Adobe Flash Player support is ending in December 2020, anybody have controversial opinions?

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WadmodderShalton

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Within three months time on December 31 2020, Adobe will stop supporting their Flash Player plugin for most commonly used web browsers. We all know that the decline Adobe Flash first started in October 2010 when then Apple manager Steve Jobs posted the infamous Thoughts on Flash open letter where he stated that Apple would never support Flash on iOS devices in favor of HTML5.

Many flash games, animations, & websites will no longer be accessible after December 31 2020 or January 1 2021 depending on your source. Though you do have the FlashPoint preservation project as your option to play many of those flash games & animations, many other flash projects got lost earlier before the 2010s (the decade with both with the Steve Jobs open letter and the July 2017 announcement by Adobe to cease support of Flash by December 2020) make most flash games & animations from the late-1990s to mid-2000s lost media forever.

Also many web browsers had already dropped support for Adobe Flash, or are planning to drop support of it at the end of this year. So your options on running Flash Player is limited for at least three more months.

What are you opinions (positive, negative or controversial) on this? Thoughts & comments are very well appreciated.
 
I feel a little sad, and I hope as many classic flash games, and animations, are preserved as can be. I did a little flash animation in college. I even own a copy of Flash! It's outdated by now, but could still, in theory, be used to make cartoons.

But I think Flash's real problems, which became worse over time, is web security. It's no longer a secure program, making it far easier for hackers to access your computer, just through clicking a link or playing a game. It's not that Flash was ever a bad program... it just sorta fell off the turbo internet bus as developers moved to more secure and flexible programs.
 
Yeah, it was the common target by many hackers with fake updates, tech supports scams & even ransomware. Hopefully when support end, hackers could stop trying to make malware disguised as Adobe Flash anytime soon.

Also, this hasn't been confirmed but I also think the Chinese version of Flash Player (the version where Adobe partnered with 2144.cn in China only) will also reach End-of-life as well on the same day as the main version of Flash Player.
 
Controversial? Naw.. it should have happened years ago. It's abused so often by obnoxious websites and hackers, it deserves to be put out to the pasture.
 
I didn't hear or knew of this! I mean, I hope there will be ways we can still enjoy things without running into issues.
 
I’m a bit torn. On the one hand, Flash was a major program, one which got many creators their first experiences in both game design and animation. It was a remarkably open platform which helped usher in an era of remarkable creativity and freedom online, something which we’re still seeing the ramifications of even today. Over the years, though, it’s been largely bashed and torn apart by the tech sector, slowly dropped from support until it became a completely deprecated technology.

On the other hand, Flash was never the best performing suite, and a lack of endian optimizations in the legacy code meant that it would always run slowly on mobile platforms. Add to that exponential processor overhead on high-resolution displays, and its position in the market largely replaced by various mobile developments (including the consistently increasing quality of video sharing sites), and its time had definitely come.
 
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Flash is impressive in that even though its own creators have wanted it dead for a long time, it filled a need so well and it took so long for better technologies to satisfy its use cases that we're only now to the point we can finally kill it, and even then there is a sizable body of content still in active use (and not just games) built on flash.
 
Also a whole lot of amazing artists got their start in flash, so those old internet communities with lots of movies were great.

...still waiting on at least one sequel to a flash movie! Though if it hasn't happened in twenty years, I think it ain't comin'.
 
Just because they will stop supporting it in Dec does not mean it is going anywhere any time soon.

Example: Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP forever ago, lol, but until very recently it was still used in many commercial applications like ATM/POS/KIOSK machines 20 years after it came out.

Flash will not completely die and fade away until web browsers start to outright block it from use.
 
That's disappointing because one of the things I like to play is Mexican train (thats a dominoes game if you are not sure)
 
my early days on the internet where at NewGrounds ... before Youtube existed there where Flash animations and games.
Most of the content of old sites has not made it to Youtube, and will end up being lost to time :(
o-ovinnie.newgrounds.com

O-Ovinnie's Movies

o-ovinnie.newgrounds.com o-ovinnie.newgrounds.com
 
In hindsight never allowing the iPhone to have support for Flash is one of the most forward thinking decision Steve Jobs ever made.
 
While I do agree, many fandoms (particularly Furries) aren't interested in upgrading to HTML5, because it's difficult to program for and that rewriting Flash projects to HTML5 is a difficult task as they can't be ported to HTML5 and need to be recreated from scratch.

Then there's Fur Affinity's Flash support situation, they are probably not wanting to spend the time or resources necessary to migrate from Flash to HTML5, let alone find & use any Flash Player emulator. Ultimately, it's just not enough for them to transition from the old Flash Player platform for them.

In fact, since FA is filled with so many DDoS shenanigans these days, these minor DDoS attacks is probably why in rare cases many Furries (and in rare cases BFs) began deactivating their accounts and leaving FA because there's not enough DDoS security on that site.

Also, in regards to the furry fandom, supporting & using modified, unauthorized & unofficial HTML4 editors & HTTP Client/Server software is FROWNED UPON. Not only by the W3C & WHATWG themselves as it's beyond both organization's control, but also by book publishers who previously published books in print relating to HTML4 & earlier from the mid-1990s to late-2000s.

In addition, the major web browser developers, including Apple, Microsoft Mozilla and Google are against updating & upgrading their HTML4 & HTTP implementations, as HTML5 & HTTPS are already bundled with macOS/iOS/iPadOS (Safari), Windows (Internet Explorer & Edge), Linux (Firefox) & Android (Chrome), but only the rendering portion of the latter two I just mentioned.
 
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Here's a few of my theories on why the Furry Fandom (not just BFs) mostly snubbed HTML5 & HTTPS:

- it's difficult to develop for, with many features from HTML4 and earlier being either deprecated or removed in HTML5.
- Inability to upgrade security, as many don't want to spend more money on security on their webpages.
- Not alot of professional coders to support it, unlike Adobe Flash.
- Inability to optimize server configuration, as many just don't want upgrade their hardware, as that costs money. (The inability for the Admins at the Furry Teens forums were right on monetary, and has since become a Discord server as of 2020).

As far as I know, the only Furry who has dropped support for Adobe Flash is of course Fetimation. I also think that the crappy DDoS security of Fur Affinity is what caused Gage/Daimhín/TinyBabyHooves to leave the Furry Fandom, because FA does not have enough DDoS security. (But hey, this is just my theory)

As I've said before, supporting HTML4 & HTTP after they're not natively supported by the W3C & WHATWG anymore is FROWNED UPON. This is because these were released in the late-1990s, so that's nearly two decades before HTML5 was officially released in it's beta form. Also, HTML4 & HTTP should not even be used in a modern server or website setting, as they are prone to severe security exploits, vulnerabilities, spam, intrusive advertisements & malware (including Ransomware).

All in all, those are my theories on why the Furry Fandom mostly snubs HTML5 & HTTPS.
 
I'll miss going through flash files to find cool stuff inside them, but I do agree Flash was getting old and was necessary to phase out :(

@EagleBoy, you could download the flash file of any games you want to preserve and you'll be able to still play them on a SWF file launcher.
 
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