Say goodnight, Flash. We hardly knew ye.

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© 2013 Lunar Eclipse Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo Ye haven’t an arm, ye hav
[See the full post at: Say goodnight, Flash. We hardly knew ye.]

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Myst, DigitalWrangler, abbodi86, KevinTMC, lurks about, Mr. Natural, Microfix, geekdom

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Yay!!!!  Perhaps this also means that it will finally disappear from Opera (or will they just leave an old version included?).  While they do give users a way to disable it, it defaults back to “on” every time the browser is restarted.  Ugh!

Adios Flash and good riddance!

 

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Haven’t used adobe Flash player since circa 2003 in the’ good olde days of Win2k/XP’.
Double celebration for the incoming 2021 and outgoing.
Windows 8.1 and 10 will be better off without it too

Woody, do you think W10 20H2 will be released with the MS version of Flash so close to the player EoS?

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Myst, alQamar

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I grew up playing Flash games so I will definitely miss Flash when it goes. I just wish Adobe would make it open source and encourage digital archival of Flash content; right now they’re leaving it up to the community to do it themselves.

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wavy

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I come to bury Flash, not to praise it.

The evil that apps do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their code;
So let it be with Flash.

The noble Woody
Hath told you Flash was abominable:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously shall Flash fin’lly answer it.

Here, under leave of Woody and the rest–
For Woody is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Flash’s funeral.

It was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Woody says it was abominable;
And Woody is an honourable man.

It hath brought much multimedia to the Web
Which content plugins could readily block:
Did this in Flash seem abominable?

I speak not to disprove what Woody spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did use it once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for it?
Does the course of blocking HTML5 run so smooth?

O judgment! thou art fled to upgrading beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with content
Unconverted from Flash, that Time shall take away,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

---
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wavy, Myst, AmbularD, jburk07, jaman57, Elrod, David F, ScotchJohn, Cybertooth, LH, lanceboil, Elly, SueW, woody

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AWWWWRIGHT!

I’ve rarely been so well Bard.

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Myst, KevinTMC, Elly

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Beautiful!

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Whats the bets Adobe will release a new version of Flash at some point in Q1 2021 due to a major security hole (remember Microsoft have also released updates for EOL products)

Rgds, Zeus

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zeuswoz wrote:

(remember Microsoft have also released updates for EOL products)

even a browser, tsk..

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zeuswoz wrote:

Whats the bets Adobe will release a new version of Flash at some point in Q1 2021 due to a major security hole (remember Microsoft have also released updates for EOL products)

I’ll bet it won’t as all flash content will be blocked “…and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.“

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[wavy]

How will they be blocking it?? Going after web sites using it? Digging into my machine and ripping it out?? mmmm

I now see this has been kinda answered in June!

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by wavy.

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[OscarCP]

Wavy, For what is worth, my guess is that the Web sites that have been using Flash will no longer do it. That would be “blocking” by default, I suppose. The article might be read that way, because it does not say “Flash will be blocked by Adobe.”

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• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by OscarCP.

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Well, at least if I need Flash I can still get the stand alone exe file from https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html

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wavy

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[Alex5723]

It won’t help you as Adobe will block ALL flash content whether on the web, servers or on you local storage.
All flash apps will be deleted by Adobe “Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site”

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by Alex5723.

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Alex5723 wrote:

It won’t help you as Adobe will block ALL flash content whether on the web, servers or on you local storage. All flash apps will be deleted by Adobe “Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site”

Do you have a source for that?  There is a big difference between stopping allowing people to download them and putting in some kind of time bomb code to make it refuse to work after a certain date even when it can’t connect to the internet, or even to delete itself or the flash applications (which are separate from the player).

There are also open source Flash players, and Adobe can’t control those.

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OscarCP

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Ascaris wrote:

Do you have a source for that?  There is a big difference between stopping allowing people to download them and putting in some kind of time bomb code to make it refuse to work after a certain date even when it can’t connect to the internet, or even to delete itself or the flash applications (which are separate from the player).

There are also open source Flash players, and Adobe can’t control those.

ZDNet actually called it a time bomb:

Furthermore, Adobe also said that “Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date,” suggesting the company has added or plans to add a so-called “time bomb” in the Flash Player code to prevent users from using it starting next year.

