
Flash and Chrome - rayshan
http://chrome.googleblog.com/2016/08/flash-and-chrome.html
======
neovive
Although Flash's heyday is long gone, let's not forget how much Flash brought
to the table back in the late 90's and early 2000's: animation, sound, games,
and scaleable vector graphics and more. Macromedia's purchase of FutureSplash
and subsequent release of the ubiquitous Flash player was a game changer for
the web. Being able to download and play real games and experience interactive
websites over slow dial-up connections was amazing and changed people's
perspectives of the web.

The FLV format also finally made streaming video a seamless experience for the
end user; leading to the creation of Youtube and other streaming video
services.

Like all technologies, Flash was overused in places (pre-loaders, rotating 3d
logos, banner ads) and Adobe's push towards Flex and RIA's took Flash away
from of it's roots in animation for quite a few years. However, it will be
interesting to see if the equivalent HTML5 stack follows a similar timeline--
minus the website pre-loaders...of course.

------
wvh
I'm happy to see Flash on its way out – I haven't even tried to install it the
last few years. Native browser support tends to work and integrate much better
on Linux than having to depend on a third party to deliver up-to-date
software. The only site I visit that still seems to require Flash is the BBC,
for video fragments.

There's some irony with Google blaming Flash for being spammy; I recently
inspected what's probably the biggest shopping website in the EU because it
slowed my computer to a crawl and noticed at least 30 to 40 outgoing
connections, a lot of them to Google and its diverse ad, tracker and analytics
properties.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Also if you want to stream BBC radio in browser it still insists on using
Flash to do it. My concern is with the way Google tend to do things in Chrome
(Aunty Google knows best, please do as I say) I might not even be able to
continue to use flash for the very few sites I'd like to, or have to.

e.g. I tried to download an mp3 of a radio show from bbc.co.uk earlier today
and "download blocked" with no option to override. I have all the protect me
from myself settings firmly off. chrome help says it's Internet Settings.
Internet settings says it's fine to download, and I've downloaded dozens of
other mp3s flawlessly. mp3 actually downloads if you paste the button url in a
new tab rather than click the button. I've had similar issues with other,
innocent and harmless, files in the past. Well, since they brought in their
cleverness and download "protections".

I forsee similar issues with flash as it goes through its deprecation.

~~~
Shank
If Chrome blocks a download, you can always go to chrome://downloads (or click
the 'see all downloads' link) and unblock it manually there.

------
justinlardinois
> Today, more than 90% of Flash on the web loads behind the scenes to support
> things like page analytics. This kind of Flash slows you down, and starting
> this September, Chrome 53 will begin to block it.

Slightly off topic: I always found the term "block" to be a bit odd in the web
browser context. The browser is the ultimate authority on what gets rendered
and shown to the user; there's no need to block anything, because it can just
not attempt to show it in the first place.

The term goes back at least as far as popup blockers. I wonder if it's because
early popup blockers were browser plugins, rather than built in features, so
they did have to actively intervene in the user experience.

~~~
countryqt30
I think it is very easy. Your browser BLOCKS the server from delivering
something. I think the term "blocking" is perfect here. :)

~~~
themckman
I think your parent is pointing out that the browser is the one that initiates
the fetching of all of this content in the first place. So, there's no need to
"block the server from delivering something" as it can decide never to ask the
server to deliver that something.

------
micaksica
The end of an era, to which all I can say is good riddance. Flash Player has
been responsible for 892 published CVEs [1]. The world is safer without it.

[1] [https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-
list/vendor_id-53/p...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-
list/vendor_id-53/product_id-6761/Adobe-Flash-Player.html)

~~~
webXL
That's like saving good riddance to the internal combustion engine because we
would be healthier without it, as if we've had better alternatives all along.
If it weren't for Flash, we might all be complaining about Java applets right
now.

~~~
micaksica
> we've had better alternatives all along

We've had better alternatives on the desktop for over six years now, since
Apple said "No Flash for iOS" in April 2010, when content creators panicked to
capture that market and started conversion to HTML5 video. That already was a
long time coming.

Chrome finally saying farewell to Flash in this manner forces the market to
recognize that Flash is no longer an option even on the desktop.

As for my security argument: using the link above, if we start with
vulnerabilities found in Flash Player after April 2010, that's still 830 of
them.

