Firefox 69 Will Disable Adobe Flash Plugin by Default (zdnet.com) 112
Mozilla will take the next major step in disabling support for the Adobe Flash plugin later this year when it releases Firefox 69. From a report: Firefox 69 will be Mozilla's third last step to completely dropping support for the historically buggy plugin, which will reach end of life on December 31, 2020. Flash is the last remaining NPAPI plugin that Firefox supports. Mozilla flagged the change, spotted by Ghacks, in a new bug report that notes "we'll disable Flash by default in Nightly 69 and let that roll out". Firefox 69 stable will be released in early September, according to Mozilla's release calendar.
Version 69 "decouples" two things (Score:5, Funny)
Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
...and nothing of value was lost.
Re: Flash (Score:5, Informative)
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All I need to know is what https://www.waterfoxproject.or... [waterfoxproject.org]. Firefox further back in the river of time, still updated but doesn't force retentive arrogant choices on you but hey, that is what Mozzila is all about, there can be more than 'ONE', many more than one. Run them both and have SteamFox (there you go Steam start distributing your own Mozilla based browser for browser based games distributed by Steam).
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Exactly what I did. What once ran in FF nicely tabbed now requires juggling at least 5 applications, including Chrome. Ditching XUL in the manner they did was the final nail in FF's coffin. I'd go back in a heartbeat if they started supporting things like FireFTP/FireSSH/etc. again - though with how pissed the addon devs were I doubt they would come back.
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I don't need this shit! When I see a company using that shit, I avoid it. When a business I use requires I use it then there is some very expensive tech support calls from me. And why use it?!
i guess i can delete my collection of.. holy shit, i have four and a half gigabytes of shockwave flash games?
admittedly, some of them don't run anymore - for example, the ones that end in .dcr...
User choice (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a good step. It's great that browser makers are generally not beholden to people like advertisers for money, so they can make more user-friendly decisions. I'd like to see more, though.
I don't want autoplay anything in my browser. Especially audio and video. I use a plugin that aims to disable a lot of autoplay, but it doesn't always work. Why not have a browser flag that tells sites "I don't want autoplaying multimedia content"? I know crappy sites with video ads would ignore it, but more legitimate sites could respect it, potentially allowing them to save on bandwidth by not sending content to me that I don't want. I know I can stop it all by turning off JS entirely, but it's so integrated into so much of the web now that even simple sites barely work without it.
It's a little different from "do not track" in that even legitimate sites have monetary incentive to track me regardless of how I set that flag. What incentive do they have to stream videos to me that I don't want to watch?
Maybe I'm just in the minority in not wanting everything to be a video. Maybe the issue is that the sites have no motivation to obey "no autoplay" because it would cost developer time to satisfy a very small group of visitors.
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This is a good step. It's great that browser makers are generally not beholden to people like advertisers for money, so they can make more user-friendly decisions.
I don't know if I missed something there, but that is wrong.
How is breaking my add-ons user-friendly.
Why are there ads on the newtab page.
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In the case of Flash, breaking your add-on is friendly because Flash is a security menace. And, in this case, you can still enable it on a per-site basis.
You're right about ads on the new tab page. That sucks. I don't use it for that reason.
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Not all ads are in fact user-hostile
Hello man just woken up from cryo storage! Unlike your naive world of 2007, here in the future all ads are in fact user hostile, it's just that you cannot always perceive how visually.
A slim minority of ads aren't hostile (Score:3)
Unlike your naive world of 2007, here in the future all ads are in fact user hostile
I agree with you that the vast majority of web ads are user-hostile. This includes any ad hosted by a third-party ad network or ad exchange, as those have a habit of stalking users across multiple websites to infer their interests in order to give advertisers the feeling of more control over what viewers see their ads. Ad networks and ad exchanges do this because interest-based advertising reportedly pays out three times as much per view [politico.com] as context-based advertising.
But "all" is stretching it. I don't see h
I agree, but not sure about change of wording... (Score:3)
Ok, I'll grant that strictly static text ads are not user hostile (since in the category of "hostile" I was think trackers and other cookie related nefariousness).
So I'd amend that slightly to say any ad that required any interactive component at all, from Flash to Javascript, to function...
The ads that you mention are so rare in nature though that I hesitate to not say "all" as it encompasses pretty much anything most people would ever encounter.
