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Comment by NathanKP | Hacker News Reader

I didn't think about the aspect of Flash updates. If Flash is no longer installed updated by Apple, I will have to download and install the Flash updates myself, or count on Adobe to handle updates. (Which judging from past experience with Adobe Flash player updates in Windows, might be suboptimal.)

Ultimately I would like to go no flash, and probably could today. I don't play flash games, so I won't have a problem there. Both YouTube and Vimeo, the two video sites I use most, have an HTML 5 version, so I don't even need flash for that.

Chances are if I uninstalled Flash today all I would miss are flash ads, and that would be a good thing, especially since getting rid of Flash closes another potential security hole.

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You can install ClickToFlash to get a taste of it, so when you absolutely need to see some flash content, you can just click on it.

http://clicktoflash.com/

Actually I don't miss Flash at all except for one place: street view on Google Maps, which is done in Flash and I find it useful to take a look when I have to go in some place I don't know (it helps a lot being familiar with the surroundings once you are there).

Apart of that, I never enable Flash on other websites.

I would like to see clicktoflash pre-installed on Macs ;-)

Clicktoflash is the first thing I install on any new Mac - my own, or friend's. I find the internet unusable without Flash blocker.

Flash uses are as follows: - Ads. Nobody needs those, and I actually dread the day Flash dies, because then these annoying ads will be HTML5 and maybe not as easy to block anymore. - Games. I know lots of people who play nothing but Facebook games all day. - Video. Not an issue anymore as most content is available in HTML5.

If Apple finds an alternative solution for Flash games, they can kill Flash off completely. I don't feel like they're going there though, probably knowing that the day they try to kill Adobe will be the day Microsoft buys Adobe out.

Maps for iOS has a native implementation of Google Street View. It's much better than the desktop version, so I don't even use Flash for that.

Chrome actually ships with its own, integrated copy of Flash. Which, coupled with Chrome's automatic updates, should keep you nicely patched.

I'll have to try a performance comparison, but the native HTML 5 video only uses about 10-11% processor power on my MacBook, allowing me to run it on batteries longer. I doubt that even Chrome's integrated flash can provide that sort of performance.

Battery usage is dependent on both cpu and gpu power draw. It's more complicated to determine what the overall difference is between html5 and flash power drain.

That's true on my Macbook as well, but it's also a lot less stable for some reason. Flash plays perfectly fine, while HTML5 video on YouTube in Chrome will fairly frequently cause weird graphics glitches or freeze a tab. Works perfectly fine in Linux, so not sure what the deal is.

I would strongly doubt there'll be any difference in penetration in the short-term. You may not be able to think of common use cases, or any at all, off the top of the head, but over the course of a year, chances are you'll come across some interesting website or feature on the web that requires flash. And the barrier to viewing it (installing Flash yourself) is really not that high.

If you want to test it without actually uninstalling flash, just install ClickToFlash (for Safari) and you'll see many sites even use flash for non-dynamic things like buttons.

Quite a few sites use Flash sockets instead long-poll to maintain connections. Hypem.com is the first that comes to mind. Zed Shaw's Mongrel2 also features JSsockets [1] which uses a .swf for connection persistence as well. There's quite a few apps use Flash behind the scenes, and you won't notice it until it breaks.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/jssockets/

I've had FlashBlock on for quite some time now, and I haven't noticed any apps mysteriously breaking. So at the moment I'd count that as pro-Flash FUD. (yes, I do use a lot of online apps)

Some flash blocking plugins automatically allow flash applets that are very small (which are often used for sockets, etc).

Correct. ClickToFlash's default (AFAIK) setting is to allow 1x1 and 0x0 flash items to load in the background. At least, that's how I think it operates.

I block everything, and press command-control-f when a site doesn't work properly.

I don't think I'd call it FUD so much as a non-visible use of Flash.

HTML5 and jQuery audio players are another example that often discretely relies on Flash as a fallback.

Many sites use Flash to embed fonts as well.

I really haven't seen that. Font solutions such as Google Font Directory (http://code.google.com/webfonts), or Typekit (http://typekit.com/) are already better solutions compared to replacing text with flash.

It's not something that sticks out like a Flash video, so it's easy to miss. I use ClickToFlash so it sticks out for me.

I agree that those new font solutions are nice, but they're also just that, new.

ClickToFlash has a "Text Replacement" setting in its preferences to automatically load Flash used for fonts.

Or even better, it lets you suppress sIFR. Note to web developers: if you need to enable custom fonts on your website, nowadays there exists better non-flash alternatives to sIFR, e.g. Cufón and Typekit.

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