~~~
tracker1
Video alone isn't all of it though... there were a lot of games, and flash
animation was also _MUCH_ lighter than video streaming on bandwidth and cpu
overhead.

Beyond that, one of the most significant areas of flash as a player is
eLearning, training and simulations. Say what you will about a lot of the
garbage in player, the authoring tools were some of the best available...
though I haven't seen what Adobe has on deck today, it was a very nice
experience with nothing comparable for at least until 2012 (last time I worked
with flash/flex).

What my real hopes were when adobe bought Macromedia, was that they'd open up
the format, and convert it to a packaged zip file with a manifest, svg and
javascript proper as the language. Allowing for browsers to co-opt and
internalize the players. Then adobe could continue to make great tooling and
the browser vendors could correct the ship on the players. My dream is pretty
close to what Silverlight offered, but that was something nobody was willing
to look at for good enough reasons.

~~~
altstar
Have a look at FlexJS.

~~~
tracker1
I've seen it, and it may work for quite a bit of that legacy content... there
are also stand alone players/clones that I've seen a few of... I haven't had
to work with or generate that kind of content for a while though, so no idea
what the modern tooling equivalent is.

------
dandare
As a former Flash animator and ActionScript programmer I appreciate the tone
of the post. Flash sucks by today's standards but it played its crucial role
in the history of the internet. Farewell.

~~~
tracker1
Agreed... nothing compared to Flash's tooling at the time, and when Apple
started the fist volley that started sinking flash, there really wasn't
anything comparable, or having the reach of the tooling for authors.

I haven't had to deal with that kind of content for quite a while now, but I
would think some of the authoring has gotten better. It's a bit of a shame
though as flash animation projects were _so_ much lighter than video
streaming.

------
danbolt
I hope as the web moves on we find an easy way of preserving a lot of the
creative work that's been done in Flash.

Some sort of WebGL/asm.js/WebAssembly player for SWFs on the internet archive
would be the pipe dream, I think. That way we could watch Strong Bad long
after Flash is available in the future.

~~~
JetSpiegel
That's Mozilla's Shumway, a SWF player in Javascript.

~~~
spriggan3
Shumway is DOA without the direct help from Adobe. That's not the first time
someones tries to develop an open source flash player. They all failed.

~~~
SXX
There just wasn't enough work and money put into these open source players.

For instance there is proprietary Flash implementation called Scaleform used
for games UI. Even long ago before Autodesk acquired them it's had both decent
compatibility with normal SWF as well as full GPU acceleration for every
platform possible include Linux.

~~~
shinymark
I've used Scaleform a good amount. It's not 100% compatible with stock Flash
but it's pretty darn close in the use cases I've been exposed to.

Scaleform has a complex code base but clearly it is possible to reverse
engineer the Flash runtime and make a compatible player.

------
rbosinger
I was a Flash developer. It blows my mind how far and wide this plugin went.
We're still dealing with a transition out years after it fell out of favour.
It's kind of neat and a good reminder that if people start using a technology
it's not so easy to simply move away from it. Very similar to the days of IE
5,6,7,8 (and yes I know that's not "over" either... but a lot less of a
concern than it was).

Still, faults aside, Flash was awesome. It was an advanced "Hypercard" (which
I learned to build things in as a kid). I hope we don't completely lose some
of the good aspects of these technologies.

~~~
spriggan3
Flash community was great. It was a real pleasure to work with visual artists
and musicians. There will never be anything like it in web development.

------
grav
They need a more technical description of "default experience". How is Chrome
supposed to know if a site only supports Flash? I've tried several sites that
require Flash, but only until I change the user agent to a mobile browser.
Will Chrome try messing with the user agent in this case?

~~~
chii
If the site is so poorly done that you have to fiddle with the user agent to
get it to work, I'd say good riddance to that site. Sites like that need a
market pressure to become good, and you quitting said site is a vote in the
right direction.

