Flash Player EOL, Adobe Announces 12-Day Grace Period

I&#x27;ve actually been wondering for a long time how Adobe was going to enforce their statement that Flash Content would <i>stop working</i> at the end of the year. This makes it sound like there&#x27;s a date-based kill switch built into their software.<p>I don&#x27;t think I like that. Yes, using Flash in a web browser once it has stopped receiving security updates is a bad idea, but what if you need to view a website in the Wayback Machine which incorporates flash, and you&#x27;ve set up an isolated VM for the purpose? I suppose you could set the VM&#x27;s clock back, but that&#x27;s a major PITA which could potentially cause other issues.<p>The existence of Flash Projector softens the blow significantly, but there will be some content that must be viewed within a web browser. Perhaps an earlier version of Flash Player lacks the kill switch?

The end of an era. Flash had many problems but it also enabled us all to develop rich content before browser support and cross platform compatibility was in the positive state it is today. It was a creative era of fun mini games and animated web comics. I definitely have some nostalgia

File this right along with Apple pulling older versions of iOS from the App Store. If you look at it sideways, it makes sense from a security perspective. But at the same time you are closing off entire chapters of computing history.

I&#x27;m wondering right now whether the true reason for killing Flash Player so thoroughly is really security, or if there&#x27;s something else involved like a license agreement for some code embedded within Flash Player which requires Adobe to pay periodically until Flash Player no longer runs.

Maybe I&#x27;m just jaded, but when I read &quot;12-day grace period&quot; it makes me wonder if they were compelled to maintain access until...something finished.

A look back at Steve Jobs’ <i>Thoughts on Flash</i> [1] written a full 10 years ago:<p><i>Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.</i><p><i>The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.</i><p><i>New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.</i><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20100501010616&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;hotnews&#x2F;thoughts-on-flash&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20100501010616&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple...</a>

They really should open source the player. There&#x27;s too much history to lose.

Got a pop up dialog asking me to uninstal. I did it.<p>At work we have to shut down two of our older web tools because of this. We&#x27;re too small to put resources in fixing. They were old and he didn&#x27;t port to javascript. (It wasn&#x27;t non-trivial, you could draw a box around some points and it would pass that data along via ajax.)

TBH I genuinely thought it was EOL years ago. Can&#x27;t remember the last flash I saw. Years?

Unfortunate. The web was a better place with Flash around.<p>Browser gaming has never recovered.