back to article Safari 10 dumps Flash, Java, Silverlight, QuickTime in the trash

Apple has taken its turn at the hammer, and added its own i-Nail to the coffin of Flash. Over at the Webkit blog, Ricky Mondello of the Safari team writes that Safari 10, due in the northern fall, will “behave as though common legacy plug-ins on users’ Macs are not installed”. Instead, it will try to default to HTML5 for …

  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Childcatcher

    That is all well and good but...

    Until the likes of the BBC and others too numerous to name get off their fat arses and nuke the need for flash from their end this bodge by Apple will still be needed.

    As for Silverlight, the darn thing keeps appearing in the list of optional things to install/patch. MS could nuke it if they wanted but they can't be bovvered (like everything else it seems ATM).

    I wanted to see how to remove haze from some photos. All the turorials demanded flash. So I had to listen to the sound description and try to work it out from there.

    Can someone please stick a knife in Flash. I'll even buy them a few pints. I susprect that I would not be alone the day that 99.99% of the internet works without flash installed.

    1. MrMur

      Re: That is all well and good but...

      I specifically came on the comments to moan about the BBC, but I was beaten to the punch. It's getting a bit embarrassing for them tbh.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That is all well and good but...

        See here!!

        https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/website_moving_from_adobe_flash#outgoing-485945

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: BBC and Flash

          The BBC is moving away from from Flash, having had a HTML5 player in Beta since September:

          Apple iOS, Windows 10 Mobile and BlackBerry users will get the HTML5 player by default, as will compatible desktop browsers where Adobe Flash is not installed or enabled.

          ...

          However, the only OS X browser it works on is Opera 32. ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5 ). The reason the BBC give is that "Safari on Mac OS X doesn’t support AVC3 via its Media Source Extensions implementation. It does, however, support HLS, and whilst we could offer HLS streams to Mac OS X Safari users (some of you have noticed that you can pretend to be an iPad and you get a working player) we’ve deliberately not enabled it during the trial. " Apparently trying to achieve the full capabilities of iPlayer (HD programmes, Live Rewind etc) in HLS would be too much effort for just one platform, and slow the complete switch away from Flash.

          ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8be5501d-43e7-4bf6-8f1e-e7037980a0f0 )

          So, I don't know how this works, or even what AVC3 is, but could it be that tricky for Apple to implement? It doesn't affect me, but can somene make a 'feature request' to Apple? Or do all Mac users watch content through iPads and iTVs instead?

          Still, it is encouraging that the BBC is already on the road away from Flash.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That is all well and good but...

      So knowledgeable users add them to the whitelist, and the clueless contact BBC support saying "why the heck doesn't your site work for me" until they spend so much money on front line support teaching people how to fix their whitelists that it registers on the beancounter's radar and they realize it is time for them to abandon Flash like the rest of the world already has.

      If Chrome and Firefox followed suit the BBC would be overwhelmed and forced to admit defeat in a matter of weeks.

      1. P. Lee

        Re: That is all well and good but...

        And it does appear to be a whitelist per site, not per plugin-type.

        So, do you trust flash from the BBC but would like to avoid drive-bys from tpb.ru? Not a problem.

        1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

          Re: do you trust flash from the BBC

          If they are so far behind the times in not reading and heeding the advice of the technical press, then the answer is "no."

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That is all well and good but...

      The thing is, most BBC content is available without Flash.

      It chooses to show you flash content under certain circumstances (not exactly sure what they are - maybe just user agent, maybe if it detects flash on your machine). I have "click to run plugins" set in chrome and a video news item on the BBC will ask me to run flash.

      If I F12 and emulate a mobile device the video plays without flash (presumably HTML5). This is also clear when using an iPad to browse the site.

      So they can show content without flash but for some reason are stubbornly using flash as their default.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: That is all well and good but...

        >So they can show content without flash but for some reason are stubbornly using flash as their default.

        The BBC team give their reasons here:

        http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8be5501d-43e7-4bf6-8f1e-e7037980a0f0

        Something to do with OSX Safari not supporting AVC3, and HLS not allowing the full iPlayer functionality. Mac users can use Opera 32 instead to access BBC HTML 5 content, though (and I'm no expert) it would seem more sensible if Apple could tweak Safari.