~~~
LukeB_UK
You're assuming that the site is still actively maintained.

------
bad_user
Flash has also been used to circumvent some of the browser protections,
especially for older browsers. For example it has been the way to achieve
cross-origin http requests (CORS) for browsers that don't support it, like
IExplorer < 9 (or 8?) and even IExplorer 9 because the CORS support is shit
for that one. On one hand it's been cool for developers to be able to do such
things, but on the other hand it makes your browser less secure.

Anyway, I'm a Firefox user and I don't have Flash installed. The web works
just fine without it. One less plugin to worry about.

------
adrianratnapala
There seems to be a lot of people saying "ohh people thing flash is bad now,
but once upon a time it was really a useful thing."

That time was the 90s and early 2000s. And in that time, I avoided pages with
Flash because they were painful. They are still a little painful now.

If Flash was transformative, I think it was that it introduced the kind of
bloat and intrusiveness that we now take for granted on the web.

------
KallDrexx
As happy as I am overall about the death of Flash I will say that at least
Flash being a plugin meant it was trivial to control.

The amount of auto-play videos (both ads and non-ads) is extremely obnoxious
and I haven't found a good way to prevent that them yet.

~~~
tkinom
Just use firefox with noscript!

I never have any issue with any auto-play videos at all.

The performance on the good old FF 30 is N*10 times better than latest chrome
browser.

~~~
IntelMiner
Firefox 30? isn't that extremely outdated however?

------
LeoPanthera
Does archive.org archive flash stuff? Decades into the future, playing back
archived flash games and animations will be very difficult.

~~~
karlding
One problem with archive.org is that it retroactively obeys the robots.txt
file, even if the files have been spidered and archived [0].

For example, consider the case when a new domain owner attempts to block all
bots from spidering their site, by adding something like this to their
robots.txt file

    
    
        User-agent: *
        Disallow: /
    

This is actually a fairly common case when domain resellers purchase expired
domains.

Now when you try to visit the archived link, because the live robots.txt file
disallows bots, you won't be able to access the archived site (which may have
been owned by someone completely different).

[0] [https://archive.org/post/406632/why-does-the-wayback-
machine...](https://archive.org/post/406632/why-does-the-wayback-machine-pay-
attention-to-robotstxt)

~~~
davegardner
This is true, however they don't purge any of the old archives. If the
robots.txt is updated to allow bots again then all of the previous archives
will become available again.

~~~
chii
it seems weird to me to retroactively obey robots.txt for a _different_
version of the site.

It makes much more sense to archive the robots.txt along with the content, and
use the robots.txt linked with that version of the site. Updating the current
robots.txt shouldn't affect a past archive.

~~~
foldor
I believe the reasoning is that if I accidentally published a public page and
didn't realize it but later fixed the problem, I'd like to make sure no one
else could see it later. It's probably easier than dealing with all kinds of
takedown requests.

------
profmonocle
> In December, Chrome 55 will make HTML5 the default experience, except for
> sites which only support Flash. For those, you’ll be prompted to enable
> Flash when you first visit the site.

Are they still planning to grant a one-year exemption to the top ten flash-
only sites? The article doesn't mention it, but I haven't heard anything about
it being cancelled.

~~~
MatekCopatek
As far as I understood, the rumours were blown up. Chrome will show a prompt
asking you whether you would like to allow Flash (similar to the one asking
you to give permission to access your location) if it's used on the website
you just opened.

The only exemption those top 10 Flash sites will get is they will have this
permission by default, but you should still be able to both permanently add
other websites to the whitelist and remove those default ones ones from it.
Which, in my book, isn't nearly as bad as Apple's hardcoded support for
FairPlay + DASH in Safari only on netflix.com.

I could be wrong though, there could be more stages where it gets harsher and
what I described is only the first step.

------
xiaoma
Looks like [https://google.com/finance](https://google.com/finance) didn't get
the memo.

 _" Adobe Flash Player is required for interactive charts."_﻿

------
anaclet0
[http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-
flash/](http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/) Steve Jobs, April
2010

------
lbill
When I clicked on the link, I expected to see something like "Flash is an
abomination and shouldn't exist, that's why we are killing it". I was wrong
and happy to be. Today "Flash" means "problems", but I remember the time where
it meant "modernity" and "Improved user experience": I'm glad to witness that
Google discards Flash while honoring its legacy!

------
TheAceOfHearts
I find it a bit funny and ironic that the only app I regularly use which
prompts me to install Flash [0] is Google Music. On both Safari and Safari
Technology Preview!

I'm all for killing Flash, but if even Google is unable to completely do away
with it, doesn't that mean that it might be a premature move?

I don't have any interest in seeing Flash kept around. In fact, I'm quite
happy to see it die. But do we actually have working alternatives for the
problems it currently solves? I don't ask this rhetorically, I'm very curious
if there's still problems which HTML5 is unable to reasonably solve.

[0]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/f52ew4wpwcmt1dr/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/f52ew4wpwcmt1dr/Screenshot%202016-08-10%2005.25.48.png?dl=0)

