit. Meaning you had to actively acknowledge the problem each and every time you used the site.

          > despite having yelled at management for the last 4 years.

          Now you get to tell management "you shoulda listened to me".
          Sorry you're dealing with the results of some manager's absolute stupidity.

      • You've had over four years of warning

        So? I've been told by many manufacturers over the years that they were going to stop making their products, but as soon as they did, they didn't barge into my house and take mine away.

        Open source people should be mad that a proprietary closed-source development environment has been shut down in favor of open standards?

        Yes. It doesn't matter if that choice is open source or can be modified or whatever. If the tools to create content are shut down, all the content created shouldn't just disappear.

        Personally, as one open source developer, I'm not terribly upset that the web is moving to open standards like HTML 5 instead of Flash.

        I'm not either, but what I am upset about is that people are overlooking the bigger picture just because Flash (or XP or IE6) is everyone's favor

        • I can understand it can be a pain. Four years ago I worked at a place where we produced a lot of Flash content. I wasn't happy that we'd eventually have to redo a lot of it. Of course some re-working would be necessary anyway because content needs to be updated every few years.

          > we can't just accept that everything will die

          I'll just repeat what you said "we can't just accept that everything will die". I'm sure there is an appropriate Forest Gump quote for this, but I'm not sure what it would be.

          • I can understand it can be a pain.

            And if something is a pain, it's a natural thing for people to complain, draw attention to an issue, and try to correct it. Yet, people have been crying for the death of Flash for years, and now that it's been disabled with a kill switch, of all things, people are happy about it. There's a far bigger problem going on, here. Flash is easy to hate, but... what if this were something else? What about that 30+ years of documentation and drivers that Intel recently purged from their online archives that "nob

          • I'll just repeat what you said "we can't just accept that everything will die". I'm sure there is an appropriate Forest Gump quote for this, but I'm not sure what it would be.

            My mom said, it went to the farm to have oats and frolic with my pet hamster. something ... something fjords.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bawb ( 637210 )

      "Anyone in the open source community who truly believes in freedom ..."

      "Feedom"?? WTactualF? Since when was Flash ever an open source product? Seriously, if you're really this upset about it, then offer to take it off their hands and shoulder the financial burden that is tech-support and security nightmare that is Flash yourself. After that you can champion CP/M and the Windows 3.0 version of Paint. Software becomes obsolete, most people get over it, and it's not like there aren't actual open-source alternatives to run your Flash files with.

      • So, products must be open source for me to use them? I was under the impression that my computer was mine and I can run whatever I want on it. Whether you like it or agree with my choices is irrelevant.

        After that you can champion CP/M and the Windows 3.0 version of Paint.

        I have a bunch of old computers and game consoles that still work just fine. Windows 3.0 and Paint will still function just fine today. That doesn't mean they are useful and relevant, but I think it's interesting that many products released 30-40 years ago will still work fine, but that smart phone app le

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bawb ( 637210 )

          So, products must be open source for me to use them? I was under the impression that my computer was mine and I can run whatever I want on it. Whether you like it or agree with my choices is irrelevant.

          Who the actual f*ck said you aren't free to run your Flash files? Just because you can't figure out how to install software doesn't mean that web browsers have to support your obsolete format or keep the security liability that it represents open. You chose to go with a proprietary product and are crying when said proprietary product is discontinued and no longer supported, as is the expected outcome for damn near every proprietary product on the planet, digital or otherwise. Welcome to the free market. No one is obligated to support you and expend resources so that you can easily access your porn library or whatever it is that has you all worked up. Especially when alternatives and workarounds are available for all platforms. Adobe warned of this day three years ago. That's plenty of time for you to figure the it out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Anyone in the open source community who truly believes in freedom would have always avoided flash anyway so wouldn't be bothered or even notice.

    • What responsibility does a company have to maintain a piece of software (and the associated proprietary specification) indefinitely? If anything this recent news makes a strong case for open standards and open source.

      On the other hand, popular media is ephemeral. Not everyone is an archivist and there is so much content already lost over the decades that adding 2000's era flash games, art, and media to the list is not going to break us. I can think of hundreds of zines I've read that never made it up to arc

      • What responsibility does a company have to maintain a piece of software (and the associated proprietary specification) indefinitely?

        None. But you're confusing the idea of maintaining software forever with just leaving it be. I'm sick of this idea that once a company doesn't want to continue updating and maintaining things, they have to employ some way of making sure it doesn't work anymore to "force" people to use new stuff. If the new stuff were any good, there's no need to force, and if the old stuff is obsolete, there's no need to kill it. But, that's not how business and political interests work.

