Apparently I missed this the first time around, but Adobe has decided to continue supporting the NPAPI version of Flash Player on Linux. They have just released their second update, Flash Player 24 Beta, on October 28th for both 32- and 64-bit platforms. Before September, Adobe was maintaining Flash Player 11.2 with security updates. Adobe has also extended NPAPI support beyond 2017, which was supposed to be the original cut-off for that plug-in architecture on Linux, and pledge to keep “major version numbers in sync”.
This took me by surprise. Browser vendors, even Mozilla, have been deprecating NPAPI for a while. Plug-ins are unruly from a security and performance standpoint, and they would much rather promote the Web standards that they work so hard to implement, rather than being a window frame around someone else's proprietary platform.
So what are Adobe thinking? Well, they claim that this “is primarily a security initiative”. As such, it would make sense that, possibly, and again I'm an outsider musing here, the gap between now and 11.2 was large enough that it would be easier to just maintain two branches.
Still, this seems a little… late… for that to be the reason, unless Adobe, then, expected Flash to die off and, now, see it hanging around a little while longer. Meanwhile, on the tools side of things, Adobe has pivoted Flash Professional into Animate CC, with the ability to export to HTML and JavaScript, so they don't really need to keep Flash on life support. It's not at feature parity, but it's getting there. Granted, a lot of the game and animation hosting sites are set up to just accept a packaged Flash file, so maybe that market is holding them back?
Whatever the reason, Flash on Linux is continuing to be supported for all browsers. If you find yourself at the intersection of Linux, Firefox, and hobbyist-developed Tower Defense games, you can pick up the latest plug-in at Adobe Labs.
Scott with the Homestar
Scott with the Homestar Runner/Strong Bad reference!
And only a true fan would use an image reference to the ‘Experimental Film’ toon. I approve!
Nuke Adobe flash from orbit,
Nuke Adobe flash from orbit, and ad block any web page that even mentions/suggests using Adobe flash! It’s time for security not Swiss Cheese!
Completely agree. Last time I
Completely agree. Last time I rebuilt my laptop, I didn’t install flash. I’ve been living without it for a while. Seems to work fine. Oh, no, the horribly animated adds don’t display anymore. Boo, hoo.
That’s a pretty thin excuse
That's a pretty thin excuse to justify ad-blocking a website, and it certainly doesn't convince me to change the way I write.
That aside, yes, my main browser has Flash completely disabled. If I want to browse Flash-compatible websites (like Homestar Runner) then I have a specific browser instance for that, and even it is click-to-run. Hopefully people will be producing for Web standards very soon.
Adobe Flash player is a
Adobe Flash player is a wasp’s nest of security vulnerabilities and needs to die! HTML only with no websites saying “Fash player not detected” and providing links to Adobe Flash player downloads! Ad boycotting/blocking is a civilized way to get the Adobe Flash player Swiss cheese of security vulnerabilities out and more secure HLML5 other/methods in! Ad Block to stop the Flash Trash!
No to Adobe’s Flash Trash, and much less systems Pawned!
Adobe Flash player is attack vector and nothing more!
Last month I wanted to run a
Last month I wanted to run a flash game and- not wanting to install the package- remembered that Chrome used to have a better sandboxed flash player baked in, but after installing it dicovered that it doesn’t any more and just gave up on trying to play the game.
Chrome does have a built-in
Chrome does have a built-in version of Flash. Not sure what your issue was, but it could have either been that the plug-in was disabled in chrome://plugins, or it could have been too soon after Chrome was installed and it didn't pull Flash down yet.
Not on Ubuntu. It requires
Not on Ubuntu. It requires the same standalone flash plugin package as Firefox.
Thank you
Thank you