~~~
drewg123
That is ... strange. I run chromium on FreeBSD without flash, and Google Play
Music works well for me (as opposed to Amazon Music, which wants flash).
Perhaps it is something about safari vs chrome?

~~~
m45t3r
Google Play Music supports HTML5, however I think it works better (i.e. more
tested) with Flash or something. So Flash is still the default, while HTML5 is
the fallback.

And btw, GPM seems to use a similar DRM method as the one supported in
Netflix, so if your browser does not support DRM, you're out of luck [1].

[1]: [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com.br/2016/04/google-play-
musi...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com.br/2016/04/google-play-music-still-
requires-flash.html)

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
It's a bit frustrating, because it's the only remaining reason I have for
installing Flash.

There's some superb wrapper apps [0], but they apparently use
WebKit.framework, so it still prompts you to install Flash.

Although I just discovered that the Radiant Player people are working on an
Electron version [1], which is very exciting!

[0] [https://github.com/radiant-player/radiant-player-
mac](https://github.com/radiant-player/radiant-player-mac)

[1] [https://github.com/radiant-player/radiant-player-
electron](https://github.com/radiant-player/radiant-player-electron)

------
Siecje
The only site I visit that still uses Flash is
[https://twitch.tv/](https://twitch.tv/)

~~~
relearn
That was the case for me as well until I started utilizing Livestreamer [0].

[0]- [http://docs.livestreamer.io/](http://docs.livestreamer.io/)

------
zwetan
Flash is definitively the perfect scapegoat

whatever your problem: slow machine, battery, security, etc. it's all its
fault

seriously, if everyone have already moved to HTML5, how come we are still
blaming Flash for those daily petty problems ?

It's not used so let's block it but it is still responsible for the majority
of problems ...

nobody notice the ambiguity of the argument ?

It's quite painful to see such arguments from Google, I thought they would be
smart enough to understand that any popular technology get hacked, the problem
is not really Flash, its the browser itself (and the advertising networks that
are perfect to distribute dodgy payloads to tons of users).

The other sad point is the amalgam of everything, for some ppl Flash equals
advertising, and that's bad so Flash is bad, and they don't want to think
further than that.

The choice of the users ? The tons of SWF content (that will probably not be
ported to HTML5) ? nobody care apparently

And about throwing everything in the same bag, so apparently if Flash is dead
then ActionScript is dead too right ?

nope

Flash is just 1 runtime running in the browser, there are other runtimes:
Adobe AIR for desktop and mobile, and also Redtamarin [1] for the command-line
/ server-side.

[1]:
[https://github.com/Corsaair/redtamarin](https://github.com/Corsaair/redtamarin)

------
cableshaft
I used to make and release flash games and still have them on my website. Is
there a good low-to-moderate effort way to convert them to HTML5?

A couple of the games used a ton of frame by frame animation with large
sprites, so they probably wouldn't convert to spritesheets very well and
should stay vector graphics.

