Since the mid-90s, you could be reasonably sure that moving images with audio on the internet were powered by some form of Flash solution.
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Since the mid-90s, you could be reasonably sure that moving images with audio on the internet were powered by some form of Flash solution. The technology that was popularized under Macromedia and later acquired by Adobe has been both loved for the opportunity it provided, and hated for all the bugs and security issues it has had through. But for the last ten years it has "rattled" for the solution, and now it is an irrevocable end.
The Register reports that Flash content now automatically leads to Adobe's information page that the Flash era is over. The company recommends removing Flash from their PC, as they have no plans to update the player security in the future.
HTML5 has officially won
The reason Adobe states is in itself known to you who have been surfing the web for the past ten years. HTML5 and similar technologies have increasingly taken over for Flash, and while it has been done, the Flash plugin in browsers has had many security issues and urgent updates. Developments for Flash in recent years are similar to another of the web's solutions for "active content"; java. Javascript, which is not related to anything other than names, is alive and well and is part of HTML5, but the old java applets are not often seen anymore.
Whether it was HTML5 or the mobile phone that was the death of Flash is a bit difficult to pinpoint. Around 2010, there were constant headlines and news about how Flash should appear on mobile. But then there was talk of Android mobiles. Steve Jobs and Apple had not put any finger in between for Adobe about the possibilities of running Flash on the iPhone. It was out of the question - HTML5 was the future.
Jobs and Adobe strongly disagree
Steve Jobs justified it in an open letter with the fact that Flash used too much power, it crashed all the time and had poor security. There was also a lack of touch support.
At the time, Adobe did not specifically agree with Apple Manager. They believed that many of the problems he referred to lay in the operating systems and not in them. But today, January 12, 2021, the legendary Jobs crosses an innertier from the tomb.
Today, Adobe is also about as definitive in its rejection of Flash as Jobs was then, by actively solving people to a website that explains why it is now over, and which asks the user to remove all software from the PC.
Gradually less Flash
In the period between 2010 and until today, Flash has gradually become less welcome on PCs as well. Apple's Safari browser on Mac has since 2016 asked users to activate Flash manually when needed, and thus there is no risk that a potentially old and insecure Flash player has run inadvertently, just because there was Flash content on a website.
More and more restrictions have come on the solution also from competitors such as Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox. Over the past year, browsers have largely either come without Flash support at all, or required some effort from the user to activate Flash in the few cases that are still needed.
The content is still available
With the stroke of mercy served by Adobe even today, there is undeniably a complete end to the 26-year-old technology. And well it is, many will say. At the same time, there is still some classic Flash content on the web that will not be playable without the player, and there may continue to be people who are wondering about players that can be used even if Adobe has stopped updating them. If you want to think about something like this, however, you should know what to do - because the last security hole in the old players has hardly been discovered.
Fortunately, much of the old Flash content can still be found in the form of recorded variations on Youtube. Some of it has also been updated to HTML5 in recent years.