Adobe decided to stop supporting the Adobe Flash Media Player. It took the decision that all the developer and users were expecting for years. Flash Player has been riddled with security vulnerabilities in the past decade, and it’s been the favourite target of malvertising and cyber-espionage campaigns for years.
According to Adobe:
“open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.”
The company didn’t give a specific date when it will stop updating and distributing Flash in 2020, but additional details will surface as the EOL (End-of-life) date gets closer.
These days most browsers come with Flash pre-installed, but the plugin is disabled by default. Internet Browsers like Googe Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Mozilla Firefox have started using an HTML5-by-default policy, as well as most online content providers.
Adobe has been planning for this step for the past few years, as it focused most of its developers in creating HTML5-centric tools, such as Animate CC.
“Adobe will also remain at the forefront of leading the development of new web standards and actively participate in their advancement. This includes continuing to contribute to the HTML5 standard and participating in the WebAssembly Community Group. And we’ll continue to provide best in class animation and video tools such as Animate CC, the premier web animation tool for developing HTML5 content, and Premiere Pro CC.”