Example:
[https://youtu.be/Qk9HlXbqRTQ?t=43s](https://youtu.be/Qk9HlXbqRTQ?t=43s)

~~~
f137
No, there is not a simple way to convert flash to html5. I say from
experience, we look for it for years.

Moreover, you can rewrite a game in html5 from scratch, if it is simple
enough, but it will be slower, less smooth, and require some latest browser
versions to run at all.

------
cookiecaper
So what specifically is going to happen? Instead of a click-to-play box,
you'll get an HTML5 version of the content if the site is serving one, and if
the site isn't serving one, you get a button to click to enable Flash content
on that domain? Seems a little unclear to me and not much different from
click-to-play. It sounds like Flash will continue to work with a clickthrough,
which is the status quo.

------
timeu
I can't be happier that Flash is bein removed except that I a heavily use
Google's own MotionChart[1] which is built using Flash and there seems to be
no HTML5 alternative yet available [2] (although google internally seems to be
uing a HTML5 version of it [3]):-(

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery...](https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart)

[2] [https://github.com/google/google-visualization-
issues/issues...](https://github.com/google/google-visualization-
issues/issues/1046)

[3]
[https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=ltjib1m1uf3pf_#...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=ltjib1m1uf3pf_#!ctype=m&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=incinequal_t1g&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&idim=country:KOR:JPN:ISL:IRL:GBR:FRA&ifdim=country:country_group:oecd&hl=de&dl=de&ind=false)

~~~
nileshtrivedi
MotionChart is being rebuilt in HTML5. See demo here:
[https://www.gapminder.org/tools/bubbles](https://www.gapminder.org/tools/bubbles)

I believe this is the library: [http://vizabi.org/examples/bubble-
chart.html](http://vizabi.org/examples/bubble-chart.html)

------
BatFastard
This seems to me to be an obvious power play by google. Does no one else see
how this is not against flash, but in favor of code which google can analyse
and extract data from. When the analytics are in flash, google has no insight,
but when forced into js they have full visibility into everything a developer
does.

~~~
f137
Not only that. I believe the main purpose of the whole war agains flash is to
kill the online games ecosystem, from which neither Apple nor Google make
profit, and move gamers to appstores.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
That seems unlikely. It's true that Flash is overwhelmingly popular among
browser game devs, but there's been efforts to encourage them to move to HTML5
for years, because Flash is terrible for users.

------
Heliosmaster
Can we have then a decent alternative to "Copy to clipboard button" that does
not use flash? :(

~~~
scarlac
document.execCommand('copy') seems to be decently supported (Chrome, FF, IE9+,
Safari 10) by now: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Document/ex...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Document/execCommand)

~~~
kalleboo
Note that Safari 10 hasn't actually been released yet - it's only in a
Developer Preview

------
piyush_soni
Wonder how does Firefox compare with it and what steps it is taking in this
direction?

~~~
kijin
Firefox plans to make Flash "click-to-play" by default sometime in 2017. This
is similar to Chrome's plan.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-
adobe-flash-usage-in-firefox/)

Meanwhile, it's pretty easy to force Firefox to apply this policy _right now_.
Just go to the Plugins screen and select "Ask to activate" for Flash. I've
been using Firefox like this for over two years, and have never been happier
with my web experience.

~~~
cpeterso
Firefox will start blocking the "Flash pixels" too, as noted in the Mozilla
blog post.

------
stronglikedan
To all those saying Flash is dead or dying, this is simply not so. Mainstream
use of Flash may be on it's way out, but browsers will continue to support it
in one way or another for the foreseeable future.

Why? As I've said before, and will say again: A lot of enterprisey
applications have tools developed in Flash/Flex. Mostly internal and B2B
tools, but tools nonetheless. It's not likely that they will be replaced
anytime soon, because no one is going to authorize the budget for replacing
something that still works, so Flash will be around in one form or another for
a long while.

~~~
bradleyjg
The same is true for java applets. There are still lots of LOB applications
that depend on it. Nonetheless, chrome removed support, firefox said they will
by the end of this year, and Edge has no support.

Companies still using them are now in the same position as those using
active-X, they need IT to deploy special measures for users that need to
access them.