        It's kind of sad how geeks, other

        • Kill switches are evil. But flash is now a flame thrower with fisher price stickers and candy left on the local playground. The little ones on the web will get hurt if its left laying around. God did I just say, think of the (no I won't say it). Real issues are complicated.

    • For what it's worth, Adobe tried to open-source Flash a while ago. Unfortunately, that's just the base language and specification - as we all know, it's the libraries that make the ecosystem.

  • Wasn't mentioned in the list:

    HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content

    And after 2 decades of being a standard, the browsers still suck at rendering it, this simple flaming text animation pegs my CPU to 100: https://www.genolve.com/svg/en... [genolve.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ELCouz ( 1338259 )
      Funny because I get 30% GPU Usage but 2% CPU usage. Is 3D hardware acceleration enabled in your browser?
    • Adobe Flash played a part in delaying adoption of SVG, and no one wants to implement SVG 1.2 in full, opting for SVG 1.2 Tiny. SVG 2 is dead in the water since no browser wants to implement it, and some proposed features are untested because no browser wants to implement it.

  • Still pushing garbage (Score:2, Informative)

    by duhde ( 7621480 )
    And yet, https://adobe.com/ [adobe.com] still happily links to the automatic Flash player installer on their front page..

  • I advocated for the death of Flash (and blocked it) as soon as it appeared. It has taken an awful long time for the rest of the world to view Flash (and all arbitrary code executors of its ilk) with the horror and disdain which it deserves and to get rid of a really ill-conceived experiment that was doomed to failure from its very conception (and has only been used for malicious purposes since it was invented). Java in the browser is "getting there", but is not there quite yet -- although it is widely ack

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @01:34AM (#60936460)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The sad thing is that browsers actually DON'T have all the functionality of Flash. Tell me how to create a vector cartoon and package it into a single file I can upload to any gallery site I want, without having to rely on a host-specific proprietary JS player. There's shitloads of things you can do in Flash that are literally impossible with the hodge-podge of "standard" web technologies -- despite all the bloat and annoyances.

        I miss the days when I could make the web tolerable by disabling Javascript an

  • Latest NPAPI plug-in without the 12 jan killswitch (Score:4, Interesting)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @09:10PM (#60935820)

    Does anyone knows what is the last version of the Adobe Flash Player NPAPI (firefox) plug-in without the Jan 12, 2021 killswitch?

    I am runing Firefox ESR, so I would like to be able to use Flash (for some games and stuff) until the next ESR removes all the NPAPI plumbing.

    I have some (but not all) installers in my NAS, so I may be able to get "some" flash working, but I'd rather have the latest version posible that still works

    thanks in Advance.

  • What bothers me most is ... (Score:3)

    by MadMaverick9 ( 1470565 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @11:37PM (#60936180)

    that NOBODY here complains about the fact that adobe has a kill switch build into the flash plugin and actively blocks users from viewing content.

    Y'all are bending over and getting fucked in the ass by Big Tech - yet again.

    And y'all are cheering on adobe for what they're doing ...

    What a fucked up mess ...

    • Does this affect open source SWF players?
    • Some people wanted to see flash dead because it was a proprietary blob. So no mess on this side. Flash can be replaced by open technology. Proprietary blob has secret code in it as expected.

      • I un-installed flash from my computers more than five years ago.

        You do not need to convince me.

        BUT - this is about Freedom!

        Users should be able to do on their computers as they please. Unfettered by Big Tech. THAT is my point.

        Freedom includes taking responsibility for what happens on your computer.

    • Well, I did... but I was voted "Flamebait" for it.

      There's a quote from Voltaire that's really popular here on Slashdot... but I don't think anyone really believes in it.

  • We have some hardware that has a legitimate use for flash. I'm not replacing 30+ managed network switches because they require flash. Its unreasonable to actively block flash. I can understand not developing it anymore, but to go out of your way to say "Fuck you, you need to replace your hardware now" because you EOL something? Thats partly whats wrong with society today.

  • will juniper update srx 550? and others (not EOL yet)

    they use flash for some stats

  • So I get it that it's EOL/EOS. But why the mandatory removal I don't get it. Whoever choses to keep it can use it without support right? Up until now there certain things in VMware management console that Flash can do but HTML5 cannot yet. I know VMware has issued an article talking about this... but that still doesn't address everything.

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