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Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise With New 'HTML5 By Default' Chrome Setting (softpedia.com) 131

Posted by BeauHD from the phased-out dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: In a Google Groups thread named "Intent to implement: HTML5 by Default," the Google developers announced initial plans to implement a new feature in the Chromium core that will disable the playback of Flash content by default, and use HTML5 instead, if available. The feature is scheduled to ship with Chromium builds in Q4 2016, according to the current timeline. To avoid "overprompting," a whitelist will allow ten major websites to continue to show Flash content by default without pestering users with "Allow domain.com to run Flash Player" prompts. The whitelist will be in effect one year only. The list includes the domains of YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, VK, Live, Yandex, OK.ru, Twitch, Amazon, and Mail.ru, the biggest sites running Flash content today. Previews of the settings and prompts UI are also available.
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Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise With New 'HTML5 By Default' Chrome Setting More

Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise With New 'HTML5 By Default' Chrome Setting

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  • Meanwhile demanding more Flash usage... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13, 2016 @09:24PM (#52109763)

    by not improving YouTube.

    • Large corporations love Flash. The expensive dev tools are a large barrier to competition.

      • Large corporations love Flash. The expensive dev tools are a large barrier to competition.

        Said dev tools will undoubtedly be rental only, part of what Adobe calls its Creative Accounting suite.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not improving it how? I don't have Flash installed and YouTube works fine.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        i havent had flash installed in ~2 years. i have youtube open nearly 24/7.. though usually on autoplay. And it fails extremely rarely on missing flash. Perhaps once a week where a simple F5 fixes it. And at most once a month where the video just wont work for whatever reason.

        • 3 years ago I uninstalled flash during a system refresh.(OS X) I then installed chrome, just in case I needed flash

          Now I only use chrome when i want to update my android tablet, Hell if someone could give me either an android plugin to download iCloud/safari bookmarks to android, or chrome bookmarks to safari, I wouldn't need both installed. (every existing plugin runs your security through a third party website.

        • I think there are a few old uploads that require the Flash player to watch. They're from the days when YouTube didn't store your original upload, just their encoded version, which in those days was a Sorensen-encoded FLV. To allow playing of those in an HTML5-only environment they would have to transcode them again, with an additional generation loss in quality. But then we're talking about video that already looks terrible, so it's not that big a deal.

    • When I interviewed there, they didn't ask a single HTML5 question but instead asked me a bunch of questions about the three years I was an ActionScript dev. They didn't seem to care about standards.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      WAT. The HTML5 version of Youtube is superior to the flash version, because the HTML5 version lets you watch instructional videos at 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x speed and still understand what they're saying (personally I wish they'd add 3x, because some instructors talk way too slowly). Oh, and it's also superior because it's not flash. :)

      IMO, pr0n is the only reason Flash still exists. In a lot of cases, you can just download the .flv container and view it without Flash. Chrome's just going to automate that proces

      • There is a plug-in for chrome (and a similar one for Firefox) called Video Speed Controller that let's you change playback speed from .1 to 4x in .1 increments with audio and up to 16x without. It is even bound to hot keys for fine ground control.

    • However, if you're running Chrome or Firefox, YouTube videos are played back using HTML 5.0 by default. Internet Explorer still uses Flash, though I believe that Edge from Windows 10 defaults to HTML 5.0 playback in YouTube.

  • It was great 10-15 years ago but now that HTML5 is largely supported by all modern browsers we can finally say good bye to the CPU heavy / security flawed plug-in known as Flash.

    • I've completely uninstalled Flash from my personal computer and don't miss it at all. My work machine has it because we have internal apps that use it, but I have a little shell script that finds the flash process and kills it if it starts to act like a pig.

    • Flash is starting to seem slick and lightweight (at least for games), compared to some of the HTML5/JS/WebGL stuff. Everyone's taking their huge C++ codebases, running them through Emscripten, and out comes something far bigger and slower to download/compile/start than anything in Flash.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The largest reason to get rid of flash has nothing to do with HTML5 and everything to do with scalablity.