Adobe wants users to uninstall Flash Player by the end of the year

But I suspect we’ll all be short of practical fine details until next year.

I don’t see why Adobe would care about a couple of open-source alternatives.

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Ascaris

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b: I think what Ascaris wrote implies that it is us and not Adobe who may have reason to worry, if we are using those open source flash players.

For my part, I do not have installed any of those open source flash players intentionally. Now, if some were included, unknown to me, in applications that I have quite innocently installed, then, well…

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That’s pretty cynical of them.  I’d expect nothing less from Adobe, I guess.  Yet another company that can’t tell the difference between “support” and “allow.”

That’s still short of deleting flash applications, though.

The older versions of the Flash player (before the time bomb code was inserted) would still work, though, and there are ways to prevent the thing from getting a good look at the date, if so desired, whether it be by local RTC/system time or from a time server on the internet.

As far as Adobe being concerned about open-source players… Oscar already answered that one.  I’m referring to the library of flash games that some people have that will be useless if there is no usable Flash player, not Adobe’s reaction to anything.  As long as the games run, they’re not lost to the ages.

While in this case it’s “just” a bunch of games (which are a part of our culture, certainly, if not a form of art in themselves), it illustrates a problem that people have pointed out before with digital archives and executable programs… which can be (with some effort) preserved indefinitely, but they may well be outliving any software (like the Flash player) or hardware capable of using the archived thing.  If you have a bunch of archival-quality DVDs with important stuff on them that you want around forever, it’s not much use if you can’t get ahold of a DVD player.

It would be a shame to see that happen to Flash… it’s time has come and gone, but there were things created for it that are worth saving, even the low-brow stuff.  I’ve seen some references to Flash games that were repackaged and rereleased as mobile games. As most people have smartphones, it makes them accessible, at least if they are released to both major platforms.  And for those who do not have a smart phone, the five or so of us worldwide, there are Android emulators.

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OscarCP, Cybertooth

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I really hope Alex is right about Adobe blocking Flash after its announced EOL. But I wonder how could Adobe be able to do that. It would need to have something added on to one’s own browsers to do that, wouldn’t it? But if, somehow, it could do that, then I won’t have to worry abut keeping Flash in my computers “just in case” I need to access something on the Web that still will require having Flash installed and working, installed in one’s machine.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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OscarCP wrote:

I really hope Alex is right about Adobe blocking Flash after its announced EOL. But I wonder how could Adobe be able to do that.

It was in b’s post above.  There’s apparently time bomb code in the Flash plugins, or at least the more recent ones.

It would need to have something added on to one’s own browsers to do that, wouldn’t it?

The Flash plugin already is just that.

But if, somehow, it could do that, then I won’t have to worry abut keeping Flash in my computers “just in case” I need to access something on the Web that still will require having Flash installed and working, installed in one’s machine.

You don’t need to do that now!  I haven’t had Flash installed in years, and I haven’t missed it. If a site requires Flash and you don’t have it, it’s the site’s problem… they are the ones out of date, and by now, it’s evident that they don’t care.  I used to chuckle at video sites that used to say “Cannot play video… maybe your technology is out of date.  Please update your browser.”  It was not me whose technology was out of date and in need of an update!

That won’t change by itself if Adobe blocks Flash plugins from working.  The sites can still leave that content hidden behind a requirement for a plugin no one can use anymore.  If they have left such content unavailable to the large number of people who do not use Flash (like iOS users, among many others), they’ve already essentially chosen to no longer offer that content.  I’d cross that bridge when I came to it in terms of worrying about whether I can get in to a site or feature that needs Flash.

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Myst

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My only concern is the Hauppauge Extender on my HTPC’s tv tuners. The extender is used for viewing a TV station via a browser on any computer on the network (or internet if you let it through the firewall) by using the tuner cards in the HTPC. I contacted Hauppauge today and they responded with:

‘With all that has happen we have had to shift our focus on other items. But the engineers still have plans to getting it all switched before Flash is completely disabled’.

And if you have any flash content (.flv), Handbrake is very good at converting it to .mp4.

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woody wrote:

Say goodnight, Flash. We hardly knew ye.

