Adobe Flash Will Stop Being A Thing In 2020

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I hope auto-playing ads will stop being a thing as well. The sooner, the better. Hint! :)

I haven't installed Flash on my pc in years. I guess Microsoft Edge browser has it already installed, but I do not use that.
 

mwryder55

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Is there a "secure" app that will display Flash content? There is a lot of training videos, etc. out there that use Flash. I would prefer to use something other than Flash to display these interactive videos.
 


Not that I'm aware of, just use flash. The odds of training videos having a virus/malware is pretty small.
 

bloodroses

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VLC player will play flash video if it is locally stored on your PC. The question though is how to get the video locally in the first place.
 

ThisIsMe

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"Open standards like HTML5 and WebGL have slowly but surely replaced Flash, however, especially on mobile devices. (Remember that late Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote a long note about why iOS devices didn't support Flash back in 2010.) Many websites use these standards for their interactive elements instead of relying on Adobe's proprietary tool."

You can't believe everything you hear a CEO say. The main driving force behind Apple not wanting flash on their mobile devices is because it would have created a pathway for competition to their own App Store. By blocking flash it affords them almost complete control over customer consumption on their devices. Google learned this the hard way, and eventually followed suit in order to make more money after initially using the whole "our devices run Flash!" selling point to get people to jump on board.

Anyway, the flash run time is still going to be supported for years to come because it's what is used in Adobe Air. Just because it's not going to run as a plugin within a web browser doesn't mean it's just going away. Many desktop and mobile apps alike still run using Adobe Air and will probably continue to do so because of how easy it is to produce Flex applications. Simplicity and power make the programming combination of actionscript and mxml (ie Flex) fun to use and a go to solution for small apps and games. With Flex devs pretty much know what they are getting. With alternatives like HTML5 you have to deal with a hot mess of browser vendors/versions/performance/hardware/interfaces/support. And the security issues for Flash have never really been much worse than other comparable products. Honestly, most of these "Flash needs to die" articles read more like opinions than reports.
 

DerekA_C

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With quantum servers and networks maintaining our internet in the future with their algorithms, no home PC could ever have the power to crack it. However, when quantum computers become PC's then it will start all over again. Unless by then AI controls everything and we wont be able to beat a life that lives within the very network we use.
 

chriz78

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I agree about the auto-playing videos. Firefox has a setting for this but it's not enabled by default. Even if you do enable it, the video still looks like it's loading but never does until you hit pause and then play. Quite the fake-out.
 

spectrewind

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Unfortunately no... I used to be an ActionScript programmer back in the day... The language is similar to C++ with external references and cross-site-scripting being it's strength... References to .EXE files were very easy to do... Layering of .SWFs. Unfortunately, also very easily exploited... a weakness.
 

king3pj

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I'm no programmer like the other person who replied to your post. Chrome has Flash built into the browser and it automatically updates with browser updates. They claim that the flash built into Chrome is in a sandbox so it's separate from the rest of your computer. I don't know enough about web security or programming to know if this actually makes it secure or not. Hopefully someone else can chime in there.

I use Firefox as my main browser and do not have Flash installed on my PCs. For the rare websites I use that require Flash like MLB.tv or listening to Audible books in my browser I use Chrome for it's built in Flash support. This has allowed me to access the Flash content I pay for without having the added security risk for the rest of my browsing.
 

majorlag

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For those who have quite a bit of flash games saved as .swf that have great replay value, you can download Adobe "Flash Player Projector" from adobes debug downloads. This will still allow you to open any .swf to play games or watch .swf videos.
~Majorlag
 

koga73

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Everyone hates flash because they associate it with ads. I used to be a flash developer and will say it was and still is a fantastic tool for animating and scripting. Flash will always have a special place in my heart :D
 

bloodroses

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I used to be a programmer and felt the flash scripting language was absolute trash. It was originally meant for animation only, but was forcefully evolved into more to adapt to alternatives like Java at the time. The biggest thing is that they tried to do too much with something that it wasn't originally designed to do in the first place.
 
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