      Flash can not render above HD. At 4K a flash animation has less than 4 pixels of precision for motion tweens where as a 400x300 animation had plenty of precision. Flash uses "twips" which are basically 1/10th pixels. So a 400x300 animation can only be stretched to 4000x3000, but at that point it has only 1 pixel of precision, so movement will be seen as jumping between the original 400x300 pixel resoluti

  • Let's extend that idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gadget_Guy ( 627405 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @09:33PM (#52109803)

    How about they implement blocking autorun of all videos by default unless you whitelist a site. There are really only a couple of video sites in the world that I ever want to have a video run without my intervention.

    No, I don't want your video ad (especially with sound). No, I don't want the trailer of your movie or game appearing as the banner on top of every page on your site. No, I don't want an autoplaying video to accompany the perfectly good text version of your news article that just says exactly the same thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      use NoScript

      • Re:Let's extend that idea (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sigma 7 ( 266129 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @10:52PM (#52110123)

        I should not have to download an extension for something that should be a core feature of the browser.

        Disabling Javascript was a core feature of Netscape 4.0, and had the added benefit of plugging practically any drive-by-exploit from an ad network.

        • Re:Let's extend that idea (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ortholattice ( 175065 ) on Saturday May 14, 2016 @12:18AM (#52110317)

          How about they implement blocking autorun of all videos by default

          You mean like YouTube, where when you middle-click open several tabs of videos of possible interest, they all start playing in a cacophonous roar? Then you have to open each tab to pause it before you can even start watching one of them, defeating the whole purpose of "open in new tab".

          Oh wait, Google bought YouTube and added that incredibly annoying autorun "feature".

          I don't know what they were thinking, but I do know that it has caused me to do a lot less casual sampling of their videos..

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            I don't know about you, but a few months ago, YouTube stopped autoplaying until you give the tab focus. Which is pretty neat.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by NotAPK ( 4529127 )

              But, they also don't buffer the content any more.

              The optimial is to allow the user to open a series of tabs in a row, start buffering the videos, but not to play them. Once the user arrives at the tabs the content should be there ready to go.

              Obviously they are trying to limit their bandwidth costs by only streaming what is deemed to be necessary. But in my experience the buffering on YoutTube is so biased towards saving bandwidth for Google that it doesn't really work for the user at all.

              Plenty of other opt

              • Re:Let's extend that idea (Score:4, Informative)

                by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday May 14, 2016 @03:19AM (#52110629)

                The optimial is to allow the user to open a series of tabs in a row, start buffering the videos, but not to play them.

                That is NOT optimal. If you're in a situation where you need to rely on buffering then buffering multiple videos at once just means that you can't actually watch anything anymore. Your connection that may have been able to play a smooth video with buffering now suddenly does nothing and you get to sit there for a few minutes waiting so you can hit the play button.

                That's a fantastic way to piss off users and lose them.

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by NotAPK ( 4529127 )

                  Hang on, it depends on what the user is trying to do, and how much they understand about bandwidth.

                  So yes, for a naive user who doesn't know anything, then not doing anything in parallel is best: just do what the user is currently looking at. But this attitude that "everyone is stupid" is terribly dismissive and very unfair.

                  Fora start, for anyone that does understand bandwidth it's just a pain since typically it's nice to be able to do things in parallel. And since I appreciate entirely how buffering the o

                  • So yes, for a naive user who doesn't know anything, then not doing anything in parallel is best: just do what the user is currently looking at. But this attitude that "everyone is stupid" is terribly dismissive and very unfair.

                    No actually that's by far the majority case for a bunch of people slurping youtube videos. I appreciate being in control of how things work as much as the next geeky person but you dramatically over-estimate just how many of us there are.

                    I do completely agree with the advertising comment, and I say this as someone who runs an adblocker. I'm amazed at what youtube looks like without it.

                  • So yes, for a naive user who doesn't know anything, then not doing anything in parallel is best: just do what the user is currently looking at. But this attitude that "everyone is stupid" is terribly dismissive and very unfair.

                    Unfair to whom? The business reality is that time is money, and naive users outnumber aware users to such an extent that a business will earn more money by just not spending time on accommodating aware users than by implementing measures to retain aware users. I know many of us don't want to hear it, but as C____C____ and other regulars have repeated over the years, Slashdot's core demographic is a minority and an edge case.

                    • You are right in that most users don't understand (or care) about these things, and that businesses tend to cater to the lowest common denominator.

