Adobe Flash Player
- Started
- Last post
- 48 Responses
- rabbit0
Not trying to sound smart alec, but if you are that dissatisfied with it, you could perhaps uninstall it, or change the auto update settings to 'never update' on install?
I agree. It drives me fucking insane. But what drives me insane at the moment with it, is it crashes Chrome as per:
https://productforums.google.com…
To fix this issue, i posted a reply:
Here is how to fix this ^ problem (if you experience it):
Chrome runs its own version of flash, what fixed it for me was navigating to:
chrome://plugins/In chrome, expanding 'details' (top right) and searching for Flash, the one listed under:
Google\Chrome\Application\39.0.2...Disable this.
I then uninstalled Flash player (need to download the uninstaller from Adobe) from my computer, and re-installed latest Flash player from Adobe like normal onto my computer.
Then I revisited the
chrome://plugins/And ensured the only Flash player that was enabled was the version I just installed (on my windows machine) and not the Chrome installed one (which lives in the Chrome folder structures)
SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32...Restarted Chrome, no more crashes :)
- vaxorcist0
Yes, the chrome flash memory leak seems to be the death knell for me, i will try the above method, thsnks!
In my pc laptop, opening a bunch of tabs on chrpme and going to various news websites with flash ads can cause the memory use of a chrone process go slowly use up more and more RAM very predictably till everything gets slow....
- raf0
I wrote it a year ago somewhere:
---
Let’s get the history straight before nobody remembers anymore how it really happened.
Not running on mobile did not kill Flash, neither did Steve Jobs. When iPhone came about, Flash had already been in agony, kept alive by its usefulness as a video player and a compact ad delivery format that was able to capture more data back than users ever knew.
People don’t remember this now, but by 2006 discussions whether or not Flash was “still ok” were commonplace. Flash-only websites were already a big no-no, it was only ok to use “flash elements” on a page.
In 2007, when iPhone arrived, I worked as a front-end developer and hadn’t opened Flash in months. And I had loved Flash.
Why was it dying, if it was (possibly still is) the better technology?
It never fully integrated with the browser, never stopped being a foreign body in it. Never properly spoke with JS, kept breaking history, didn’t deep-link, had a non-standard right-click menu, made text non-selectable too easy and always opened a new window instead of a new tab. And it was processor heavy like nothing else on my computer. It still spins the fans in my laptop and shrinks its battery time today.
Add CSS Nazis to this who loomed over the internet back then and a general distrust towards letting a single company control so much of the web (which wasn’t baseless, Adobe by then had proved to be more ‘evil’ than Google and Apple together) — and you get the picture.
Another, and when I think of it, probably the main reason of Flash’s demise was that Adobe was so busy appealing to programmers and making Air the next Java, that they completely neglected the crowd who made Flash as big as it was: designers. Neglected? They just showed them the finger, because real money and the future was in the Air. Most good Flash designers I know never picked up on AS 3.0, and many developers never bothered to.
TL;DR: Jobs didn’t kill Flash, he only smelled its stench and noticed before anyone else that Adobe already drove it into the ground.
- ukit20
Exactly raf. Before the iPad came out and Jobs issued his manifesto the trend among designers and developers was already to not use Flash and replicate as much as possible using JS. It's only once Jobs made his statement that Apple would not support Flash that people nostalgically came to Flash's defense and pretended Apple was the one that killed it.
- formed0
That's just not true. At least not for my business or the others that we work with. Certainly nothing any clients wanted was, and still cannot easily, be done with js.
I find it the opposite, as soon as someone mentions how they miss the design and reliability of Flash people jump and start saying how it wasn't Jobs that killed it.
Jobs killed it, brilliant business move, nothing more to it.
But hey, what do I know.
- No he didn't. He simply said the iPhone wouldn't support it. That didn't cause it to die. Adobe did.monospaced
- evilpeacock0
It's a mess now; most ad networks I have to work with require Actionscript 2 which means running the CS6 version of Flash indefinitely since AS2 support was removed with Adobe's Creative Cloud versions.
Eventually I'll probably have to move Flash CS6 to a virtual machine to keep it running smoothly as new hardware and operating systems come out (just like doing IE testing).
- ukit20
I guess it depends on your vantage point, if you are working on Flash sites for a living it might have carried on being a popular niche for longer.
All I'm saying is that looking at the scene as a whole, I could see a clear trend away from Flash in terms of the kinds of sites designers and agencies were making which accelerated during the mid 2000s. It had less to do with Apple and more with the emergence of jQuery and other JS-based solutions for what Flash was trying to do. No it didn't give you the ability to replicate everything Flash could do, but in many cases it was good enough there was increasing adoption of a "standards mindset" within the design community.
Also raf is absolutely right that Adobe shot themselves in the foot by trying to position Flash as a tool for rich internet applications, which was a dead end movement and alienated designers.
- formed0
JQuery, etc., and this so called HTML5 stuff had promise, but it's been years and we are still not at the design possibilities of Flash was 12+ years ago.
