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

On 6/3/14, 10:28 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> I agree that we can't treat it like any other plugin right now, but that should be our goal to get to that point?
If the cost/benefit is right.

>
>>> Most sites that I view nowadays look totally fine if Flash are blocked.
>> You and I probably have a different perspective on this than most
>> people. That's why we do user research in the first place. Since many
>> people don't even understand that Flash is a plugin separate from the
>> browser, they had serious trouble understanding why we were asking them
>> to click just to play the videos and see the ads.
> I don't see this being substantially different from the click-to-play being implemented for other plugins (except affecting more sites).  As you know, the click to play implementation has had some nice refinements since that test.
As a result of that test, yes! The reason Flash is substantially 
different is that there is frequently functional Flash which is 
completely hidden on a page: used for copy/paste, or for some audio system.
>
>> That's true, but does it matter? You can view the content correctly
>> without a binary plugin.
> I see that as a temporary workaround, and the longer term goal being have everyone code in HTML/CSS/JS directly.  I want Flash to stop being used on the web, not just in Firefox.
I think we might disagree here. As long as we can render Flash content 
using standard HTML/CSS/JS (Shumway), I don't think it is/should be our 
goal now to get rid of SWF content. We can achieve almost all of our 
goals of having a privacy-respecting, fast, standardized, open web and 
use Shumway to render existing SWF content.
> Anyway, I'm happy to do the work to get us some hard telemetry data on this as you described previously.  (I might start with top sites just to double check feasibility.)  What results would change your mind about this?  (aka how many broken sites are considered acceptable)
The ultimate answer is that we can't afford to die on this hill. If 
users leave Firefox because we disabled Flash, then we can't do it. So 
maybe if we get to a point where all the major video sites are using 
<video> and not Flash, then we can discuss whether click-activating the 
remaining functional and advertising Flash would affect Firefox usage, 
and test that using our beta channel.

But I don't think there is any evidence that would sway me at least 
until youtube is using <video> by default and then we can review the 
landscape again.

--BDS