                      But what does that have to do with the fact that businesses treat their customers like idiots, and in the process make their products and services worse for customers who actually care about these things? That attitude, while it may be reflective of a justifiable business decision, is offensive (and demonstrates the sociopathic nature of business).

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by antdude ( 79039 )

                  Especially on a slow connection! That's like a DDoS. Ouch.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Xest ( 935314 )

                  To be fair it's not like we're stuck in the 1980s anymore, giving download priority to the current tab whilst background buffering the background tabs with any remaining bandwidth should be a fairly straightforward way of providing the best of both worlds.

          • Oh wait, Google bought YouTube and added that incredibly annoying autorun "feature".

            Yeah google bought youtube, added an autorun feature and then promptly set it so it only autoruns when the tab becomes the active focused tab.

            I've been youtubing en-mass for many years and I can't recall the last time I heard a cacophonous roar (or even just two videos playing at once).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Altrag ( 195300 )

              I get it frequently. I tend to keep a lot of browser windows open and when something crashes, I use the restore option.

              Suddenly half a dozen videos are all playing at once. Especially annoying if they're embedded in some non-Youtube page so the little arrow doesn't get added to the title bar.

              I've had to set Youtube back to using flash (even though its far buggier) because none of the HTML5 (or even Youtube-specific) blockers I've found actually work. Most if not all just let the video start playing and t

    • How about they implement blocking autorun of all videos by default unless you whitelist a site.

      I agree. Google automatically white-listing certain sites based on an arbitrary size of those sites seems highly illegal and like a conflict of interests.

      I say illegal, because the Chrome browser has recently reached the threshold of the biggest marketshare [netmarketshare.com] of all browsers on the desktop (to say nothing of their marketshare of the Chrome browser on mobile devices like Android phones and tablets).

      After all, if manual white listing is good enough for the other smaller video sites, why isn't it good enough for

      • Why would it be illegal for them to make a browser that works well with their site? 90% of mobile apps are browsers configured to work with only one site. Are most mobile apps illegal?

        You mentioned that a lot of people use Chrome, are you thinking of monopoly laws? A monopoly is when one company is the only company providing a product. That would be of Chrome was the only browser, if the user had no other choice.

        In fact, according to your link Chrome has 41% market share. Other sources say less, but anyw

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Etcetera ( 14711 )

          Why would it be illegal for them to make a browser that works well with their site? 90% of mobile apps are browsers configured to work with only one site. Are most mobile apps illegal?

          You mentioned that a lot of people use Chrome, are you thinking of monopoly laws? A monopoly is when one company is the only company providing a product. That would be of Chrome was the only browser, if the user had no other choice.

          In fact, according to your link Chrome has 41% market share. Other sources say less, but anyway that's nowhere near 100%. You can't use any browser other than Chrome? MOST people use some other browser.

          Are you new here or do you legitimately not remember the IE browser tying issues? You don't need 100% market share to be a monopoly, you just need to be able to exercise price/feature/etc control without (realistic) chance of competition. "Google is making a change to its browser that favors its own sites and we all just have to deal with it because that's the way it is" is pretty much the definition of a technology monopoly.

          • > Are you new here or do you legitimately not remember the IE browser tying issues?

            Windows had over 90% market share measured at the consumer, and there was exactly ONE significant OEM who wasn't tied to a Windows contract. "Every computer company except one must follow our rules" sounds a lot like a monopoly.

            Again, MOST people do not use Chrome. A monopoly is "all, or almost all".

            > without (realistic) chance of competition.

            Given that Chrome has less than half the market, there's pretty clearly not

    • On Pale Moon (a Firefox fork) go to about:config and set...

      media.autoplay.allowscripted false
      media.autoplay.enabled false

      Note that on Youtube, you have to do extra work to start the first video, because of disabling autoplay...

      * click somewhere in the picture frame
      * click on the little triangle in the bottom left of the image to start playing

      Firefox should be similar.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        that's just normal firefox settings, no need for pale moon. And i would recommend against pale moon. Nice idea, but horrible realization.

    • Use the Flashcontrol ext

  • Does this mean Google is committed to killing Flash on YouTube this next year?