Just like you could possibly say not all falls from great hei
Re: A slim minority of ads aren't hostile (Score:2)
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Among the following, which would you prefer:
- Ads
- Paywalls
- The Internet returning to being a hobby, apart from sites that sell physical goods
- A fourth option (specify)
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- Paywalls
- The Internet returning to being a hobby, apart from sites that sell physical goods
- A fourth option (specify)
These three. Think about the websites you visit: are there any you would really miss visiting that you wouldn't be willing to pay for, even na token amount like 50 cents a month?
The other option is something like Patreon. (I used to favor micropayments, but now I think they would likely have the same problem as ads, at a smaller scale).
An entire month of access to read one article (Score:2)
Think about the websites you visit: are there any you would really miss visiting that you wouldn't be willing to pay for
If I read only one article on a particular website, I might not want to buy an entire month of access. Subscriptions suck you into the filter bubble of the particular websites to which you currently subscribe.
even na token amount like 50 cents a month?
Of which the payment card industry would take 30 cents plus 3% of the total, leaving the merchant with about 18 cents.
Re: An entire month of access to read one article (Score:2)
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Patreon solves the first problem [of having to buy a month's subscription to read one article]
Not if the one article is set to patrons-only. There's really not much practical difference between patrons-only posts on Patreon and any other subscription, other than that Patreon is easier for individual authors to set up.
or alternatively, paywalls like the wall street journal and new york times solve it in different ways
What might those be? Last I checked, The Wall Street Journal had a hard paywall, the same as patrons-only posts on Patreon, and I could find not evidence to the contrary. The New York Times and MIT Technology Review use a metered paywall, but known ways of technically deterring users fr
Re: An entire month of access to read one article (Score:2)
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If a content creator
Why do people use the phrase "content creator" instead of the word "author"? The law uses "author" regardless of the medium of a work. This style guide [gnu.org] claims that "content" means that a work's primary "purpose is to fill a box and make money," and "creator" unfairly compares authors to deities to make them worthy of extra privileges under law.
doesn't want you to see it without paying and you don't want to see it with paying, I don't see what the problem is.
The first of two problems is that since the introduction of Flexible Sampling in October 2017, Google Search lists documents but fails to disclose on the search engin
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Why do people use the phrase "content creator" instead of the word "author"?
I don't care.
Do you work in advertising or something? Your arguments are of the type you would expect from someone who would rather not see a solution.
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I want there to be a solution. I just haven't yet seen in practice a solution that funds a website's writing and hosting without ads and without multiple subscriptions that total several hundred dollars per viewer per year. I've already cut out Starbucks.
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I just haven't yet seen in practice a solution that funds a website's writing and hosting without ads and without multiple subscriptions that total several hundred dollars per viewer per year
Ever been to Wikipedia?
Would most other sites work as charities? (Score:2)
Do you think the way Wikipedia is funded is appropriate for the majority of other websites?
The Wikimedia family of sites has the advantages of 1. being run by a registered charity, 2. being structured so as not to need to pay its writers, and 3. scale. It's an exception, and I doubt there is room for many such exceptions on the Internet. I further doubt that charity-run sites alone will provide enough demand for high-speed home Internet to keep home ISPs afloat.
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Do you think the way Wikipedia is funded is appropriate for the majority of other websites?
No, I think there will be a variety of ways to fund websites, and the Wikipedia model is just one of many. Certainly (even now with advertising), there is no "one way" to keep websites funded.
I admit, wiithout advertising, many websites would disappear. Those websites would not be missed.
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Many sites are just user hostile full stop. Take The Independent news site on mobile. Most stories have video, and to auto plays, and takes up more than half the screen, and the close button is the very last thing loaded and doesn't appear until after the video starts. Scrolling down doesn't help, the video follows you. They really, really want you to watch their video, and it's not even an ad.
I stopped going there because of that shit.
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This is a good step. It's great that browser makers are generally not beholden to people like advertisers for money, so they can make more user-friendly decisions.
I don't know if I missed something there, but that is wrong. How is breaking my add-ons user-friendly. Why are there ads on the newtab page.
This is a good step. It's great that browser makers are generally not beholden to people like advertisers for money, so they can make more user-friendly decisions.
I don't know if I missed something there, but that is wrong.
/How is breaking my add-ons user-friendly.
Mainly because flash hasn't been "run anywhere" for a very long time. If you write your page with flash, it won't run on my Raspberry PI(it never did), my flatmate's iPhone (Apple's choice) or my Android cellphone (Adobe's choice). In fact, Flash took ages to even manage 64 bit CPUs. Web pages should be write once, run anywhere but flash was a major problem in making that happen.
