"One of site I frequent has a notice of how to work around the no Flash issue which requires installing a previous version of flash and a webbrowser that is not mainstream. Isn't this more dangerous than Flash itself?"
This is not recommended as it results in using an old version of Flash Player with known, exploitable security issues fixed in future releases. Sites recommending this are doing their users a disservice.
There is no alternative plugin to Flash Player. Adobe announced Flash Player's end-of-life in July 2017 giving content creators, programmers, developers, IT experts, etc over 3 years remove Flash Player dependencies from their products. All modern browsers provide the capabilities necessary to do this in JavaScript. This is an investment and prioritization choice, not a technical limitation.
For reference:
Major browser vendors are deprecating Flash Player support. For details specific to each vendor, please refer to:
- Apple Safari - removed Flash Player support in Safari 14, released Sept 16, 2020
- Google Chrome - removed Flash Player support in Chrome 88, released Jan 19, 2021
- Firefox - removed Flash Player support in Firefox 85, released on Jan 26, 2021.
- Firefox ESR 78 will support Flash Player for the time being, assuming the Flash Player NPAPI plugin already installed as it’s no longer available for download.
- Microsoft Edge - removed Flash Player support in Edge 88, released Jan 15, 2021
- Microsoft Internet Explorer and legacy Edge