  • "Planing" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13, 2016 @09:44PM (#52109861)

    Are they going to bring it over to the jointer after that?

  • Meanwhile (Score:3)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @09:44PM (#52109863) Homepage

    Every single "enterprise class" web service (e.g. HR, payroll, health care, etc.) will be still insist on flash for the next 20 years.

  • hardly killing it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by luther349 ( 645380 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @10:04PM (#52109947)
    is it will just use html 5 if it can hardly killing flash. devs love flash becouse they can fill it with ads something they cant do with html 5.

  • Google Devs Planning Flash's Demise... (Score:4, Funny)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday May 13, 2016 @10:11PM (#52109963)
    FTFY

  • Because the only place Flash exists on my computer nowadays is inside of Chrome. It's not my usual browser - I use it for those few sites I visit which still rely on Flash. Google keeps Flash and Chrome updated together, so I don't have to keep updating it separately every few days whenever yet another critical Flash vulnerability appears.

  • You want a radar map in motion to see if the sky is coming to kill you? YOU HAVE TO HAVE FLASH.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No you don't. The NWS has a link on the radar pages that says "Standard Edition," which allows you to switch to an animated GIF. Also, those radar loops are truly awful and outdated. There seems to be some plan to eventually replace them with a new version of the software [noaa.gov], though I haven't seen any progress in that direction in a long time. However, as with most meteorologists, I use the $10 Radarscope app, which is far superior and has far more products. There are definitely some things missing from Radars

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        The NWS has a link on the radar pages that says "Standard Edition," which allows you to switch to an animated GIF.

        That works. Thank you.

        I use the $10 Radarscope app, which is far superior and has far more products.

        Products not including an upgrade to Donkey Kong [wikipedia.org], I assume.

  • That tips the scale towards "Not evil".

  • biggest flash users are porn sites (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sittingnut ( 88521 ) <sittingnut.gmail@com> on Saturday May 14, 2016 @12:39AM (#52110361) Homepage

    "... domains of YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, VK, Live, Yandex, OK.ru, Twitch, Amazon, and Mail.ru, the biggest sites running Flash content today"
    really?
    some of them, yes. but biggest sites using flash are big porn sites.

    • That and Newgrounds. How much of Newgrounds has been remade in HTML5+JS+Canvas, if any? Rendering a Flash vector animation to MP4 bloats it by a factor of about ten in my tests.

  • I have no working flash in chromium for years (Score:3)

    by allo ( 1728082 ) on Saturday May 14, 2016 @05:16AM (#52110813)

    As chromium does not package pepper flash and google is too arrogant to use npapi plugins anymore.

    No problem. And from the named sites ... amazon needs flash? youtube? Search engines like yahoo and yandex?
    No. They work without it pretty well.

  • Whitelisting YouTube makes no sense (Score:3)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Saturday May 14, 2016 @06:57AM (#52110963)

    It makes no sense to white-list YouTube when Google should be making YouTube send HTML5 video to any recent-enough-to-support-HTML5-video version of Chromium anyway.

  • How do I block HTML5 video (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday May 14, 2016 @07:35AM (#52111029) Journal
    I hate audio and video auto playing and auto looping. At least with flash there are a number of add-ons that work and block the damned thing. HTML5 video is not as easily blocked. As the advetisers and clickbaiters figure out more creative ways to be annoying, I'm wondering what the state of the art is in blocking unwanted audio, video, autoplay, autoloop etc?

  • Where both Flash and Java belong. When you need a VM, use a suitable VM technology - neither Flash nor Java will ever be secure enough. They do, however, both make excellent virus vectors.

  • Google = The most anticompetetive company (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google is the most anti competitive company in the world. I can't wait until someone like Trump dismantles this company who ruins businesses based on their market position.

  • So then, would this make HTML5 "The Reverse Flash" or "Zoom"?

  • [rant on] It strikes me that Google hires probably the brightest minds and do not grasp basics of IT: different people have different needs!

    While it is acceptable to start restricting an securing web browser by disabling some features and external plugins for general public, it is quite unacceptable NOT to leave any option but not to upgrade for specialized use. I still did not get over NPAPI deprecation. Companies like mine have built specialized solutions around plugins and/or flash and with Google ecosys

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