Chrome to deprecate Flash

Report · May 17, 2016

Hello,

as most people might have heard by now, the Chromium team plans to deprecate Flash in favor of HTML 5 beginning Q4 2016 [1]. Can we get a statement by Adobe on this? Are you in talks with Google? Does Flash have a future or is it time to change sides? Flash and AS3 still are a multi million dollar market, why are there no signs that Adobe is making sure that Flash will have a stable future.

The lack of trust in Adobe when it comes to Flash is the worst thing for everyone, and it is a shame that this awesome and refined piece of technology is slowly but surely fading out. Our company (and I suspect many others) would be more than happy to pay a monthly subscription fee similar to Unity's, if we get the guarantee that Flash will remain actively maintained and marketed together with Air.

Why does Adobe not sell the Flash platform or create a side company that does nothing but Flash as a business, so everyone can rest assured that this company will actually commit to Flash and continue to push it forward? Even if that means it's time to rethink the business model and make the development companies pay more. That would still be cheaper than to rebuild everything in another technology from scratch.

Thanks

[1]: Google Groups

Report · May 17, 2016

Hello rewb0rn

I came today to search in forum the same questions you. I have a company and all software are in FLEX and are dependent on Flash Player , I have seen Flash Player be Bombarded every day and Adobe does nothing. I have even sought legal support for applied time capacitei my team to develop with Adobe products and it does not comment about it . Well could create a browser with support for Flash Player and bring tranquility to us, I will strengthen your post and hope to answer also about the future of Flash Player.

Report · May 17, 2016

Eduardo12fox exellent idea, the ADOBE could create a browser own it and enter with force in this fight, because the HTML5 features never compared with the FLEX force. Still I go further, if not the interest of the ADOBE make a new browser, then put the flash player as open source, so the community can continue and force the current browsers react.

Report · May 17, 2016

Too sad but my thought is that, flash player plugin is near to death.

AIR is another story! anyway ADOBE I don't trust you anymore!!!

Report · May 17, 2016

Have a look at the slides which explain the draft proposal in a less opinionated way, here => HTML5 by Default - Google Slides

A few things to keep in mind:

This is a proposal. As stated, it will change.
Flash Player is NOT being deprecated. Though Chrome is investigating alternative ways of handling runtime permissions.
Don't read tech "journalists" for information about Flash Player. They are never right.

Unless Adobe outright says so - Flash Player development and partnerships with Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Facebook will continue.

Report · May 17, 2016

Hey Joseph, thanks for your reply. I always shared the optimism for Flash, but things look serious this time. An overlay itself is bad enough on it's own, but what worries me even more is the Agenda that Google seems to have for the future of Flash. After all, this merely looks like one step in a plan to remove Flash completely from the web.

At the same time, Adobe seems to abandon Flash themselves, at least if you can trust this article, who quotes an "Adobe spokesman":

Google to block Flash on Chrome, only 10 websites exempt - CNET

I do not know if that source can be trusted or who that "spokesman" was, but it would be nice to get a statement by an Adobe staff member here or elsewhere in the forums.

Report · May 17, 2016

Ha! Yes... I heard an "Adobe spokesman" tell a room full of community leaders that AIR was lo longer under development a few years ago. He was obviously mistaken. I was interviewed by Adobe even years before that around working with Edge Animate for an article and the Adobe interviewer was shocked to learn that I used Flash Player - "I didn't know we still made that!".

So my message around this stuff is always to take it with a grain (or more) of salt

Report · May 17, 2016

All this is good but we need a response Adobe about roadmap of Flash player in next years

Report · May 17, 2016

Adobe, please keep this one of the most advanced and powerfull technology alive. I cant understand why so big company can not hire small team to manage and advance Flash and Air forward like it done in Unity?

Report · May 17, 2016

Flash Player is actively developed and maintained by a dedicated team of engineers.

You can find a current copy of the public roadmap for Flash Player and AIR here:

Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes | Adobe Developer Connection

Report · May 17, 2016

Jeromiec

That does not answer anything, we want to know if we can continue to produce content for flash player

Report · May 17, 2016

Jeromiec, I program more than six years in the Flex platform, I know that the proposed Flex was never produce sites, aminations and other public attractions, and yes, enterprise RIAs. Therefore, we need a guarantee to continue in our developments, I do not want to go back to square one of the projects that are online and working. I can not imagine having to give the start to these systems because of policies. Flex is easy, is rich is wonderful, but need Flash and others navigated are trying to kill. Because ADOBE not desevolve your own browser, and then turns the Flash open source, so I doubt very much over.