After 24 years at an average of one vulnerability each week, I think we got to know Flash far too well:

Adobe » Flash Player : Security Vulnerabilities – CVE details

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Myst, doriel, OscarCP

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894 vulnerabilities with score 10. One could be surprised, how much holes there can be. But I have to say that I liked games like yettisports. But its time to move on, even if they helped us lot of times. It will be very interesting, if flash will be discontinued completely. Also, one complete cathegory of windows update will disappear We cant lose.

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will there be any kind of sandbox/emulator to preserve these good old flash games? there are still many flash games which never received any html5 version or anything else.

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You can create one by building an offline PC with games donloaded to it. It wont need especially strong hardware. Some older PC/laptop would be approriate.

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Bit of a ‘mob mentality’ broke out about Flash, without thinking about some of the many advantages.

It became ‘trendy’ to put the boot into the product, especially around the time that Steve Jobs started dissing it – nothing to do with the fact he wanted to promote his App concept, with 30% cut for people to use that particular monopoly.

Flash enabled Acrobat and Adobe Reader to deliver up audio, video and 3d content within PDFs.  With endless App stores, platforms etc. etc., the world has got more complicated and time-consuming to navigate, whilst providing Apple and co. with unimaginable riches.

No, I’m not going to be diverted by ‘celebrating’ the end of Flash, whatever our tech leaders would prefer.

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Cybertooth

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Pretty sure the malware people will just move on to something else. Glad to see Flash go, but should have been gone a long time ago.

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David F

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As a side service, my company produces training films and uses the .mp4 format. But before 2015 everything was in .flv.

One of our trade groups says that is common for companies like ours. For us alone, we have about 800 unique training videos, about a quarter in .flv. That number is high because we make them in six different languages.

While they can be played through a browser if necessary, most are played through a media player that supports the .flv extension. If that ceases to happen then a lot of companies will have a chore to handle all of that converting. My guess is that it wont get done.

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I have a handful of videos saved locally in .flv format, which currently play by default in MPC-HC.  Do I need to convert them to a different format?

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There are many media players that can work with .flv videos and that do not require the Adobe plugin, so nothing will change if you use one of those.  I don’t have Adobe anything on my PCs, but .flv videos play just fine in VLC or MPV.

 

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AmbularD wrote:

I have a handful of videos saved locally in .flv format, which currently play by default in MPC-HC.  Do I need to convert them to a different format?

No. Adobe will block .flv using Flash player / extensions / plug-ins..

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You can use Handbrake (free) to convert flv to mp4.
And you can batch convert all your files in one go.

cheers, Paul

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SueW

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To date, pretty well everything that has been said about Flash (in this thread) could be said about eighty-column punched cards. Or 2400-foot reels of tapes used for off-lining printing jobs.

True, back then there were not Security Issues – but yes! There were! Patching an object deck was not difficult on the IBM 1401, and one could sneak a tape out of the computer room.

The eighty-column punched cards served us well; we could carry a bootstrap loader in a shirt pocket; some of us used a pen-knife and matchbox of chards to save us the time walking across to the DP building to stand in line for a key-punch machine.

They had problems: A 1000-card deck, nudged off the edge of a desk, with no sequence numbers was a nightmare; a rogue tape drive made nonsense of the payroll tape at the speed of creased[sic] lightning.

I miss slide-rules, too, but today’s slide rule fits in my shirt pocket, takes photos, and plays podcasts from SBS in Sydney NSW.

And the legacy lives on: “BD” and “BM” are synonymous to me, it’s just that one uses a 12-4 punch while the other uses an 11-4 punch; that’s all.

For most of the folks responding here:-
“Say goodnight, punched cards. We hardly knew ye”

“Say goodnight, tape reels. We hardly knew ye”

“Say goodnight, tables of logarithms. We hardly knew ye”

Nostalgically, Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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While I’m glad to see this dinosaur finally going extinct, part of me will miss all the old Flash games I used to play as a kid. But hey, it’s for the best.

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Looks like MS are to provide an ‘Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player’ patch for the baked -in Flash Player within Win8.1/10 via WU/WSUS and the Catalog for those who wish to get shot of this menace before EOL.
this could be their hottest patch EVER!!
more info: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-to-finally-kill-adobe-flash-support-by-january-2021/

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