Adobe has revealed the end-of-life date for Flash, which is set to December 31, 2020. After that date, Adobe Flash Player will no longer receive security updates, and will become unavailable.
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User will be advised to uninstall the software from their computers. Adobe will show desktop notifications to remind users to get rid of Flash.
Adobe Flash could be used to play videos and animated content. These days, there are a large number of users who disable Adobe Flash. They do so because of performance and battery life reasons as well as because security vulnerabilities are discovered in the Flash plugin. Security vulnerabilities can be exploited to hack your PC. Most of the media web services and sites have already switched to HTML5 videos, so Flash is no longer require to explore their content.
After December 31, 2020 Adobe will remove Flash from its downloads, and also will prevent the flash content from being played in browsers. This will be probably done by implementing a 'time-bomb' in the software code that checks for the current date.
Adobe will release security updates till December 31. Google Chrome and Edge, which come with the Flash Player bundled, will include the updated files and deliver them to existing users via the update mechanism of the browser.
Adobe Flash is now the only NPAPI plugin that Firefox supports. Starting in version 84, Mozilla will remove all NPAPI code from the browser which is required to run Flash. Chromium-based browsers will also drop Flash support starting with Chromium version 88 which is coming on January 2021.
Personally, I have no Flash plugin installed here. It is not required for my daily browsing tasks.
What about you? Do you use any Flash content these days?
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Приходится использовать Flash только на сайтах с китайскими и корейскими игр. Хоть там и есть свои клиенты для части игр, но преимущественно остаётся необходимым Flash.
HTML5 video is in a patent war. Googles decison to use the “free” videocodec is a bad move. It is a resource hog.
It is not usable, if you don’t have the latest hardware.
Flash is delivering. It is note a resource hog. And not involved in any patent war.
I gotta miss those classic Flash games, including Happy Wheels.
When they remove npapi plugins there will be leftovers maybe in the about:config like firebug
Just leaving the following info here for anyone who might search for how to run something that needs Flash after December 2020:
Adobe announced that Harman (a Samsung subsidiary) will support plugins and a “packaged browser” for those who need Flash support after December 2020, but they conveniently forgot to mention the pricing. It’s totally unrealistic and clearly not practical long-term for any company or individual that requires Flash for internal use.
Right now the best bet would seem to be keeping a copy of version 32.0.0.363 of pepflashplayer.dll (which seems to the the last version of Flash that isn’t timebombed) and a 2020 version of Chromium that can use it. Obviously neither should be used externally or for anything that could be a security risk.