Why are there ads on the newtab page.
You can Turn those off. I did.
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Why are they there in the first place. I don't want them off. I want them to never exist in the first place
Also, why cannot I set the new tab page to about:blank.
Re:User choice (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Maybe I'm just in the minority in not wanting everything to be a video. [...] I don't want autoplay anything in my browser."
You might be in the minority, but you are FAR from alone. I *detest* ANY type of media autoplay- regardless of the type or if it is muted or not. And I think most users are very annoyed by any type of autoplay, but perhaps not motivated enough to fight it (especially if muted). Firefox is the only browser (I know of) so far that allows blocking autoplay of muted video (and no addon/plugin needed):
media.autoplay.default=1
media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed=false
media.autoplay.allow-muted=false
Although it will break some sites (I find in practice it is a rare thing, though). The Firefox UI currently includes no way to set the first two of the above, you must use about:config.
>"Maybe the issue is that the sites have no motivation to obey "no autoplay" because it would cost developer time to satisfy a very small group of visitors."
Or they are so arrogant and controlling they want to FORCE their crap down your throat regardless of your preferences, requests, or situation. I don't want my browsing experience to ever be like DVR-less "TV" or "Radio".
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Are you perhaps also blocking Javascript by default?
Many sites override the autoplay setting by simply having Javascript start the video.
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>"Are you perhaps also blocking Javascript by default?"
I am not, no. Blocking javascript breaks all sites and trying to tangle with that mess is almost impossible now.
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Remedy is worse than the disease (Score:3)
Disease: Flash.
Can autoplay videos. Easy to workaround: block the plugin, even on a per-site basis.
Remedy: HTML5 videos
Can autoplay videos. Cannot be blocked. Some partial solutions include hidden config settings in browsers, and it may break sites.
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I use a plugin that aims to disable a lot of autoplay, but it doesn't always work.
I'm interested in what your plug-in can and can't block. How many of these tests [pineight.com] still play?
I know I can stop it all by turning off JS entirely
CSS animated filmstrips, such as this [pineight.com] and this [pineight.com], still play with video autoplay, GIF autoplay, and JavaScript all turned off.
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I think the issue is that adtech people are really pushing "internet tv" hard, and every autoplay video is one more they can add to the "number of times this video was played" score (regardless of whether anybody actually wanted to watch it, or what proportion of the site visitors cursed aloud and smashed the "STOP PLAYING" button as hard as they coul
Re: User choice (Score:2)
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Where now? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, where do i go if i want a browser with flash support.
Sure, disable flash by default. But as many things that involves computers, there's always people that have a use for it and/or want to access old content. I want a browser that has flash enabled. All the big vendors disabled it now. It feels they do not want to leave the choice to the user.
Having an up-to-date browser with flash is a better option than sticking to firefox 68 with flash and without updates.
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Can you point to an unbroken instance of Gemcraft:Chasing Shadows that DOESN'T use flash?
GemCraft - Chasing Shadows on Steam (Score:2)
Armor Games has put a version on Steam [steampowered.com]. I haven't tried it, but more likely than not, it uses AIR, not Flash Player. Though AIR and Flash Player use very similar runtimes, AIR presents less of an attack surface because an application made with AIR is self-contained, not interacting with the web browser in the same way that an SWF object does.
Re:Where now? (Score:5, Informative)
Use oldversion.com, put an alternate browser install to run along next to your main one.
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Stick with FF 56 like us sane people.
Re: Where now? (Score:2)
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It's the last version that supports the addons I "can't" live without:
deduplicate-tabs
New Tab in Tab Context Menu
Open Tabs Next to Current
Sort Tabs
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So, where do i go if i want a browser with flash support.
The STD clinic. Your computer is infected.
I consider this a good thing for developers (Score:2)
They have until Septemberish to recreate whatever flash was doing on their web site in javascript or python, or whatever.
There should be plenty of job openings for contractors or new hires to replace the "functionality" Flash was "providing".
That being said, I just remembered I had an old Tag Cloud plugin for my web site that used Flash. I should probably check and see if there's something I could replace it with.
I'm probably either lazy about fixing stuff like this, or contented that once it's done, there
Re:I consider this a good thing for developers (Score:4, Insightful)
The "excuse" is quite simple. Flash works, and implementation has been paid for. Unless you are willing to pay for new implementation, you don't get to tell people that they can't use their existing implementation "because reasons".
