You've got 55 days left to stop using Flash before Firefox kills it entirely:
If you're still using Adobe's Flash Player, you've got 55 more days until Mozilla fully banishes it from Firefox. Firefox 83, released Tuesday, is the penultimate version of the web browser that will run Flash software, and Firefox 85 will completely disable it when it arrives on Jan. 12, 2021.
Flash expanded browser abilities with features like streaming video and gaming graphics that boosted the abilities of the web more than a decade ago. But security risks and other problems led browser makers to bypass Flash by expanding the web's built-in abilities.
[...] The timing of Mozilla's move, years after Flash's fate was sealed, shows how hard it is to uproot widely used technology. Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 persisted long after Microsoft wanted to move on, too. Some technologies, like mainframe computers and vinyl records, have survived obsolescence, but not Flash.
Safari axed Flash with Safari 14, part of the Big Sur release in November. Chrome will phase it out in December. Microsoft stripped Flash out of Windows 10 in October.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday November 18 2020, @02:59AM (13 children)
Flash still works fine, just feed it to a standalone player.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @03:58AM (4 children)
For about a month or more Chrome has been throwing the warning about Flash being removed by the end of December, and on my Win7 machine, Adobe Flash has been popping up a window after login with a big warning that is is going away and it presents you with a nice big "Uninstall" button to hit (as well as a "remind me later" button).
(Score: 2, Redundant) by Arik on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:22AM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:38AM (2 children)
None. What part of "Adobe is aggressively wanting to remove Flash from my computer" did you have trouble with?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:47AM
Use (a compatible version of) Flash (the program, not the player) and save your swf files as projector executables.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday November 18 2020, @05:00AM
That won't make it die. That would encourage development of gnash; it presumably doesn't need a whole lot of work, aiming at a stationary target.
But gnash competes against free-as-in-beer players still available if you search for them; and $$ash(aka actionscript) competes for various uses against ecmascripted html5 crap on the one hand and python (renpy in particular on the other) and seems to be losing on every front.
So there's not likely to be many new releases that need it. Old releases should be targetable with whatever winds up being the smallest Free VM image for the latest player, or in some cases the earlier player that some of the older stuff may require.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:00AM (5 children)
Yeah. Kind of like monospace fonts. They really should remove them from the browser also.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:12AM
It's in your browser configuration. You should be able to set it to use only your preferred font(s) one way or another.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 18 2020, @07:23AM (2 children)
I strongly disagree. Monospace fonts are incredibly useful for displaying code. Also there are things made for monospace fonts that should never be displayed in other ways.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:23AM (1 child)
The problem with monospace fonts is the same problem that Flash has. It has its uses, but there's some people just like to use it to make our eyes bleed.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:44AM
If monospace fonts make your eyes bleed, you should see an eye doctor.
The problem with Flash is it's abysmal security. As far as I know, there are zero security issues associated with monospace fonts. Quite the opposite: While in other fonts, letters often look the same (I vs. l, rn vs. m), with monospace fonts they are generally well distinguished (indeed, I think from a security point of view it's a bad idea that a non-monospace font is used in the URL bar of browsers; with monospace, nobody would mistake e.g. "rnicrosoft.com" for "microsoft.com").
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @02:36AM
Rosco, aren't you sad that Firefox is going to kill your dog? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:25AM (1 child)
I have 4 versions of firefox on my computer, and I often run all 4 simultaneously. Mozilla can't kill Flash in Firefox, they can only exclude it from newer versions.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:37AM
But it was never a good idea to allow that in the browser without at least some sort of big scary "if you aren't sure what you're doing, don't allow this" warning.
Browsers allowed this because this allowed junk that made advertisers and hardware manufacturers happy, and they let the browser makers feel the happy. Not because it ever made any sense whatsoever.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 18 2020, @03:12AM (1 child)
Microsoft was the number one exploit on your machine, until Adobe stole first place from Microsoft?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 18 2020, @06:31PM
Adobe only stole the Exploit Crown it due to how many web sites used Flash.
Please remember that ALL of the following are guilty of the same badfulness:
* Adobe Flash
* Microsoft ActiveX
* Java Applets
* Microsoft Silverlight
Basically, a third party, native executable, that runs unverified code from the network, AND can interact with the page's JavaScript in very complex and difficult to analyze ways.
