Replacing Adobe Flash Player

[MichaelNyby]

So I have been getting these notices about bye-bye Adobe Flash Player and I suppose I have to make some decisions in the next few weeks about what to do about that going bye-bye and if anyone has any ideas I sure wouldn't mind if you'd share those ideas with me.

Thank you.

What ideas, you might ask?

Well, I might be having to convert existing stuff I might have and have forgotten about --- especially as I have a number of units spread out over a few locations and some I haven't looked into in a fair bit.

Next idea would be if I run into something I might have watched in the past using the Adobe product --- what can replace Adobe?

And I'll bet there are other questions I haven't thought of, yet.

Would appreciate any ideas or answers anyone might have.

[BC_Programmer]

Wait until it is disabled (or find a way to disable it now) and see if anything you do is actually affected before deciding whether you need to take action.

There is a good chance you won't even notice. I don't think I've had any Adobe Flash installed on my main machines for about 5 or 6 years. (which was a task unto itself since Windows update insisted on trying to reinstall it frequently)

[MichaelNyby]

So I'm in a better position to do a limited amount of research and going to the Adobe folks would be the best second move. (First was asking folks in this community; and thank you for that response, BC_Programmer.)

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html#

So in order of perplexity I first choose to highlight the second sentence of #4:

Customers should not use Flash Player after the EOL Date since it will not be supported by Adobe.

That strikes me as indicating we can still use the product after 2020.  Is that strike one, or do I get rewarded with a hit?  Do any of you read that as indicating we'll be able to continue to use the product in 2021 if it is already installed on a unit before the close of business in 2020?

Okay, the next sentence I want to highlight on that Adobe page that link above takes you to really is territory that takes me right off the ball field --- from #2:

Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content.

HTML5 is a viable alternative to Adobe Flash Player?

Clearly I am clueless as to what that Adobe Flash Player product has been helping me with for so many years.  Kind of feels like I suddenly found out I have four tires on my car and they have been helping me drive the car around for some 50 something years.  (I've lived in some countries many years ago where a shortage of tires made the three-wheel vehicles a necessity.)

Anyway, HTML5 replacing Adobe Flash Player has me lost!  Then there are those two the Adobe folks point to, WebGL and WebAssembly, that I don't think I even knew existed.  This whole business seems mighty complicated.

[BC_Programmer]

Adobe Flash Player lets you play Shockwave content (SWF) files and Flash Video (FLV) files.

Typically people would use it through a browser plugin/extension, which allows websites to have that Shockwave content and Flash Video on the page. Many years ago, youtube used it, for example. Some games and cartoons that were shown on web pages used Flash Player.

That's pretty much it. Fewer and fewer websites make use of it, largely because games can be created in-browser using HTML5 now, and also integrates video playback features. WebAssembly is an effort to create a sort of machine language that can be used on web pages securely, so developers can develop web tools in any language and have them run client side. WebGL is a way of doing  3-D from Javascript.

Most browsers will block Flash Player altogether before the EOL date. I think Chrome already blocks it completely, though I'm not sure.

Clearly I am clueless as to what that Adobe Flash Player product has been helping me with for so many years.

Well, what did you think Flash Player did?

[MichaelNyby]

< < < truncated > > >

Well, what did you think Flash Player did?

I think that I simply looked upon the flash player as something like what I learned to do many years ago with the Mandelbrot Set; it's there, it's real, it has a purpose, but I will never fully understand it so just let it do its thing and don't give it any more thought.

I think in this computer world there is a whole lot of that going on with a whole bunch of folks, and I think that way because I don't think I have ever met any one human that fully understands all of this computer stuff.

Have you?

So I seemed to have accepted that this flash player served some purpose and then just moved on.  Now they take it away and so I am forced to find out what in the heck it was doing for me over many years and then find out what is going to replace it.

Maybe that's what I have to do.

Maybe I need not worry at all because somebody else already embedded some software into some other software and so I can just keep right on going down Ignorant Lane and the software works fine without my having to know why or even what it does.

And I don't think that is so uncommon.  Take the automobile.  How many people know how to fix one?

Well, let's go back to before the computers took over that machine.  How many people knew what a carburetor did?  That was a piece of equipment that frequently wouldn't work correctly, but many times when people were perplexed by it not working it really was easy to fix.  But people drove cars and didn't mind that they couldn't fix that piece of equipment.

Most people know how to change tires, though.

So to get back to the key point, I don't think I ever really asked myself what the heck that flash player product did, or how it worked.  It just did whatever it was supposed to do and no thought given to it, unless there may have been some notice that some sort of update needed to be done.