Re: What's the long term plan with Click-to-play and Flash?

> What is the problem you are trying to solve, and why do you think this 
> proposal will solve it? 

1. Make it crystal clear that Mozilla wants Flash to go away and that developers should stop making new things in it.  And that Flash will eventually be treated just like every other plugin.  
2. Get the web more in shape for the fact that Firefox on Linux will lose Adobe's Flash in 3 years.  (I'm a Linux user so it's personal :P )
3. I want to eventually see a web without *any* plugins.  

>  From user research, we know that some users expect advertisements in 
> the page, and when we tried blocking Flash, these users were confused 
> about why the page didn't look right and were unhappy that we broke the web.

They were confused by the Click-to-play part?  When was this test?

Most sites that I view nowadays look totally fine if Flash are blocked.
I remember when formatting would get messed up blocking Flash but that hasn't happened in a while (IME).

I do agree that right now, advertisers are the biggest item keeping Flash not click-to-play though.  Hence, why I try to address them first in my plan.

> > b. Attack sites are the other big reason to have many plugins per page.
> I very much doubt this. We do know that one of the leading vectors for 
> non-targeted malware attacks is plugins on advertising networks. I doubt 
> that there will be a high plugin *count* in those attack scenarios, though.

True.  Could be some crossover, but it would likely be accidental.

> Our current strategy is to continue development of Shumway to the point
> where it displays most web content reliably and performs acceptably, and
> then try to switch users to Shumway with a fallback to "real" Flash if 
> we detect incompatible content. I believe that will be the best way to 
> solve the privacy issues with Flash without causing pain to our users.

That does help solve the privacy issues with Flash, but does nothing to make developers stop using Flash.

I also don't think Shumway can ever fully implement Flash (think DRM bits), so this has a long term plan that still includes Adobe Flash.  If the advertisers have a choice that they can ask for the unimplementable bits of Flash to get the plugin (and therefore mitigate any privacy protections) they would totally do that.

Some advertisers already fall back to non-flash ads (check out the ads on www.phoronix.com) if they don't detect Flash.  My plan can help push them to make that the default.  

Thanks,
Bryan