It’s Been a Long Time Coming, But …

The end of Adobe Flash

As of December 31, 2020 Adobe stopped supporting Flash and as of January 12, 2021 Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player on any website that is still using it.  Adobe is strongly recommending all users uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems as a result because Adobe will not issue Flash Player updates or security patches after the end-of-life date.

Initially created to be able to display interactive web pages and online games, then integral in the creation of YouTube, Adobe Flash became the dominant platform for online multimedia content in the late 1990’s and early aughts. However, the proprietary technology of Flash has slowly been replaced with the continually maturing open standard alternatives such as HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly since Adobe made the announcement it was killing Flash back in 2017.

Most of the major browsers have already removed Flash content from their products.  Microsoft and Chrome have also removed Flash from their operating systems.  But what about web pages that have not gotten in front of the curve and still rely on Adobe Flash content and Adobe Flash Player to view that content?  As of the date of this post the United States Courts (uscourts.gov) still lists Adobe Flash Player as one of the plug-ins that may be used/needed to view content on their site. Courts are notorious for being slow to update their website technology.  It would not be uncommon to receive a notification from a website that you need to downgrade your Java or Flash Player version in order to access online court records.

The question is, is it safe to install the plug-in (or keep an older browser like IE 11 with Flash Player installed) to be able to access content on websites that have not upgraded to one of the open standards?  According to Adobe the answer is no. So how does one get around this conundrum? There are Flash Player emulators such as Ruffle from GitHub that will allow you to view Flash content.  You can either install a browser extension or their desktop application via their website https://ruffle.rs/.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re planning on reusing any of your PowerPoint presentations with embedded video clips?  You might want to update those with non-Flash-dependent content sooner rather than later.

Hopefully, those websites that chose not to heed Adobe’s 3 year warning about the cut-off date will get enough negative feedback from their visitors that they will upgrade their content and join the rest of the modern web.