I never install flash on any computer I own. I don't run any closed source software outside of a VM.<p>It is very possible to get by without flash. In the rare cases where flash is essential to view a video, for example the SpaceX livestream a short while ago, I stick the url into `youtube-dl` and I have yet to experience a situation where it is not supported. In the case of the livestream, You can do:<p><pre><code> $ youtube-dl -o- $URL | mplayer -
</code></pre>
To stream it yourself. This is how I watch iPlayer.<p>As a side note, I found this humorous:<p>> It's a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of web technology.<p>Google is your ISP (Fiber), Google makes your hardware (Pixel & Nexus), Google maintains your OS (ChromeOS & Android), Google made your browser (Chrome), Google strong arms web standards (http2), Google Decides what you see (Search), and places ads on it.<p>To confine `unilateral corporate control of web technology` to the past is laughable.
Of course it is. The thing those 'movements' don't seem to understand is that budgets are limited and that people (and companies) tend to build websites the way they used to make paintings: once. Then maybe, over time they'll update the content but flash is usually not seen as part of that content but as the infrastructure, or 'deliverable' at the time they commissioned the website. So if it worked at delivery time it is presumed to work for eternity.<p>And so all those flash bits are here to stay, possibly <i>forever</i>. That's why there were a lot of people - me included - that were arguing against things like flash, silverlight, binary components and other web-page plug ins because they will sooner or later end up being unsupported. Besides causing gigantic accessibility issues for the handicapped.<p>So, now we have a mess, and that mess is here to stay. That won't stop large company 'x' from doing this all over again in a few years just because they can but at least there may be a few more voices trying to stop the plug-in madness before it gets out of control.<p>If it isn't in the html spec: don't use it. Welcome to a web full of non-rendering holes that may or may not be functionality and an archive full of websites that nobody will be able to see without powering up a VM circa 2004.
I find it strange Flash is still around, given that iOS and Android don't support Flash anymore and that YouTube has made a lot of video content available as HTML5. I thought that other sites would have followed suit. Is there evidence of a mass exodus from Flash?
Flash is not going away. There is too much content using it, for example there are tons of flash games. And not just little toys, there are some very good games. Also MMO's use it extensively.<p>Some games are transitioning to unity player - you can't really call that much better though.
Has there been any serious attempts at creating a flash or a SilverLight killer? Let's face it: flash and SL exist almost exclusively because of video (yes I know there are other uses but most of them like sockets etc can be done in other ways today, I'm talking about why it's still deployed for new sites).<p>Every other kind of snazzy desktop-like animated experience can be created in js, and if you dread using js you can write them in another language and compile to js. The js runtimes are fast enough these days.<p>But: video. Especially <i>live</i> broadcast video. What is the best attempt a replacing flash/SL there? The rights for sports events are worth billions, and a single game can sell for $20-50, so an open unencrypted video service just will.not.happen. The rights holders would rather retreat to cable. Whatever the solution is will have to have the same features in terms of DRM and other protection that flash has.<p>EDIT: just realized the solution is quite simple: just get off the web and let those who want to watch e.g NHL Game Center use a special application, not a web browser.
The only thing I use Flash for is to allow a user to easily get something to their clipboard. (<a href="http://zeroclipboard.org/" rel="nofollow">http://zeroclipboard.org/</a>) - until that is possible, afraid I will still be using it.
This new MacBook I got last month didn't come with Flash and I decided to not install it. I also decided to switch to Safari from Chrome.<p>I was surprised how many sites and embedded video now offers HTML5, obviously Youtube and Vimeo have been working for years, but just video on news sites that use their own video solution work.<p>The biggest surprise was visiting twitch.tv and seeing the live video stream work in HTML5 (only in Safari, not Chrome).
I generally don't install Flash on my machines but recently I installed it because a major financial site that my employer uses (I know, WTF!?, right?) required it. I set the plugin to ask for permission every time and, holy cow, nearly every site, particularly news sites, requested it. It's a key part of the Web's advertising infrastructure.
I have a potential client project coming up where they will need to access a user's webcam and record video and audio from it. They'll want this to work in modern desktop browsers (let's say latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE10+). At this point in time I don't believe it's possible to do this with HTML5 technologies alone.
The website for Occupy Flash has outbound link to <a href="http://ie6funeral.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ie6funeral.com/</a>. Apparently, some Japanese funeral company has bought the domain. I find that quite funny.
I don't understand the essence of this movement, by all standards it is the mobile lobby who should be to blame.<p>Killing Flash is like killing the Concorde Airplane, it just means it is too advanced for its time.<p>Everyone who knows anything about Flash and HTML5 knows that in terms of CPU resources HTML5 is still far far far FAR behind on what the Flash plugin can do... yes, even now.<p>HTML5: <a href="http://themaninblue.com/experiment/AnimationBenchmark/html/" rel="nofollow">http://themaninblue.com/experiment/AnimationBenchmark/html/</a><p>Flash: <a href="http://themaninblue.com/experiment/AnimationBenchmark/flash/" rel="nofollow">http://themaninblue.com/experiment/AnimationBenchmark/flash/</a>
a while ago, I wanted to create a real-time broadcasting website. I explored all sorts of technologies, like webrtc, mediasource ... none seems to be suitable for what I wanted. then, I asked how twitch does it? it's flash.<p>what html5 can do is what flash can do long time ago. the motivation for replacing flash must not be technical but perhaps political.<p>why didn't adobe release flash as opensource to push it as a standard.
My favorite Quicktime of Ill Repute website, despite promising that it serves up naught but ill-reputed Quicktime, now tells me that I don't have Flash installed.