Adobe Flash Player End of Life: December 31
Adobe (via John Gruber):
Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.
[…]
Customers should not use unauthorized versions of Flash Player. Unauthorized downloads are a common source of malware and viruses.
[…]
Note, as it gets closer to the EOL Date, the number of Flash-supported browsers and operating systems may decrease so Adobe strongly encourages customers to migrate to other standards.
Previously:
- Google to Stop Indexing Flash
- Adobe Will Discontinue Flash in 2020
- How Adobe Flash Fell, and Why Flash Content Is Worth Preserving
- Thoughts on Flash
4 Comments RSS · Twitter
Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.
That's pretty scorched earth. So much for preserving old Flash content.
Seriously. It's not like it involves some server resources on their end to just let Flash continue to exist as it is.
I think it's probably more of an admission that there's no way they could possibly fix all the security problems with it and they don't want to get sued after they stop supporting it.
I have no doubt that people will figure out a way around it. (Since Flash doesn't require a connection to Adobe's server [to my knowledge], theoretically the only thing that's in place is a simple kill switch if the date is > 12/31/21?)
Are there any features of Flash Player that third-party players don’t yet support?
Almost certainly.
For a start, NPAPI and ActiveX are essentially dead, and browsers seem to now hardcode it to only support running Flash Player (and perhaps Java). And that support, too, is running out. So a third-party player wouldn’t support running Flash inside a webpage, unless it also bundles its own browser.
Suppose you’re running the Flash movie separately: then there’s still the problem that Flash is a massive runtime with all sorts of interaction, vector graphics, video, 3D, etc. features. A hobby project like Gnash or Lightspark isn’t going to support all of that.