It's honestly baffling how many people are so ignorant of the most basic concepts of "budgeting" and "sunk costs". No wonder so many are living paycheck to paycheck.
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Unless you are willing to pay for new implementation, you don't get to tell people that they can't use their existing implementation "because reasons".
"If you continue to use Internet-facing software that is neither maintained nor formally proven correct, you are at greater risk of a data security breach and a fine or judgment against you, and no liability insurer will accept you."
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You also show ignorance of basic IT security concepts such as "risk assessment" and "value of the target compared to costs to attack it successfully in a meaningful way".
Concepts that insurance companies you rate so highly understand very well.
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Thank you for your deep and well explained reasoning. I have reconsidered my view point because of it.
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Flash works, and implementation has been paid for. Unless you are willing to pay for new implementation, you don't get to tell people that they can't use their existing implementation "because reasons".
It's honestly baffling how many people are so ignorant of the most basic concepts of "budgeting" and "sunk costs". No wonder so many are living paycheck to paycheck.
You what? Why on earth would I care about some random person's sunk costs? That's their problem not mine. The major browser vendors and mobile pl
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You appear to have misspelled "their product got dropped from the tool portfolio".
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It would help if your posts actually made any sense. Who's product?
If it's Firefox then yeah sure, because the iPhone doesn't support flash and neither does android. And I don't think chrome makes it easy either.
So sure companies are free to ditch the tools that 95% of their customers use. Companies are also free you go out of business.
What is your point?
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Any developer still using flash apparently hasn't noticed that Chrome, the most popular browser, stopped displaying it years ago. And it never worked on iOS at all.
Flash has been dead for a long time outside of artist communities using it for animations.
Comical Flash messages (Score:2)
I've thought it comical that updating Flash shuts off the "Disabling the insecure version of Adobe Flash" warning in FF, because EVERY version of Adobe Flash is insecure.
It just takes a few weeks for someone to notice the top 10 current vulnerabilities, and turn the alarm back on.
C compiled to JS is slower than wasm (Score:2)
It appears you propose to switch from compiling C to WebAssembly back to compiling C to JavaScript using Emscripten. This will cause the output of the compiler to run slower in your browser, draining the battery of your laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
Or alternatively, you could have meant to propose to switch from compiling C to WebAssembly back to compiling C to native code using a traditional compiler. In this case, you will lose out on ability to use an application at all because it happened to be compile
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<Windows.h>: no such file or directory
not disabled already? (Score:1)
You mean it hasn't been disabled already?
Flash is so 1990's! (Score:1)
Flash is so 1990's! It's hard to believe that we're still carrying around support for a 90's-style plugin. Nobody writes Java Applets anymore. Flash Player is a similar architecture. Download the full runtime into your browser in order to run the app. Contrast that with the built-in support of newer application frameworks. I've been ready to say goodbye to Flash and its security issues for 15 years!
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Nobody writes Java Applets anymore.
Well, except Brocade FCAL switch management interfaces (2 year old hardware) and most net enabled KVMs (brand new). Not even web start, requires applet in both cases
It's far easier to for me to go without Flash since last year, I junked the only NAS device (6 years old) I had that required it.
vSphere Web Client (Score:1)
And no, I do not want to switch to Chrome, I thoroughly dislike it and don't trust it.
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I wish Vmware would finally dump the flash requirement (the HTML5 version does not have full functionality)
As a paying customer, you could try filing a support ticket for the missing functionality. This may, however, require you to extend your support contrast past the EOL date of Flash Player.
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And their response to "fix missing functionality" is to use the "Full" supported client i.e.Flash.
Which is why I specifically mentioned purchasing support that extends "past the EOL date of Flash Player", as VMware will no longer be able to call an SWF object "the 'Full' supported client" once no major web browser runs Flash Player anymore.
What about when we need Flash? (Score:4, Interesting)
How do we play or use Flash when we have to? I understand it is old, but there was a lot of content made for it. Some of it needs to still be used or enjoyed.
Re:What about when we need Flash? (Score:5, Funny)
Isolated virtual machine running Windows XP behind 3 firewalls installed only in RAM, and when you're done throw out the RAM sticks. Alternatively burn the building down. Safety first.
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There are some stand alone apps that let you play flash videos. I forget the name now because it's so long since I've used one, but I found one that was designed for flash games and it works pretty well.