I think it's fair to sum up this situation by saying that java applets are
dead or dying. Flash may well be in the same position in 3-4 years.

~~~
stronglikedan
I was going to counter by saying that our MIS displays some reports using a
java applet, and I can still access them in Chrome. However, I just attempted
to run one of those reports, and it turns out that the latest version of our
MIS no longer offers the java applet as a display option. Therefore, I must
concede. TIL.

------
qwertyuiop924
Thank god. The nightmare is ending.

------
mxxx
Am I the only one who feels like this has been talked about for a long, long
time? I actually already thought that Flash had been just about eradicated
from the major browsers.

------
pvdebbe
I still use Flash for youtube (with an add-on that enforces it) because
Firefox doesn't seem to be able to handle my 4-monitor Xmonad setup properly
with HTML5 fullscreen video. And the process also locks up my soundcard until
I kill the process. Flash behaves much better. After youtube ditches its Flash
player altogether, I guess it's chromium for YT then. No biggie.

~~~
zokula
Same with me as well, Firefox or Chrome both are slower with HTML5 media
versus flash. Flash video runs faster than HTML5 and also has hardware
acceleration which HTML5 fails at on my hardware, a couple of laptops and a
desktop rig.

------
amelius
> Today, more than 90% of Flash on the web loads behind the scenes to support
> things like page analytics. This kind of Flash slows you down, and starting
> this September, Chrome 53 will begin to block it.

I'm all against Flash. But this argument sounds silly. Why not handle this
like any decent OS, and "nice" the Flash portion of the page, so that it takes
only cycles (or bandwidth) which are otherwise left unused?

~~~
foldor
Because that's not really the reason behind the change, it's just a convenient
argument to use.

------
TeMPOraL
> _This kind of Flash slows you down_

I wonder if Flash is still slower than the current JS bloat of the "modern
web". My intuition says, probably not.

~~~
wvh
And funnily enough, Google itself is behind a lot of that JS bloat and
background tracking. They are probably not the ones that should be pointing
fingers at Flash.

------
f137
I wonder, does anybody here plays online games? I wonder, further, is there
anyone who thinks HTML5 is even close to Flash for games creation?

------
drdaeman
Good. Maybe that'd force Facebook to update their OpenGraph video embedding.
Right now it essentially requires an URL that's either
application/x-shockwave-flash or video/mp4 (with undocumented <iframe>
embedding for chosen parties), which doesn't really cover all the cases for
online videos (e.g. live streaming with DASH or HLS).

------
okonomiyaki3000
Some of the comments on that page are just sad. I didn't realise Flash still
had so many fans.

------
aorth
The article mentions Flash content slows web page loading and is power
inefficient. Flash also has an abysmal security record. Chrome 53 will start
blocking certain kinds of Flash usage, and Chrome 55, in December 2016, will
go further.

Great news!

------
andrewvijay
Even then Chrome's battery usage is pathetic. I sincerely hope you guys get it
right in battery consumption from within chrome rather than blaming on flash!
Please! It hurts.

------
knodi
For years!!! we been waiting for Flash to be kicked to the curb.

------
tbrock
Remember when this was a selling point for android devices? I think everyone
that owned one pretty much touted it as the killer feature.

~~~
untog
"Everyone that owned one" feels like kind of an exaggeration, but it was a big
feature at the time. I found it very useful for video players and was glad my
phone could plug the gap while the web caught up to HTML5.

------
willtim
It's great that Google is highlighting the importance of power efficiency as a
major part of their justification for killing flash. Now they need to fix
Chrome itself: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11975514/microsoft-
chrome-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11975514/microsoft-chrome-edge-
browser-battery-life-tests)

------
brakmic
Don't want to troll around but it seems to me only two things are inevitable:
taxes and Flash Obituaries. ;)

------
cdevs
I use Linux, what's flash? Joking, but seriously I would like HBO now to
finally work on my Linux boxes.

------
Nux
"This kind of Flash slows you down" .. Shame they apply the "block" only to
"this kind of flash".

------
bahadirbozdag
great decision, it is time to move forward. i believe flash will cease to
exist in 5 years

------
gcb0
will they address the elephant in the room and also say that Google analytics
slow down 90% of the web just for tracking?

------
Jemaclus
I updated my Chrome today (Mac OSX) and the graphics took a huuuuge step
backward. Almost like someone accidentally published the Linux build to the
Mac link. A couple of my friends have reported the same experience, but I
don't see anything official about this. Am I going to have to attempt to
downgrade to get the better UI back?

