Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Only 4.9 percent of today's websites utilize Flash code, a number that has plummeted from a 28.5 percent market share recorded at the start of 2011.
The number, courtesy of web technology survey site W3Techs, confirms Flash's decline, and a reason why Adobe has decided to retire the technology at the end of 2020.
[...] On the client side, browser makers are expected to remove Flash support from their products altogether by the end of 2020 —Flash's end-of-life date.
2020 can't come soon enough.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:20PM (3 children)
"Using a sane web browser? Download our native application instead!"
And the native application turns out to be either A. exclusive to an operating system other than the one you regularly use (good luck compiling Swift+Cocoa source code on and for a non-Mac), or B. written in Electron, which bundles a separate tens-of-megabytes copy of Chromium with each application you install.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:46PM (2 children)
You have to have a clear distinction between downloading a program and simply viewing a page before it makes sense to argue about what sorts of programs one will or will not accept to download. Right now the typical web user simply downloads and runs whatever any random server it sees a reference to feels like sending it.
Right now, there isn't even any incentive for the "web developer" to even try to avoid it, because the end user doesn't see it, isn't even aware of it, and has no opportunity to reject it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:12PM (1 child)
Let's say there were a Firefox extension that lets the user turn script execution on or off for a particular domain. How many layers would such an extension [mozilla.org] solve?
Or let's say there were a Firefox extension to block execution of any script without a machine-readable free software license. How many layers would such an extension [gnu.org] solve?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:29PM
With wide adoption, it would be a big help, not a solution necessarily, but a big move in the right direction at the web layer. Because web devs would be forced to again think about scripting rather than simply piling it on by default whether it serves any purpose or not.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?