        1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

          Re: That is all well and good but...

          So when I use Firefox on OSX why does nothing play? Safari is nowhere in sight.

          Feeble excuse if you ask me,

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: That is all well and good but...

            > So when I use Firefox on OSX why does nothing play? Safari is nowhere in sight.

            Really? You found it quicker to type a question than to visit the links posted above? Tch.

        2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: That is all well and good but...

          Something to do with OSX Safari not supporting AVC3, and HLS not allowing the full iPlayer functionality. Mac users can use Opera 32 instead to access BBC HTML 5 content, though (and I'm no expert) it would seem more sensible if Apple could tweak Safari.

          Seeing as Safari on the I-Pad and I-Phone already work fine without Flash, I reckon that by the autumn the BBC and others will have switched to running whichever DRM system Apple chooses to work with: you don't think you're going to be able to save any of that HTML 5 video, do you? This might also explain the EOL for older Macs which presumably don't have the necessary hardware.

    4. energystar
      Windows

      Lacking at BBC...

      Is Seniority in decisions.

    5. Graham Triggs

      Re: That is all well and good but...

      They already have a HTML 5 desktop beta of iPlayer, and they serve media to mobile devices without Flash.

      Surely it can't take them much more than flipping a switch - the question is how many visitors are using old browsers that have to use Flash in order to work.

  2. Shadow Systems

    Doing away with the cruft?

    Good.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Doing away with the cruft?

      One of the rules of practical computing is that you never can do away with cruft. It will ooze back through the backdoor, stickier and oozier than before.

      (It has to with it being easier to go into technical debt and compound on it than to to actually design and think, and easier to hire hapless knuckle-dragging coders than to retain capable software developers who can understand a problem and formulate a solution. I guess.)

      1. David Glasgow

        Re: Doing away with the cruft?

        Cruft is not sticky and oozy. It's sort of flaky, whiskery and dusty.

  3. Scroticus Canis
    Unhappy

    Will it fix Safari playing with Flash settings?

    Safari 9.1.1 plays with Flash settings; whenever it is launched Safari changes the Flash system preferences settings from block camera/mike & peer to peer, to ask. Flash and all plug-ins are switched off in the Safari settings so why does it play with the Flash preferences?

    Maybe this feature will be cured in version 10. No problem with Firefox.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Auto user agent charge?

    In my experience, the majority of sites can be accessed when you switch the browser User Agent to iPad or something, so it baffles me why those sites cannot default to that method of delivery.

    It would be the quickest fix ever for the BBC - the capability is already there..

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Auto user agent charge?

      >so it baffles me why those sites cannot default to that method of delivery.

      Apparently the 'iPad' method of delivery is HLS, which doesn't currently allow full iPlayer functionality without more effort from the iPlayer development team. They don't want to make that effort for just one browser, since they are keen to get HTML 5 delivery working across all devices.

      The dev team say that OSX Safari is missing something called AVC3, which is required for HTML 5 iPlayer delivery. I don't know, but maybe their assumption is that it wouldn't be that hard for Apple to add it to OSX Safari (since it's in iOS Safari already).

      In the mean time, their unofficial advice to OSX users seems to be ' pretend to be an iPad or use Opera 32'.

  5. Mage Silver badge

    I welcome this.

    It proves that Apple can do really smart stuff.

    Now where is the browser that by default blocks cookies, microphone, camera, location data, scripts etc etc unless you white list them?

  6. chivo243 Silver badge

    Whooo fuckin Hoo!

    It's about time. Glad to see this happening. If all browsers did this, it wouldn't take long for sites to realize their traffic is down and put 2 and 2 together and then change their SOP...

  7. bazza Silver badge

    Satirical Observation

    Web standards are terrific. Look at how un-fragmented they are, a boon to all mankind!

  8. energystar
    Headmaster

    Sound like trashing 'dumb' plug-in interfaces...

    The more the better.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A friend of a friend has asked me to ask you all...

    whether pornhub will still be available?

  10. Daniel B.

    Java

    I still need it. Do I still get the option to use the plugin?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But will it support HTML 5 more?

    Safari and its Webkit are much decribed as being the new Internet Explorer. So have they improved things to take Apple from being a distant last at html5score?

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