TECH NEWS – Nowadays, Flash has been somewhat outdated, which is why Adobe is abandoning the support for Flash altogether.

Back in 2017, Adobe, together with industry leaders, decided that when 2020 ends, so will the support for Flash, and from January 12, there will be no updates, plus content using Flash (which in the past has been the base for many websites, too) will be blocked. „Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020, and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems,” Adobe says.

On December 8, the company published the following statement: „Today marks the final scheduled release of Flash Player for all regions outside of Mainland China. We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades. We are proud that Flash had a crucial role in evolving web content across animation, interactivity, audio, and video.  We are excited to help lead the next era of digital experiences.” Microsoft also issued a new update (KB4577586) for its Windows OSes, which will uninstall Flash Player with it.

Adobe acquired Flash in 2005, effectively during its peak: at that time, over 98% of computers connected to the Internet used the technology. However, the time has stepped over the technology (which was necessary to watch videos on YouTube before Google brought in the HTML5 technology), and nowadays, Flash Player contains security issues. Still, the Internet Archive will try to preserve the web content using this tech for the future.

„Utilizing an in-development Flash emulator called Ruffle, we have added Flash support to the Internet Archive’s Emularity system, letting a subset of Flash items play in the browser as if you had a Flash plugin installed. While Ruffle’s compatibility with Flash is less than 100%, it will play a very large portion of historical Flash animation in the browser, at both a smooth and accurate rate,” Jason Scott of IA wrote.

You can find a collection of Flash content here. RIP Flash.

Source: WCCFTech