RIP Flash: 20 Years After Its Launch, Adobe Finally Kills Off The Outdated Flash Player Plugin
No, don't cry. This absolutely needed to happen.
This is a bittersweet moment!
Adobe has announced that it¡¯s finally doing what many in the tech industry have been suggesting for years. The company is officially killing off Flash.
Reuters
The company says it¡¯s going to stop updating and distributing Adobe Flash Player, with the final cutoff being set at the end of 2020.
Of course, while you may be worried about the disappearance of something you¡¯ve probably seen a lot of notifications for online, rest assured, this has been a long time coming. And for good reason too.
For one thing, Flash isn¡¯t the most secure plugin for web browsers. It¡¯s a favourite among creators of malware, who use the platform to distribute malicious advertising. It¡¯s gotten so bad over the years that security researchers even advise users to completely purge it from their computers.
However, the real reason Adobe is moving on from Flash is because the platform is outdated. Developers have already begun abandoning Flash, in favour of other formats. Even Google Chrome stopped supporting Flash in September last year, in favour of the more resource-efficient HTML5.
We've all pressed "Install" on this dialog box, right? Be honest!
¡°As open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web,¡± the company said in a blog post.
Luckily, the change doesn¡¯t really mean much for you. iOS and Android haven¡¯t supported the Flash Player plugin since 2010 and 2012 respectively, and even Chrome began auto-blocking Flash format ads in 2015. Firefox followed suit last year, as did Microsoft¡¯s Edge browser. Even the browser that started it all, Internet Explorer, will abandon Flash in 2019.
And if IE can let it go, surely you can right?