Hypothetical example: the runtime might let you save content onto the local drive, but not if that content came from the network. But maybe the JavaScript can fetch malware from the network, hand it to the runtime, which can then save it as a local file somewhere. Two things that independently were "safe" but combined together can do combinations of things that should not be done.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday November 18 2020, @03:29AM (4 children)
Good by Flash.
For some time now we have had the ability to have annoying unwanted animations, sound, and video, in our browsers. With no way to remove it. And no way to justify idiot web monkeys not using it since everyone has it.
At least your "off switch" will be missed.
Now, can we get web sites to offer PDF files as downloads instead of automatically opening them with Adobe Acrobat Reader? (Damn, no time right now to verify that the absolute latest actually still does that)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @03:49AM (2 children)
In my (slightly out of date) FireFox, About:Preferences (the stupid "gear" icon) includes a section called "Applications". Part way down the list is:
Portable Document Format (PDF) with a drop down menu,
Preview in Firefox
Always Ask
Save File
Use Sumatra PDF (default)
[I have this set as default for Windows Explorer, instead of Adobe Reader]
Use Other
It's currently set to Preview in Firefox, their built in reader usually works OK.
If you haven't tried Sumatra, it's worth a look, it also displays several eBook formats, and even displays generic Postscript (.PS) files...and nothing else. Compared to Reader it is tiny.
Still need Reader if I have to fill in an Acrobat form, or do the Adobe "secure sign" security theater for someone.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday November 18 2020, @10:59PM (1 child)
Do you have any comparison to Foxit Reader? I'm getting tired of them trying to shove cloud features at me and am looking for an alternative.
(Yes I know I could just use Edge, but I really like the ability to pick between one page per screen, continuous, or two pages per screen. Edge doesn't have that option.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @01:41AM
Never tried Foxit Reader. Some years back someone sent me a .epub file and I went looking for a reader. Found SumatraPDF and was so happy I haven't looked further. It's even available two ways for Windows -- normal install and also a "run the .exe with out installation" version. So far Sumatra hasn't tried any cloud stuff, at least not that I'm aware of.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:07AM
As the AC says, that's a setting in your browser. In Palemoon it is in Tools - Preferences - Application Tab. Just find PDF and change the setting to Download or Always Ask.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:01AM
He'll be resurrected Tuesday, February 23. [deadline.com]
What? Wrong Flash? Which Flash are they killing? It can't be Zoom. Isn't he the most popular feature of this year? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:04AM (4 children)
Mainframe computers are far from becoming obsolete.
https://www.suse.com/c/mainframe-versus-server-farm-comparison/ [suse.com]
Z13 config-a replaces 200,000 XEON servers
Z13 config-b replaces 400,000 x86 model J servers
And considering vinyl...
https://www.thereporter.com/2020/11/14/vinyl-records-have-made-a-comeback/ [thereporter.com]
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday November 18 2020, @10:52AM
Mainframe computers are far from becoming obsolete.
Indeed. There are now so many, they have merged into a blurr in peoples minds, and are now referred to as "the cloud".
It probably helps to view them as that dark cloud over the horizon bringing doom and destruction, and replace them
with a server in a closet (like any mainframe - headless, running Unix, 24 hours a day). Fortunately, you do not need
to buy a 6 ton one unless you need a 6 ton one. People like Dell will sell you one you can lift by yourself.
Not only that, you can run a DEC10 emulation in a virtual machine on it for that real Mainframe experience. (Not
recommended unless you have actual DC10 experience). You might be able to emulate an IBM System 360 too
but I would not recommend that for anyone.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday November 18 2020, @12:55PM (2 children)
Those numbers come from a comment to the original article and are completely made up.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:29PM (1 child)
I disagree they are made up. IBM has similar numbers (same order of magnitude) in their technical papers in many places.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:32PM
Citation Needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:25AM (2 children)
Is that really still a thing?
I stopped using it at least five years ago.
I thought that was true for most people.
I guess you learn something new every day.
(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:42PM (1 child)
Sadly we have a supplier that still uses flash and there are no one-to-one alternatives. They did start migrating from flash a couple of years ago, but appear have to have only changed the end user parts of their service to HTML. The admin sections that I use still use all flash. We fill in a bug report every few months and just get a "our devs are working on it" response.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday November 18 2020, @11:15PM
According to Adobe's Flash end-of-life FAQ the supported solution is to contact their vendor, Harman, for a supported version of flash.
My read of that document is that the Flash player we have today is time bombed to stop working on the EOL date, but I haven't tested that yet.