Windows 8’s Flash whitelist goes black, turns on Flash almost everywhere | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8’s Flash whitelist goes black, turns on Flash almost everywhere

arstechnica.com

45 pointsshawndumas39 comments

Another effect of Sinofsky's departure from Microsoft.

This was the topic of a very heated debate internally 4 years ago, allowing the whitelist itself was a massive cave-in by Sinofsky who had set a fairly hard line against all plugins.

I'm hoping all of the jaded Windows decision makers who so adamantly wanted to ban Flash have been sufficiently spanked.

That said, I do wonder how well Flash will work on 7" tablets or even phones. Flash waved the white flag long ago on Android and Microsoft most likely will not support Flash across their entire OS line.

Flash is not available on Windows Phone.

Nor Android (discontinued) or iOS (never existed).

Adobe had internal ports of the Flash plugin for iOS. Ironically, Apple assisted Adobe in the early porting work. However, Apple assigned the work to an "intern" and the code returned to Adobe was such crap that it didn't even compile. Coincidence or diversionary tactic by Apple? Suspicious Adobe people called this "Project Boomerang".

GIGO

Do you have a source for this?

As much as I want to be on the ditch Flash bandwagon, I can't. Reality hits hard, trivial things that gets done using Flash is impossible or requires a lot of workarounds when implemented in pure html/javascript.

A few weeks back I was looking for a Javascript or HTML5 implementation for those bitly style "copy URL to clipboard" function. It just doesn't exist without flash (except in older versions of IE)! There are --webkit only implementations for grabbing things from a clipboard but not for pasting to it and I thought the former was more of a security issue.

Another thing I noticed is a smooth flash animation on my low powered Netbook looks like a jitter mess when implemented in canvas.

Until these issues are resolved, sadly flash isn't going anywhere soon.

> here are --webkit only implementations for grabbing things from a clipboard but

Seriously‽ That's crazy insecure, though I can't find any more information about it.

Generally in "HTML5", these interactions are only allowed during user-triggered clipboard events e.g. the developer can intercept a "paste" event and grab data from the clipboard (in order to try and get it under a different format or somesuch).

We're spoiled with Flash's mature functionality. HTML5 video and audio are still too early in their life cycles to supplant flash. HTML5 also lacks a good way to package a lot of files together into a single one like .sfw's do. I always imagine what it would be like to try and convert a website thats is made up of almost all flash like Newgrounds over to HTML5. Until there is an easy conversion path, flash will live on.

> HTML5 also lacks a good way to package a lot of files together into a single one like .sfw's do

What? Data URIs, style and script tags.

This is a bad way because you loose semantic of file separation. Better way is MHT, but it was supported only in IE and Opera.

Google's closure tools can compile JS into a single file, and can also target runtimes to remove redundant code.

I imagine you could get away with a single html and js file.

Images could be converted to binary too in theory, I think the Cappuccino guys got something like this going.

Also check out the packaged files you create for Chrome store.

You don't need a separate JS file, there are script tags.

  > HTML5 video and audio are still too early in their life cycles to supplant flash.

What are you missing? I've been working with HTML5 video/audio for a few years and features are on par now with Flash on all major browsers. It's a pity Firefox doesn't support H264/MP3, but that will change in the near future.

I am guessing DRM

features are on par now with Flash on all major browsers

So can we publish an H.264 and Speex encoded stream using a local webcam as the source over WebRTC or RTMP in all major browsers yet?

Right, wake me up when they do.

Probably the saddest news I've heard all day. This gives web/application/browser developers yet another excuse not to move HTML standards forward to capture the flash functionality.

I was honestly hoping that Microsoft would have put a stake in the ground regarding flash, and not carried it into their RT platform at the very least.

read the effen post : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/03/11/flash-in-windo... Adobe added substancial improvements to the flash player and it will be embedded directly in Internet explorer , like Chrome does.

    For Windows 8, we worked with Adobe to include 
    a version of Flash that is optimized for touch
    , performance, security, reliability, and battery life.

Did you reply to the right comment? This is seems to completely miss the point they were making ...

Adobe promised that a well-performing Flash on mobile devices would be coming any day now, for several years. It never materialized. Forgive me if I don't believe that they've finally solved it for Windows 8 tablets.

Not so sure about that. I think iOS and Google have over 90% market share in mobile.

I think you meant 'iOS and Android'. Google's phones have very little market share.

Perhaps it will create further competition for HTML5 so it will get up off it's ass and innovate. You could do everything that html5 promises in Flash 8 years ago. Never should it be accepted that a technology should win simply because it is an open standard (whatever that really means).

I'm not a big fan of Flash, but one thing which sticks out to me and tells me that Flash will still be around for a long time is pornography.

It might sound fairly ridiculous but one of the largest content and viewing blocks on the internet is porn [1] and what are most of these sites using? Flash players. it only takes a quick glance at some of the more popular google ranked websites (and the majority of people without a favourite site tend to just google their fetish of choice) to see how prevalent flash is in the industry: WARNING NSFW. [2] pornhub, [3] youjizz, [4] redtube, etc, and they all use Flash, every single one of them.

There may be a couple of fledgling HTML5 sites out there, but until porn ditches Flash for good, it isn't going anywhere.

[1] - http://onlinemba.com/images/internet-porn.jpg [2] - http://www.pornhub.com [3] - http://youjizz.com [4] - http://redtube.com

Tangentially relevant, I wouldn't go near IE10 on the desktop, my Bowser of choice is Firefox there, but for touch IE10 is amazing. Swiping left or right brings you back or forward, being chrome-less and swiping down or up to bring up the chrome works wonderfully, I find myself trying to swipe left or right on my Android phone and feeling aggravated at the inconvenience of lack of gesture control.

Use dolphin browser, it lets you set custom gesture controls

Call me paranoid, but this looks like a good tactic to spread the maximum amount of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt into the already-collapsing Flash community while still keeping support for the platform.

Reminds me of the OpenGL vs DirectX wars. (not implying the situation is similar in any way, only the FUD tactic :) )

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-an...

I think Ars just won the link bait title of the year.

How is that title link bait?

Windows 8’s Flash whitelist goes black [1], turns on [2] Flash almost everywhere

[1] did they just blacklist all Flash?

[2] another way of saying betrayed, attacked, etc

If you are familiar with the terminology the title is completely factual and not at all exaggerated or controversial.

A whitelist approach means only sites that have been specifically allowed(whitelisted) will be allowed to use flash, a blacklist approach means all sites will by default be allowed to use flash except those explicitly blocked(blacklisted).

If you're familiar with English you'll note that there are two entirely valid definitions to the sentence, as noted.

The negative meaning is particularly valid if you're familiar with Flash's history in recent years.

So you're misreading Ars's clear statement in the most contorded way possible and thus Ars posts a "linkbait headline"?

This doesn't seem like a big deal. Outside of Windows RT, Flash on the desktop (including the Windows 8 desktop) has been unrestricted the whole time. So this only affects Windows RT users and people using the formerly-called-Metro version of IE. I don't think there are many of those, so other than the symbolism of the "future of Windows" moving back towards Flash, I don't see how this has much impact.

I'm so glad I got Android and run Linux at home. Flash is nice to have for many websites that otherwise would lack functionality or simply don't work. Not installing it by default is one thing, but banning it is another.

I guess this was inevitable, flash is too prevalent to completely block from a device that is being marketed as a laptop and it's not fair to selectively whitelist only some websites, so this was gonna happen eventually.

So now what happens to Silverlight? What a mess.

Great news , i can go back developping real apps with ASWING and not bother with sh*tty javascript anymore. Who cares if it doesnt work on ipad... i'll give the ipad folks a tuned down experience, that's all.

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