This "standards mindset" has led to a barrage of generic websites, which has further been perpetuated with WordPress.For high end, design driven sites (a la "custom", NOT standard/generic), Flash was king and has yet to be surpassed. There are some great examples out there, dont get me wrong, but the cost to develop those are insane and stability/flexibility is far from what a single player had.
Adobe probably contributed to it, but Jobs killed it and guaranteed Apple a very profitable market in their app store. There's no other reason why he'd make such a stance. It was business smart and helped Apple to dominate the "app" world and market place.
- Fact remains that ALL other phones supported flash besides the iPhone. You can't say one phone killed itmonospaced
- fate0
I think that's really wrong. If anything, Flash development accelerated during the 2000's
Seems like EVERY photographer had a flash site.
Flash agencies like Fantasy Interactive, group94, First Born, Big Spaceship, RGA (yes, these were primarily Flash design/dev agencies before they rebranded as "digital agencies of the future) hit their stride during the mid 2000's
- fate0
If you go through the archives of The F W A .com, you'll see a pretty clear dividing line after the iPhone and then the iPad launch.
- fate0
@formed - Couldn't agree more.
- inteliboy0
I loved the experimental flash stuff that happened in the first half of the last decade.
But really... it's a damn plugin people! Good riddance.
- formed0
Ooph! Go look at First Born's site now. I loved the timeline one they rocked for years. Now we have the mediocre WP-looking grid (which is fine, but after looking to them to be one of the leaders, I wouldn't look twice at the new site). Gotta be kinda sad for some of these pioneers.
I dare not look at Group94's new site, I might cry.
- fate0
Agencies were still doing big, ambitious flash sites as late as 2010.
That year was probably the last big heyday of Flash.
- raf0
Remember those attempts at Flash portals like Roadrunner or that Fantasy Interactive's social network thing? They got redone in html pronto because they made no sense. Same with Ultrashock. And then...Praystation.
Jobs' policy was to remove from iPhone everything that would hinder user experience, given the limitations of the device.
When Flash eats up a whole battery in half an hour people won't say "Adobe is crap", they'll say "iPhone is crap".
This is also why iPhone didn't have multitasking for so long. I had it through jailbreak and it was a battery killer at the time. Apple only introduced it officially when they figured out how to make it play well with the battery — and it's still pretty much an issue today.
- raf0
Also... it was a time of an aesthetic shift. The web was ripe for a reboot, for simplicity, for text-driven stuff... Think what punk did to prog rock in the late 70's — it rebooted the whole aesthetic and resulted in... the 80's, even if they were shit.
I hated that web reboot at first because it was going backwards in a way... but this is how the web evolves: in circles.
We stopped designing for 800px long ago and thought the only way was up and suddenly had to design for 320px again when smartphones were introduced.
--
Also, one overlooked factor: Google search. Effectively, it did more to kill Flash than Apple did, and did it first.
- fate1
Raf I totally agree that Flash deserved to die. All your points are correct about its drawbacks.
But as a tool for creativity, it hasn't been replaced and is sorely missing from our new web that resembles a phone book more than the future of interactivity.
- formed0
C'mon, do you really believe the bs that "battery life" mattered? Watch a video, phone dies, pretty simple. Flash ain't gonna kill it faster than that! He made billions from that move, that's the only logic. I tip my hat to him for balls to make a business move like that, but that's all it was. Battery life still sucks. That's a non issue. Apple's features are generally a few generations behind everyone else, call it what you will (perfectionism or complacency).
Jobs/Apple really genius was making money, pretty objects were just a means to get there. There is no company out there that controls the user in the name of profit like Apple does. Again, tip my hat, but that's what it is (if you look past the fanboy-isms).
Search was being fixed. That wasn't an impossible task, nor was it a prohibitive issue.
I won't argue that there wasn't crap, but at least it wasn't monotonous like it is now. It's getting slightly better, but moving at such a snails pace.
- If anyone gave a flying fuck about flash on phones they would have boycotted the iPhone for a model that supported it.monospaced
- Or adobe would have tried to make it work. Neither happened because apple didn't kill it. They just ignored it with ONE phonemonospaced
- Everyone knows video is battery-heavy but web isn't that much. People don't know what 'flash' is, they'd blame iPhone.raf
- Search of Flash content never really got fixed. Analytic number crunching drove Flash out and left it for page embellishment use only.raf
- Flash was really great, and no, it hasn't been surpassed yet. The problems it had could've been fixed by Adobe.raf
- Google was already getting their search methods within Flash before the iPad.CyBrainX
- I would have boycotted iphones for not having Flash if I didn't like just about everything else about them more than other phones.CyBrainX
- Same as everyone else Cy, and that is the reason Flash didn't survive. Nobody gave a fuck about Flash, ESPECIALLY ADOBE.monospaced
- Considering that EVERY smart phone competitor on the planet at the time DID run Flash just shows you how much Apple had JACK SHIT to do with its death.monospaced
- If people wanted Flash, they would have bought phones that ran it. Those that did were severely disappointed. Adobe said "fuck this, we're out."monospaced
- But if you want to blame the underdog with a whopping 2% of the market, go ahead. It's easy to do if you ignore the facts and like bashing Apple.monospaced
