Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

YouTube's video pick spells doom for Adobe Flash
cnet ^ | January 28, 2015 | Stephen Shankland

Posted on 01/29/2015 8:07:56 AM PST by CedarDave

Adobe Systems' Flash software had a good long run as the technology of choice for bringing interactive splash to the Web, but Google is helping to give it the heave-ho by moving YouTube to Web-standard video instead.

"We're now defaulting to the HTML5 player on the Web," said YouTube engineering manager Richard Leider in a blog post Tuesday. It took four years for Google to make the HTML5 change, which is a major victory for Web standards fans who've strived to eject proprietary plug-ins from the Web.

If you watched a video online 10 years or so, ago, it was almost certainly delivered with Flash. That's because Flash gave people an easy way to publish and share video in a way everyone could access -- similar to what Adobe did with its PDF file format and Acrobat document creation tool. That was during a period of relatively slow change for the Web, when Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 dominated the market but remained static for years. Adobe acquired Flash's creator, Macromedia, for $3.4 billion in 2005.

Many of Flash's detractors, however, didn't want technology that's owned and controlled by a single company. Its most vocal opponent was Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who publicly castigated Flash. "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers," he famously wrote in blog post in April 2010. But while Jobs was the technology's best-known detractor, he wasn't alone.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: adobe; adobeflash; dsj02; flash; flashplayer; google; html5; internet; youtube
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-45 next last
To: CedarDave

My Real Player Plus hasn’t been able to download from Youtube for several months, so this does not come as a surprise.


21 posted on 01/29/2015 8:41:39 AM PST by MHGinTN (Is it really all relative, Mister Einstein?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Zathras
Flash is a security problem and will always be so.

That's not quite true; they certainly could make a Flash Player that was secure — the problem is mostly cultural: many of the big companies don't see the security and maintenance problems as impacted by their design-practices and language-choice. This is one reason why you will continue to see companies using bug-ridden DNS servers, even though there's an implementation proven not to contain remote-code execution exploits, single-packed DoS, or unexpected termination.

22 posted on 01/29/2015 8:46:26 AM PST by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Zathras
OK ... all I know is Adobe since 1998 and I've HEARD the comments about being fat and heavy, but I don't know what it means to ME, who uses youtube frequently and other apps a website might direct me to

WHAT does a guy like me DO ?

Do I go inside and uninstall flash and install another ?

Get rid of adobe altogether .. the reader and a couple of etcetera's ??

What do I do ?

23 posted on 01/29/2015 8:46:30 AM PST by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but, they're true)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: CedarDave

Only one problem: if you’re running Internet Explorer 11.0 or Firefox 35.0.1 under Windows 7, YouTube still defaults to Adobe Flash 12.0.0.296 (the current version) because IE and Firefox does not support the VP9 video codec used by Google for HTML 5.0 video streaming.


24 posted on 01/29/2015 8:53:37 AM PST by RayChuang88 (FairTax: America's economic cure)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

Ad Block is your best defense against Adobe silliness. Unless you actually need to load Flash. Sometimes uninstalling Flash and putting it back helps, sometimes.


25 posted on 01/29/2015 8:59:09 AM PST by discostu (The albatross begins with its vengeance A terrible curse a thirst has begun)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Resettozero

The only folks I know that like Adobe are PDF Writer users who only have Word to compare it to.


26 posted on 01/29/2015 9:00:22 AM PST by discostu (The albatross begins with its vengeance A terrible curse a thirst has begun)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Baynative

Using Firefox allows the use of No-Script which prevents the nonsense from starting. It does take getting used too, but it’s worth it.


27 posted on 01/29/2015 9:02:58 AM PST by hlmencken3 (“I paid for an argument, but you’re just contradicting!”)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: CedarDave

MalwareBytes is constantly catching bugs delivered in Adobe updates.


28 posted on 01/29/2015 9:06:44 AM PST by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again,")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: knarf
OK ... all I know is Adobe since 1998 and I've HEARD the comments about being fat and heavy, but I don't know what it means to ME, who uses youtube frequently and other apps a website might direct me to

I find youtube to be impossible. To watch videos, I have the youtube downloader extension for firefox, and watch the downloaded file in media player classic (has the proper codecs built-in). What is funny is that a short video on youtube will take forever to load, and will be constantly buffering, but will take <1 second, in many cases, to download (and, of course, doesn't have any lag).
29 posted on 01/29/2015 9:13:51 AM PST by jjsheridan5 (The next Ronald Reagan will not be a Republican, but rather a former Republican)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: CedarDave

“iPad users who can’t receive Flash content that Apple has blocked.”

If this is the case then Apple sucks and needs to be put
on the shelf with GM as companies “undeserving” to operate
in America.


30 posted on 01/29/2015 9:14:49 AM PST by Slambat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: discostu

Microsoft Silverlight is a piece of crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It does not work. I can’t even play netflix videos with it. If I go to the test page then that works... But to used it in the actual world it does not work.

I have never installed Flash on any computer and had it not work.


31 posted on 01/29/2015 9:24:47 AM PST by Revel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Revel

I’ve never had a problem with Silverlight. And we have clients for our products at work that use it, so I’ve put it on a lot of computers.

Flash always seems to work at first. But on some machines it gets flaky, and just keeps getting flakier. My wife’s home machine is currently going through Flash psychosis. Lots of hard hangs, and just outright crashes.


32 posted on 01/29/2015 9:30:47 AM PST by discostu (The albatross begins with its vengeance A terrible curse a thirst has begun)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: CedarDave

Good.

I frickin hate Flash.

It is a resource hog and for some reason keeps stacking itself and bloating memory resources as you watch successive videos.

Only way to reduce its footprint in memory is to completely crash it and dump it out of resources.

.724 would be a better alternative.


33 posted on 01/29/2015 9:33:58 AM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CedarDave

Great! Flash is a royal PITA! All it gives me is ! !


34 posted on 01/29/2015 9:34:34 AM PST by norwaypinesavage (The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: knarf

HTML5 is innately supported in all (?) browsers today. Some don’t do it as well as others (Opera I’m looking at you) but it’s supported. So as a practical upshot as companies move from Flash to 5 you don’t have to do anything. You won’t have to uninstall Flash because you just won’t use it anymore. And the Reader is unaffected, though honestly you’ll find life is smoother PDFing with something like Foxit.


35 posted on 01/29/2015 9:35:37 AM PST by discostu (The albatross begins with its vengeance A terrible curse a thirst has begun)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: discostu

Zactly

That’s why I use “CutePDF” as a reader.

Adobe sucks.


36 posted on 01/29/2015 9:36:52 AM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: discostu

THIs THIS THIS THIS THIS

The only company that compares is Java. Adobe is notorious for bugs and security holes. Their applications are a pain in the rear to manage in an enterprise network due to the constant patches and updates. Just when you get around to testing and rolling one out, another one comes out, and that is for flash player alone. Then there is acrobat... that POS overpriced garbage.


37 posted on 01/29/2015 9:45:45 AM PST by drunknsage
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: hlmencken3; discostu

I use Firefox with Eset security. It works excellent until I get a link with a video that introduces adobe and one of it’s associated disasters.


38 posted on 01/29/2015 9:48:00 AM PST by Baynative (Did you ever notice that atheists don't dare sue Muslims?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: Boundless

“One immediate problem, alas, with this move to HTML5 is that HTML5 videos download and play automatically, and I haven’t figured out an easy way to control that (in FireFox, it appears that a lot of about:config hacking is needed).”

Try this:

NoScript Add-on for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/


39 posted on 01/29/2015 10:17:22 AM PST by PastorBooks
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: discostu
Adobe is one of the worst software companies on the planet, their success is a tragedy.

Problem is, Photoshop is best of breed, Quark got lazy on publishing and Adobe InDesign is now dominant for good reason, Illustrator is the best high end drawing package.

The subscription model is what made me swear off of them forever. I am at CS4, and at CS4 I will stay.
40 posted on 01/29/2015 10:29:37 AM PST by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-45 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson