Flash Player Removal?

[alecmoeller]

Afternoon Adobe

I have been working with google for the past couple of weeks on getting information on the direction they are heading with flash player as a whole. We have found out that over the next year they will be fully de-emphasizing flash player out of their Chrome OS and Chrome browser. I have also found articles out their talking about Firefox doing the same thing, but not at as a fast rate. I have confirmed with Microsoft in a webcast they just had that they are on their way of moving fully to HTML5 for video encoding and playback.

Basically i am looking for a statement from adobe, to tell us what direction this is all heading that way I can report back to our different departments in IT. Because if a big change is coming we need to get ahead of it, and redo all of our videos that we have exported as a flash player file extension. Our company mainly use IE11 in windows 7 right now with google chrome as a back up. We are moving to windows 10 in the years to come, so we need to be prepared if flash player is being phased out of browsers that we used. If you could please contact me at my contact information below that would be greatly appreciated.

Alec Moeller, Systems Engineer
IT, End User Services

Respect lives here every day.

Brookdale Senior Living, Inc.
6737 W. Washington Street  |  Suite 2300  | Milwaukee  |  WI 53214

Direct 414.918.5705 | Email: AMoeller@brookdale.com

[_maria_]

I have forwarded your post to the Flash Player Product Manager.

[alecmoeller]

Thank you, for passing this onto the right people.

Please let them know, they can contact me directly. They do not need to keep this communication on the forums.

Thank you again.

Alec Moeller, Systems Engineer
IT, End User Services

Respect lives here every day.

[chris.campbell]

Hi Alec,

I can assure you that Adobe is committed to regular updates for the Flash Runtime, with a focus on:

Security

Critical customer issues

OS and browser Compatibility

Quality

New features

We don't expect this to change and you can count on regular updates from us  (currently made every second Tuesday of the month).

As to the browser's plans, we are aware that Chrome will move towards a "click to play" on a per domain basis for Flash and I expect the others could eventually follow suit in some fashion.  That said, everyone (Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Apple) is aware that there is a massive amount of legacy content available and no one wants to "break" the web.  In fact, in some use cases (web based gaming for example), there is currently no existing technology that matches what Flash can and has delivered for years.

In Chrome's case, they are explicitly allowing enterprises to create whitelists so that the content that employees require is available when needed.  Again, everyone is keenly aware that Flash is required for many use cases, like Flex based applications, and no one wants to break existing content.

I have not heard of any plans for a browser to outright block Flash Player from use.  Honestly, I would be shocked if that happened, as most consumers that I talk with don't care about the underlying technology, but instead just want their content to "work".  If my browser told me I could no longer play my favorite game, watch a video I wanted, participate in an online class, or use my work's intranet application, I'd simply use another browser.  If I was a browser vendor, I wouldn't want to see my customers jump ship.

My suggestion is to keep doing what you're doing.  Go to the source whenever possible for news.  The vast majority of the tech articles that I see get it wrong.  The bylines against Flash are sensational and I assume this helps generate a fair amount of traffic, regardless of the validity. 

For upcoming changes in Chrome, I recommend looking at the following posts:

https://chrome.googleblog.com/2016/08/flash-and-chrome.html

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ

For Firefox, please see:

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-adobe-flash-usage-in-firefox/

Hope this helps,

Chris

[alecmoeller]

Morning Chris

This does help a lot and shine some light on this subject from the Adobe side of the house and where you guys stand on support of this protocol. I will be passing this information on to our security team to let them know patches will still be coming for this product. I will also let the other departments know that are involved with this, that support will still exist and that you all do not have plans for end of life right now.

I did get information from Google that we will be able to white-list domains for a little, as of right now that will go away after one year. Our biggest concern is that 90% of our LMS classes are recorded playbacks made over time in Adobe Flash professional, which is now Animate CC. With Edge (IE replacement- EOL 2020) and Google moving to mainly HTML5, but not doping flash as of now, we will need to convert these videos so they are playable. Is using software like Handbrake to convert them recommended by you guys or is there more preferred option? We want to make sure are content is player now and for the future to come.

I have one other issue and google has not been able to give me an answer on this. We also use a lot in our environment Adobe connect for meetings or live / recorded training sessions. Is the downplay of Flash in these browsers going to effect how Adobe connect works? I know right now on a Chromebook you can only view a connect session and can not host or present. I know a plugin or extension was not required to be added to the device from our admin console to make that work. So i am guessing here that it uses Adobe Flash to present the session on both the Chromebook and on PC. If this is true, how much are our Adobe connect sessions going to be effected by this?

if any more information is required of me to answer these questions please fell free to call me Chris.

Alec Moeller, Systems Engineer
IT, End User Services

Respect lives here every day.

[Personal info removed by Mod]

[chris.campbell]

I did get information from Google that we will be able to white-list domains for a little, as of right now that will go away after one year.

As far as I'm aware (and I've had many conversations with the Google engineering team on this topic), enterprise whitelisting will not be taken away.  There have been discussions about a potential Google supplied whitelist, which would expire in a year.  This whitelist would effect all Chrome users, not just enterprise ones.  That said, no decision on a whitelist has been made (other than enterprise enabled whitelists functionality will be available at the start and will not expire.)

With Edge (IE replacement- EOL 2020) and Google moving to mainly HTML5, but not doping flash as of now, we will need to convert these videos so they are playable

I would recommend bringing this up as a question in the Animate CC forum.  Animate CC can export to HTML 5, but I'm not sure what would be required from the video side.

Adobe Animate CC - Home

We also use a lot in our environment Adobe connect for meetings or live / recorded training sessions. Is the downplay of Flash in these browsers going to effect how Adobe connect works?

I can't speak to Connect's future plans, but the Flash Runtime treats all issues that Connect customers have with the Player as high priority items.  We are fully committed to supporting Connect in all browsers and platforms and I expect to continue to use it on a daily basis.  As for future versions of Connect, I'd recommend stopping by their forums to see what news is available and letting them know your thoughts and concerns.

Adobe Connect User Community

Connect General Discussion

Thanks,
Chris

[Joseph Labrecque]

alecmoeller wrote:

Our biggest concern is that 90% of our LMS classes are recorded playbacks made over time in Adobe Flash professional, which is now Animate CC. With Edge (IE replacement- EOL 2020) and Google moving to mainly HTML5, but not doping flash as of now, we will need to convert these videos so they are playable. Is using software like Handbrake to convert them recommended by you guys or is there more preferred option?

Hey, Alec.

What format are the videos in now? FLV? I have a lot of experience in converting videos by building small utilities which take advantage of FFMPEG to transcode... and the utilities are written in AS3 and leverage Adobe AIR

Let me know if this would be helpful of if I'm not understanding the formats you have.

[alecmoeller]

Some content is in FLV format, but there is others that are not. I would have to ask my departments to find out all the different file types we have. We just need to convert everything so it fully functional with HTML and will not rely on third-party extension.

Alec Moeller, Systems Engineer
IT, End User Services

Respect lives here every day.

[Thomas Gunter-Kremers]

These articles should give you some info.

Adobe Connect and HTML5 «

The Adobe Connect HTML5 Roadmap «

[alecmoeller]

Thank you for this, i will take a look into this and share the knowledge with my other departs. That way we can make a better decision in what direction we will head.

Alec Moeller, Systems Engineer
IT, End User Services

Respect lives here every day.