The keyword is lockdown.<p>I am all for giving hate to flash. It is commonly found vulnerable. It produce slow websites which eats memory and cpu. It has poor history in non-windows systems.<p>But in all, I have serious doubt this call was made for any reason beyond pushing users to their app-store. games? online experience? chat? By forbidding flash, companies are bit more forced to turn to apps with their products. Sure, things can still use javascript, html5 and web-sockets, but I would not trust web-sockets to be left alone if they seriously would start to threaten the app world.<p>Maybe I am just cynical, but follow the money argument looks to support it.
I remember reading this and thinking "nice", back when there were a lot of sites where video couldn't be viewed on an iPhone:<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/</a><p>Two years later, and I can even comfortably disable the Flash plugin in my desktop browser.<p>It seems (thankfully) that Flash is fast turning into a relic of last decade. Not a bad move by MS.
Well, we have come to a point where no one actually cares about IE. Everyone wishes this browser wouldn't exist and most of the people use it as a tool to download Chrome and Firefox.<p>Having said that Microsoft's new policy is either aimed at discouraging Flash altogether OR this is just a test. They want to test users are willing accept this kind of feature where MS white-listed websites are given more power than the normal websites. Expect more to happen on this front.
My initial reaction was oh noo how dare they take something away from me, I then realised I have chrome.<p>I then got thinking, as a default for a browser that will end up in corporate desktops and home users that this is actualy a realy nice move. I'm sure there will be some registry hack to negate this, but for the common user who lacks the ability to do that are perhaps best left with there internet L plates attached.<p>In summary, big fat +1 from me on this as anybody who is able to bypass this hurdle will be alot less likely to fall foul of this safty net. Less infected PC's, less spam, less crap in general.<p>Lets not also forget the big benefit this betowes upon us, less calls from friends who's PC's/Internet seems to be running a little slower and after 15 minutes on the phone you realise it will be easier to see them.
Microsoft is being like Apple; like Apple, they know Flash isn't a good answer for tablets and mobile and they're guiding people towards something that is. In fact, Microsoft is pushing developers towards HTML 5.<p>Note that desktop IE 10 supports Flash and other plug-ins just fine. I run Windows 8 preview on the computer in my ham shack and I find that do almost all my browsing with the desktop IE anyway. I just use the Metro IE to visit QRZ, which is a web application for looking up call signs and logging contacts.
Earlier, the plan was to have no plugin support at all in IE10 Metro. Microsoft is positioning the whitelist approach as a backwards compatibility shim for high-profile sites that won't or can't give up Flash.
The whitelisting is on the IE10 thats embedded in the Windows 8 ui (those fancy tiles). The normal IE10 browser that you use to browse the web with has no such limitations. Nothing to see here...
When we data security advocates discuss things like promiscuous trust among SSL certificate authorities and one-click scary page bypass features with browser vendors, inevitably the old adage comes up "no vendor is willing to lose market share by making its security policies more restrictive than the others".<p>Perhaps this is a test case trying to break out of the old status quo?<p>Disclaimer: I recently accepted a position at the big M itself.
I'm becoming confused as to who Microsoft are anymore. They continue to disappoint by chasing other people's customers while alienating their existing ones.<p>I've been here before with WindowsCE and WinMobile. :(
reading the lines, It seems this is only in the Metro version of IE. But still an hassle, where the desktop IE pops-up when non white-listed Flash content is on the page.<p>Submitting your site for consideration for Internet Explorer compatibility
As stated previously, developers who have sites that require Flash Player can mark the page with a META tag (or serve a header) indicating that the site requires a plug-in. This causes Internet Explorer 10 to prompt the end user to open the site in Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop. If a site is on the CV list as compatible with Internet Explorer 10, Internet Explorer 10 will always open it with Flash Player enabled and the user won't be prompted to open in Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop.
Interesting.
Flash is not just video and ads. Flex is a powerful and rich application stack on Flash platform. There are numerous sites out there using Flex.
"First they took away Flash, but I didn't care because I was not a Flash developer..."<p>Whatever your stance is on Flash, this is a scary development if you don't like walled gardens.
How is this news ? We know this since last May ( <a href="http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/05/23/windows-8-secrets-internet-explorer-10-will-ship-with-adobe-flash/" rel="nofollow">http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/05/23/windows-8-secrets-in...</a> ).
Personally i think this is great news. And i would very much like to see Java ending up in the same boat.<p>Having a language that is not inherently designed to be run in a sandboxed environment should not be allowed to run in a browser.
Also an interesting information: there are two versions of IE. How and why should the user choose which one is more appropriate? Will the locked down version be default?
doesn't the significance of this depend on the roles of the two browsers in windows 8? is that explained anywhere? how can you understand or comment usefully on this without knowing what the difference in uses for the two is?