~~~
alexcroox
It's the new "material design". You can disable it in chrome://flags to get
the non Windows 95 style back. I too hate it. Not sure what the recent design
trend of sucking all colour from UIs is hoping to achieve.

~~~
Klathmon
Just know that that flag will not stick around. It will be removed at some
point, the rule of thumb is 2 major updates, so 12 weeks.

If you have actual issues with the new design, file bugreports or issues.

~~~
Karunamon
Where they will sit ignored and unaddressed like literally every complaint
about crappy browser UI.

(Me, bitter?)

------
anotheryou
Since recently flash in chrome makes my computer reset after 3s of video
playback...

~~~
poppysan
What kind of system are you working on?? That is ridiculous. Flash has never
made any computer that I have ever owned reset.

~~~
hutzlibu
And anecdotal evidence of what never happened to you, still works best, to
ridiculise other peoples experience, right?

------
PhasmaFelis
Surprised they didn't just ban it from the browser outright, like they did
with Unity.

~~~
wyqydsyq
They didn't ban Unity. The legacy NPAPI extension format (which the Unity web
player plugin was built on) was deprecated in favour of PPAPI.

NPAPI was outdated, unperformant and insecure, the goal of PPAPI was to
address those issues. All that would be needed for Unity web player to work
out-of-the-box in Chrome again is for it to be ported to PPAPI

~~~
Klathmon
And they were given a 4 year heads up that chrome was going to remove it.

Instead Java used that time to build several help pages that showed you how to
install other browsers then made a shitty anti-chrome campaign when it was
finally removed, and unity just sat there and did nothing the whole time.

~~~
Dylan16807
Here's what a Unity dev said:

"I don't expect Chrome to keep supporting PPAPI native plugins for any longer
then they have to (in order to support Flash), because it has the same
security issues as NPAPI.

And, porting the plugin to PPAPI would be far from trivial, and not be
compatible with existing content anyways"

Is any of that fundamentally wrong? They decided it was a better use of their
time to go right to WebGL.

~~~
Klathmon
Honestly I'm not that sure, and that was a shitty way for me to word it about
Unity. The big thing with PPAPI is that it can be much more sandboxed than
NPAPI ever could, which means it already has a big step up in security, but
obviously anything whose purpose is to circumvent the restrictions put in
place for the browser is going to be inherently less secure than just running
a website. In the end PPAPI could let you run code from a webpage as "root" on
your computer, and there is nothing Chrome or anyone else can do to stop that.

That being said, I think Unity is going in the right direction trying to get
away from plugins altogether. They are trying (successfully IMO) to compile to
"true" web technologies and let the game be exported as HTML5 and javascript
which is the right choice.

------
dredmorbius
Flash has one key advantage over HTML5 video.

Flash can be blocked, through browser extensions, CSS, or simply by removing
the !@#$%^&*() Flash plugin, disabling all autoplay video.

HTML5 has no such similar functionality.

This feature of Flash is very sorely missed.

(/etc/hosts or similar blocklists of all known video service providers is an
effective and reasonably concise, if not entirely perfect, alternative. I
recommend it.)

~~~
viraptor
That's not really correct. It can be blocked both by extensions (ABP and
uBlock), and by CSS (just hide <video> or other containing element).

~~~
dredmorbius
My experience on hiding video was that the video was hidden, yes, but the
audio continued to play and video content, I believe, was being downloaded.

I've yet to find an extension which blocks _all_ video effectively. Or
prevents autoplay.

Chome/Android doesn't support extensions at all. So there's that.

Flash, by its very blobbiness, had an effective defeat mechanism: remove the
blob.

Again, for video, especially autoplay sources, I've found blackholing the
video platform provider's hosts or domain quite effective. It's still only a
handful for most offenders. And if the practice spreads we may see pressure
from the providers themselves to defeat autoplay.

Though those of us blocking will be beyond caring.

