It’s pretty well known by now that Adobe’s Flash player isn’t secure to be using, yet a lot of major websites still insist on using the crippled technology. This latest move from Google should help steer the last remains few sites into using the much faster, secure and less resource heavy HTML5 Video. This year Google will be blanket blocking the Flash plugin from Chrome – mainly the kind which loads elements in the background which can cause browsing to be slowed down somewhat. Also on mobile devices where battery life is essential, HTML5 is much less intensive.
So, what is Google doing?
Google’s plan is from September with Chrome 53 it will begin blocking Flash from the background of websites and then from December with Chrome 55 Google will be disallowing access to any websites which don’t support HTML5 Video, although once you load the site you’ll have access to enable Flash.
I can’t access Flash sites on Safari though…
So far the entire Apple platform hasn’t been supporting Flash on iOS since it’s inception in 2007, partly because Steve Jobs saw the massive downsides with it and also he had a decade long grudge with Adobe from the Mac early days. But this isn’t going to change at all with Safari and to be honest I use Safari as my daily driver and the only thing I need Chrome for is Netflix, very old YouTube videos and the EdgeMax software on the router I have.
Source: Google blog post