Report · May 18, 2016

Howdy folks,
Thanks to everyone who took the time to provide thoughtful feedback about this feature, it really was greatly appreciated. E-mail unfortunately doesn't afford complex thread response chains, so we took a best effort at consolidating and trying to answer the key themes below, in a single e-mail.
Q. Why Now?
A. With the shift to Mobile, many sites have built pure HTML5 experiences, which they use when Flash Player is not present. Internally we did a lot of testing and for most common browsing patterns, the web experience (when turning off Flash Player) is largely the same… This, in turn, informed our decision to do this now (i.e. we think that the web is ready). Try disabling Flash Player in chrome://plugins, we think that you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Q. Flash Player, HTML(5), and Gaming
A. Ultimately we think that the Open Web is the right platform for developers, especially as mobile devices become increasingly more prominent. We think that we currently have a compelling story for Ads and Media, and are looking to invest more in technologies that enable web gaming (e.g. WebASM, WebGL2, etc…) to further improve our story. Speaking of gaming, Mozilla has a great site to try out that demonstrates the capability of games on the Open Web.
Q. Does this mean that Chrome is deprecating Flash Player?
A. Flash Player is still widely used by many websites, we currently don’t have any plans to announce regarding deprecation. Any future plans that we make will be based on usage and what’s in the best interests of our users.
Q. What about the whitelist?
A. Our whitelist will be based strictly on real usage numbers, the goal being to avoid over prompting users. The whitelist will expire one year from the Stable launch of the feature, at which time, users will need to directly approve the sites.
Q. How did we pick the top 10?
A. We looked at the number of times that Flash was loaded, for a given domain, and ranked the sites by volume. After the 10th site, relative usage dropped below 1%, which was consistent w/ the line that we had held for the NPAPI wind down. The (current) top 10 sites represent ~28% of the total load volume, which we believe will have a material impact on the number of prompts that most users see.
Q. Will the whitelist change, before Q4?
A. Perhaps, though it's likely to decrease in size (or have members replaced), rather than expand. As an example, we're working w/ the YouTube team right now to see if we can't find a way to get them off the list before we launch the feature (given the volume of Flash activity, 8.26% of all Flash Loads were from YouTube.com, we wanted to approach that with an abundance of caution).
Q. What about users (or sites) who still need Flash Player?
A. We’ll still continue to ship Flash Player with Chrome for the foreseeable future, we intend for it to be simple to enable on a per site basis and the preference will be a one-time choice for each site (i.e. we won’t prompt again).
Q. Will sub-domains also be whitelisted?
A. Yes, approvals are on per domain basis (e.g. apps.facebook.com would be under the approval for facebook.com).
Q. Anything else?
A. Yes, we're especially looking for feedback from games developers. In particular we'd like to understand the current set of challenges associated w/ targeting HTML5, whether it's platform capability, tool chain, etc... Having a better sense for the pain points will help us prioritize our development efforts.
Thanks again!
Kind Regards,
Anthony Laforge
Technical Program Manager
Mountain View, CA

Google Groups

WTF ADOBE? I am already on the way changing my business and carrier, dropping flash player and air (maybe ones google will block it on play.google.com) lack of supporting it. I never trust you again!!

Report · May 18, 2016

As Jeromie mentioned, Adobe remains committed to both Flash Player and AIR and we will continue to provide both security and functional updates. I also think Anthony @ Google did a good job answering some of the fundamental questions that they had received on the Chromium thread. I think *everyone* I've talked with understands that there is a huge amount of legacy content dependent on Flash and still new Flash content (especially in the gaming segment) being created every day. For the Flash Runtime team's part, we'll do everything we can to make sure that this content continues to work as expected.

I would encourage developers that have an opinion on Flash within Chrome, and would care to engage in a level headed technical discussion, to provide their thoughts to Google. This is the purpose of the "intent to implement" thread.

Thanks,

Chris

Report · May 18, 2016

Hello Chris,

If all browser solves block flash player forever? the Adobe have or think a solution. I believe this is fear of all programmer in flex, flash

Report · May 18, 2016

I haven't heard anyone propose to absolutely block Flash from being used. Google's implementation is simply "click to play", on a per domain basis. Once you've approved Flash to run, all Flash content on the site (or in an iframe) will work without any further interaction and each subsequent visit will remember your choice. Google will also continue to distribute Flash with the Chrome install.

Report · May 18, 2016

I haven't heard anyone propose to absolutely block Flash from being used. Google's implementation is simply "click to play", on a per domain basis. Once you've approved Flash to run, all Flash content on the site (or in an iframe) will work without any further interaction and each subsequent visit will remember your choice. Google will also continue to distribute Flash with the Chrome install.

yes we know that Google not blocked completely flash content, but what they are going to do is terrible from user experience view.

Google made one step forward to disable flash, business is very sensitive regarding this steps and this is big problem for us, developers.

Report · May 19, 2016

I think it's time Adobe launch its own browser. This would bring more peace to us developers and we could also indicate to our customers. All would gain from it

Report · May 20, 2016

Something I don't quite understand is, I thought Chrome was shipped with the PPAPI Flash Player? Wasn't this supposed to be much more secure, and essentially solve the major complaints people have about Flash Player? What's the deal?

Report · May 25, 2016

gperry91: Yes absolutely, they do not mention security in their motivation, also. I suspect company policy.