Thursday, November 24th 2011
Group Seeks to Make the World Uninstall Flash Player
When webpages weren't much more than text and images peppered with hyperlinks, and when animated elements were limited to slideshow-like animations by Compuserve GIF, Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash) transformed the web, making it visually engaging. Even PCs with first-generation Pentium processors and 56K internet connections had access to a much superior internet experience thanks to Flash. According to Adobe's own statistics, over 90% of internet-enabled PCs have the Flash Player browser plugin installed. Apparently the "open/free everything" proponents want the world to get rid of the Flash plugin. Why? Because it's not "open", not all platforms can use it, and it poses security hazards.
Brandishing an extremely original name, "Occupy Flash" calls itself to be a "movement to rid the world of Flash Player plugin," because "Its time has passed. It's buggy. It crashes a lot. It requires constant security updates. It doesn't work on most mobile devices. It's a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of web technology." Occupy Flash argues that with HTML5, Flash is redundant and "free". Not quite; people don't pay for Flash Player plugins, those who create Flash content do, for the Adobe Flash software. It's not like a transition to HTML5 is going to change that equation much. People still won't have to pay to be able to consume public HTML5 content, while those creating it will still need to use proprietary software to create quality content, it's just that they'll end up with more vendors to sell them that.
Recently, Adobe announced that it will discontinue Adobe Flash for mobile devices. Could that be a valid bone of contention of Occupy Flash crowd? It's both yes and no. Very few websites use Flash to run their functional parts (for example, GeForce.com before its HTML "makeover"), besides, trends show an increasing number of websites being mobile-friendly, some sites like ours, have separate pages for PC and mobile platforms. Fora such as the Mobile Web Congress are steering that change, proactively. HTML5 isn't a monolithic "knight in shining armour" that isn't buggy or never needs security patches. Switch to YouTube's HTML5 mode, use it for a week, and tell us your experiences. It's one thing to promote open standards proactively, it's quite another to reactively fight an established standard just because it isn't "open" enough. BRB - occupying a snack bar for some grub.
Brandishing an extremely original name, "Occupy Flash" calls itself to be a "movement to rid the world of Flash Player plugin," because "Its time has passed. It's buggy. It crashes a lot. It requires constant security updates. It doesn't work on most mobile devices. It's a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of web technology." Occupy Flash argues that with HTML5, Flash is redundant and "free". Not quite; people don't pay for Flash Player plugins, those who create Flash content do, for the Adobe Flash software. It's not like a transition to HTML5 is going to change that equation much. People still won't have to pay to be able to consume public HTML5 content, while those creating it will still need to use proprietary software to create quality content, it's just that they'll end up with more vendors to sell them that.
29 Comments on Group Seeks to Make the World Uninstall Flash Player
My biggest gripe about Flash is the way it allows ads to disable the ability to stop them playing and they just go on and on and are extremely irritating and actually encourage me to look at a site a lot less. This forces me to use Flashblock in Firefox, which prevents them being shown unless explicitely clicked on - heck I don't even see a static picture, just a generic "F" logo. So, if every animated ad could just sit there static with a big Play button, it would be much more respectful to its
potential marksprospective customers and perhaps even net more sales.EDIT: Also, what Twilyth just said. Tracking is bad, but likely the same level can be achieved in other ways, too.
I don't think this case is clear cut between HTML5 and Flash, as there's so many variables to consider (especially technical issues) many of which I don't even know about.
Nice editorial. :cool:
HTML5 content can leave cookies and locally store in your browser cache, too.
#OccupyTPU
Hell it works pretty well on phones now can play 480p on my desire z.
edit: I almost forgot. This is what you get if you try to say you want to block all.
So the alternative is to be asked each time. Doesn't really sound like much of a choice to me.
It's also why a variety of tools were developed to deal with them - just like there are now various tools to deal with web bugs, LSO's and a variety of other security and privacy threats. The same will happen for HTML5 and maybe it will be just as insidious as flash. I can only hope that's not the case.
#OccupyModlounge
Not so easy with HTML5. How do I block HTML5 ads? Not so easy... "Occupy Flash" is nothing more than smoke and mirrors for the corporate advertising industry to promote "We can ownz your PC with HTML5".
Yes, I'm sure a HTML5 ad-block addin can be developed... but it would not be so easy to manage like flash and flashblock, and it would provide a window of opportunity for advertisers until the world go savvy with the new blocking techniques.
It wouldn't surprise me if the blockability of Flash is a key driver for getting it banned.
Like "occupy wallstreet" there are reasons to believe that it is a method of popular-misdirection... People jump on it and it fills the news-space, while other shady activities continue without closer inspection. Time passes. Events have concluded.
Honestly, web wouldn't be where it is without Flash. Sure it also brought annoying flash banners but still, it brought massive multimedia boost to the web.
What's the problem with that antiflash group, why not go against patent trolls that use their proprietary standards (software or not) to hurt innovation.
I'm sure they are developing an Apple Time Machine to go back in time and prevent adobe from ever creating it.
As for the LSO's, I installed the BetterPrivacy add-on in Firefox to deal with them. :rockout: