back to article Google updates Chrome Flash plugin for security, stability

Just when you thought Adobe Flash was close to dying out on the web, none other than Google has stepped in to give the much-maligned rich media plugin a new coat of polish. The latest stable version of the online ad-slinger's Chrome browser for Windows includes a redesigned version of the Flash plugin that Google reps say will …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I got stability and security 6 months ago by removing the flash plugin altogether. No more stupid web page tricks or the "click to flash" mess. Pure web experience as it should be.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They just love to blow their own trumpet don't they.

  2. HMB

    Disabled in a flash

    When I'm using my computer and suddenly uninvited sound flares up and it's flash that allowed it to happen, that's when I decided enough was enough.

    I decided to install a flash blocking extension for the crash-fantastic plugin. I'm not going to tolerate websites farting audio into my personal space without me clicking on them.

    The best / worst I heard was a friend whose computer suddenly started to make porn noises in the other room, because he'd left something open and it spontaneously re-ran itself after being quiet for hours.

    Having to click once on a flash area to activate it is slightly inconvenient sometimes, but I'm just happier now most flash is gone.

    The fact that a flash stability update makes news says a lot.

    1. Matt 75
      WTF?

      Re: Disabled in a flash

      yeah, cause of course you couldn't possibly fire off sounds automatically in a webpage via HTML5 audio... oh no, wait - you can!*

      And - you've no way of blocking it!

      People can design absolute crap using any technology. At least Flash content is easy to block and small to download. Just you wait until everyone starts doing ad banners with whacking great PNGs in HTML5!

      *except in Safari where such hideousness is blocked by the browser

  3. Eddy Ito

    Universal solution

    Write a NPAPI plugin that provides access to PPAPI plugins so then your precocious pappy will only need to ponder pepper plugin players for perusing porn, simples really.

  4. Scott Earle
    Stop

    99.9% of users fired up Flash?

    Saying that 99.9% of users "fired up Flash" is disingenuous. What it means is that 99.9% of users did one of two things:

    1. Went to a site that uses Flash as the default, and falls-back to something else (e.g. HTML 5 video) if it's not there. It would not surprise me if YouTube (for example) did that.

    2. Visited a site that had ads on it. Again, these sites will try to push Flash ads on you if they can, because they can get more useful info out of a Flash ad, as well as showing you an annoying moving ad and possibly sound or even one of those horrible expanding ads.

    How many of those users would have not even noticed that Flash was not there, if they had not had the Flash plugin installed?

    1. Matt 75

      Re: 99.9% of users fired up Flash?

      Yep, YouTube does use Flash as the default video format.

      Why? Because Flash - for all its faults - is still much, much better at handling video than the various browsers' HTML5 implementations.

      http://transitioning.to/2012/01/the-world-of-pain-that-is-html5-video/

  5. UKHobo

    Dear Neil,

    I'm sorry but you'll have to rewrite your article replacing the now illegal trademark term "Metro" with the term "Windows 8". Did you not receive the memo? Rest assured it will read much better after you've done that; Redmond marketing has assured the board that this will remove any potential confusion in future public correspondence.

    As a side note, also please be advised that for the moment it's ok to refer to Redmond as Redmond but that might change soon because we're in legal discussions about a possible infringement here with a small biscuit manufacturer in Sheffield, old England.

    Yours sincerely,

    Steve Balmer

  6. James Le Cuirot
    Go

    Opera and Firefox

    I don't know why those two camps won't embrace PPAPI. My wife uses Chromium on Linux and we found Flash was being a bit flaky so we switched to the PPAPI version and the difference was startling. As an Opera user, I find this situation frustrating.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Opera and Firefox

      Even with the new out of process plugins for Opera? I find it a bit slower to start but Flash can no longer crash the browser.

      One of the differences, of course, is that Chrome builds its own plugins.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmmm...

    ...that would be the version of Chrome that installed the other day then? I was wondering why it kept telling me flash had crashed .

    1. muttley
      Boffin

      Flash crash...two versions of flash active?

      Go to chrome://plugins and disable the flash version that *isn't* \PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll

  8. Snowy Silver badge

    Many site do not work without flash, BBC iPlayer being on on them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Worry no more

      http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Curious now

    Is there any way to trick a site into thinking you don't have flash, but automatically turn flash back on once it turns out not to have an HTML5 option? I have flash turned off but find having to turn it back on to look at video content on obscure sites every now and then annoying.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Curious now

      >I have flash turned off but find having to turn it back on to look at video content on obscure sites every now and then

      Obscure sites like You Tube or the BBC?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gordons alive!

    Squadron 40! DIVE!

  11. Danny Roberts 1

    Full screen - dual monitors

    I love Flashblock, I love seeing little grey boxes where the annoying adverts would have been. Can easily add iPlayer / Sky player to a whitelist. I noticed the upgrade when full screen video kept moving to the main monitor. For years I've had a hack which allows flash video to stay full screen on one of the secondary monitors while I work on the others.

    Currently disabled the latest version under 'plugins' until this monitor issue can be hacked again.

  12. Anonymous John
    Unhappy

    Tell that to my Android phone and tablet.

  13. Graham Marsden
    Alien

    "Just when you thought Adobe Flash was close to dying out on the web"

    "That is not dead which can eternal lie..."

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