
“Adobe Flash Player is required for interactive charts” - level09
https://finance.google.com/finance?q=EURUSD
======
Okvivi
I built those charts on Google Finance. At the time (10 years ago) there was
no better alternative for building interactive charting in browsers.

After I left Google Finance I feel that the team has attempted a few times to
remove Flash, but I don't know why they didn't succeed.

Others on this thread are probably right - finance is not enough of a focus
for Google, only so many engineering hours, better spent on other parts of
Google Finance (more, better and cleaner data) than on replacing something
that works well enough.

~~~
reagan83
Thanks for building this 10 years ago. This was my first repo I looked at as a
noogler earlier this year because I wanted to understand the effort req’d to
replace flash charts. It looked a bit more complex than I was expecting but I
still have it as #1 on my backlog for a multi-weekend project.

~~~
yosyp
Are Google employees expected to work on Google services over multi-weekends?
Are you compensated or is this for fun? If you're working for free and your
work is not open source it seems like you are being taken advantage of by your
employer.

~~~
reagan83
I think about it a little differently: I don’t work on that product team, but
I’ve benefited from using google finance for almost a decade and have the
skillset + interest to help contribute back to that product.

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anilakar
People are complaining about Flash? I've got quite a few stories from doing
integration work with refrigeration systems. Mind you, most of these systems
are meant to be used daily by the staff at ordinary grocery stores.

\- One vendor requires a leaky JRE 1.5 to run their configuration tool,
originally written for Windows CE around 2007. You need to keep it inside a VM
and disable automatic Java updates.

\- A newer system from the same company requires Flash. Most customers opt for
the Java based one, because the newer system is unsuitable for anything but
the smallest sites (frozen foods melting at high bus and CPU loads).

\- The web GUI on another company's product wants a browser Java plugin that
accepts unsigned certs.

\- The web GUI on a third company's product requires the user to accept
unsigned certs, even though these systems are never exposed to the internet
(RFC 1918 and certificates are inherently incompatible). The GUI is a stateful
JSP frameset hell.

\- Yet another company that no longer makes refrigeration systems requires
DOS-based software. Luckily its volume ID based copy protection does not work
under Windows XP.

EDIT: Fixed line breaks for readability

~~~
wyager
Why the hell do grocery store refrigerators require a web GUI? The most
complicated computer in the whole system should maybe be an 8-bit
microcontroller.

For _massive_ industrial-scale refrigeration and storage, it might also make
sense to add, say, a serial port.

~~~
arghwhat
Well, for a fleet of refrigerators, it might be nice to have a place to see
data from the entire fleet. Power requirements, temperature, failures or
failure indicators, etc.

A large supermarket would most likely want something like that. With serial
ports, they'd have to design a system themselves, including the boxes to
attach to the individual serial ports.

Of course, for a technically skilled individual, a serial port is much
preferable.

~~~
anilakar
Temperature logging is mandated by HACCP-related regulations. Without a
centralized system one would have store clerks running around with
thermometers and a clipboard. The maintenance company can do remote
supervision, troubleshooting and optimization. Also, having an overview of all
stores helps one pick out the ones that are wasting electricity.

Disclaimer: Our company's main product is used to collect data from
refrigeration systems into one vendor-independent, Flash-free web UI. We do
pretty much everything ranging from web development to reverse engineering and
hardware design.

------
ulfw
It's the typical Google development cycle. Build a great product, don't get
enough users, engineers lose interest and boom the product is basically
sunset. Years later it is either revived or cancelled outright.

~~~
alekratz
Yup, I'm seeing this with Google sites (sort of) right now. Even though
they're rolling out a new version, it's pretty much impossible to get a digest
of all pages on the old sites with revisions. There _is_ an API to access this
data, but it's behind an amalgam of out-of-date documentation and forgotten
APIs.

edit: clarification

~~~
robmcm
Google reader highlighted this issue. I wonder how many finance apps there
could have been if Google had never developed Google Finance.

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coldcode
Funny thing is they used to have interactive charts without Flash. But then
I've always felt the janitorial staff worked on google.finance. When companies
go out of business or merge they stick around in the site for months
sometimes. Or ever try the stock screener? What an unsmiling pile of poor. Yet
they have the data and the horsepower to do amazing things with it, but since
it apparently makes no revenue, its not worth the effort unless the night
cleaning folks feel like writing a little code.

~~~
mywittyname
Google doesn't have an public finance API to use for creating a better
product, do they?

~~~
jmh530
They used to, shut down in 2012.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-finance-
apis](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-finance-apis)

------
underyx
A week or so ago this message appeared on the Portfolio page, I assume the
Flash Player requirement will be gone soon:

> Google Finance is under renovation. As a part of this process, the
> Portfolios feature won't be available after mid-November 2017. To keep a
> copy, download your portfolio.

~~~
userbinator
If the trends of "renovation" I've seen on other sites are any indication, the
Flash requirement will disappear but so will a bunch of other useful features.
:-(

IMHO if they can't change things without removing functionality, they should
just leave well enough alone. They don't have to "support" the old version or
do anything special with it; just leave it alone in its current, working,
state.

~~~
angus-prune
But with flash being deprecated across pretty much every browser and EoL by
Adobe, they can't really leave it alone.

~~~
userbinator
Of course they can. Flash isn't a cloud service. All "deprecated" and "EoL"
means is that Adobe isn't going to change the product or provide support.
Google could do the same. It will keep working the way it has always worked.
There's millions if not more sites out there still with Flash content. I have
a collection of SWFs (mostly games) and they still work too.

The "this technology is old/deprecated/EoL/unfashionable/etc., let's just
delete it all and provide no equivalent replacement, nevermind the fact that
it's been working well" attitude is what really pisses off users, including
me. Also somewhat like me, they don't really care what technology is as long
as it works --- all they see is something which used to work is now broken and
they can't do anything about it.

------
pja
Google Finance is a dead product walking: Are there any developers actually
working on it at all?

~~~
BerislavLopac
Any recommendations for a better alternative?

~~~
muleaga
Teletrader Public Webstation
[http://www.teletrader.com](http://www.teletrader.com)

(full disclosure, that’s the company I work for)

~~~
ben_utzer
Selecting a nation will change automatically language. That's bad. Especially
for Switzerland.

~~~
eps
Yep. Same problem here.

Also can't search by company's name if it has an apostrophe.

------
Aardwolf
The article title is wrong. The real message is: "Adobe Flash Player is
required for interactive charts." The title is: "Adobe Flash Player is
required for charts"

I see a chart without flash, it's just not interactive (but a static rendered
image)

~~~
yeukhon
It should be "Adobe Flash Player is required for charts on finance.google.com
on Firefox otherwise static rendered chart image is not renderable either".

I tried Firefox on Windows and Chrome on Windows, only FF can't show the
static rendered image without first activate Flash.

~~~
vog
I'm using Firefox and had no trouble viewing the static chart.

~~~
yeukhon
What's your setup?

------
stephenr
VMware's private cloud control panel software requires flash (or at least the
version I was subjected to did)

No charts. No fancy graphics. It's all basic crud stuff. And it's all in
flash.

~~~
gwbas1c
That's why I quit VMware. That was the only project to work on, and there was
no way I was going to spend my career in a dead-end technology like that.

It was kind of obvious that HTML was going to take over... Like really
obvious.

------
ungzd
They forgot to turn off this service.

~~~
DonHopkins
Perhaps they will gradually lower its contrast like a bad hn post, until
nobody notices it fade away.

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wslh
I saw the flash player alert yesterday and thought my computer was infected by
some malware! I can't believe Google doesn't have a chart control to put
there.

------
CharlesDodgson
it has a very iGoogle feel to it, i expect it will be killed off or refreshed
soon.

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butterfi
My place of work used a Java applet for time-card management and just upgraded
us to... a flash application. I had to set-up a VM just to manage my timecard
because I refuse to install Flash. And this is a major payroll service.

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stevenh
Chrome on a Mac here. Did anyone else's ENTIRE SCREEN fade to black for a
second upon loading this page? How is that possible?

~~~
geoah
Nope.

OS X 10.12.6 Beta (16G8c)

Chrome Version 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build) (64-bit)

~~~
ameesdotme
Off topic: That beta is very buggy and you should consider updating to a more
recent one.

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spork12
Checkout tradingview.com over google finance

