Re: Ready for Click-to-play Flash?

hi Bryan, thanks for testing all these Flash websites. The w3techs.com 
report on declining Flash usage was particularly interesting.

I'm a program manager at Mozilla and one of our 2015 programs is focused 
on reducing Flash problems. This program has a number of sub-projects 
working on different fronts. We want to reduce the need for Flash 
content by improving web alternatives (like MSE, EME, asm.js, and 
Shumway) and reduce problems related to Flash (like async plugin to 
reduce jank; improving our plugin sandboxing to improve security and 
reduce hangs; collaborating with Adobe to investigate Flash problems 
buried in Firefox crash reports and Bugzilla; Shumway for Flash ads to 
reduce jank, malware risk, and power usage).

This wiki has links to more information about the various projects:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Flash

As you point out, some major websites still rely on Flash, but they 
could still work with click-to-play. We could even make the transition 
to Flash click-to-play easier for users by only defaulting click-to-play 
on unvisited websites. I think the owner of this decision rests with 
Benjamin Smedberg.

btw, I thought all plugins (other than Flash) defaulted to 
click-to-play, but I just created a new Firefox profile and found the 
following plugins were "Always Activate" instead of "Ask to Activate" 
(i.e. click-to-play):

- Flash (no surprise)
- GCPlugin (GradeCam)
- Unity Player
- VidyoWeb

If we can make a common plugin like Silverlight click-to-play, we should 
be able to make these less common plugins also click-to-play. I will 
look into this.

thanks,
chris


On 4/6/15 8:54 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> It's been 10 months since our previous discussion on Flash [1] and the landscape has changed a lot for the better.  Youtube has gone <video>[2][3] by default pretty aggressively and Google has started converting [4] Flash adwords on their own.
>
> The overall change seems the biggest with audio streaming sites with the majority being plugin free now (see below).   Flash has lost almost 1/3 of it's (homepage only) marketshare according to 1 rough estimate [5].  It's losing about 1% every 4 months, but I expect that to start slowing.
>
> I think the Firefox 39/40 time frame makes some sense for having Flash go click-to-play*.  It seems some sites just need a little more push to get them to go <audio> or <video> by default.  I do believe Firefox usage is enough to push some of them (specifically to <audio>) and it doesn't appear to be nearly the "hill to die on" as it seemed 10 months ago.
>
> Thoughts?
> Bryan
>
> Firefox 39 would let there be an almost full Aurora and full Beta test before it goes to release.  It's also the same time async plugins is landing.  Firefox 38, aside from seeming to aggressive is also going to be an ESR release and I'd prefer to give enterprises some extra leeway there.
>
> Works today without Flash!  - audio
> grooveshark.com now works without flash, wasn't true 1 year ago
> libre.fm
> pandora.com
> soundcloud.com
> jamendo.com
>
> Doesn't work, unknown
> last.fm - still requires flash for web play
> spotify - seems like they recently went back to needing flash - https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Web-Player/Why-require-Adobe-Flash-in-Web-Player/m-p/1020725#M8871
>
> deezer.com - unknown, not launched in US yet
> rdio unknown
>
> Works today without Flash!  - video
> Youtube
> Vimeo
> www.dailymotion.com
>
> Doesn't work without flash (or plugins)
> Netflix - uses silverlight or EME, n/a
> Amazon Instant - both flash and silverlight, so n/a
> Comcast Xfinity Vidoes- both flash and silverlight, so again, n/a
> Hulu - requires flash
> twitch - requires flash
>
> [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.tech.plugins/PK237Yk1oWM
> [2] Firefox 37 has MSE enabled for just youtube (and on Windows only - Vista+)
> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/37.0/releasenotes/
> [3] YouTube now default to video (where MSE is available it seems)
> http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html
> [4] Adwords, auto Flash to HTML5
> https://plus.google.com/+GoogleAds/posts/BWVyFHGUi9n
> [5] 11.4% This month, 32% in 2009, 14.3% April 2014, 12.5% Nov 2014
> http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cp-flash/all/all
> * Just standard click-to-play, no fancy stuff like my previous proposal.
>