Google Sunsetting Flash in Chrome; What's the Future?

[MetMan]

Google announced they plan to completely block Flash in Chrome by end of year. Chrome is over 50% of the browser market share to the best of my knowledge. What's the plan for this game in light of this info?

[SweaterPuppies]

No change. They will just tell you to use other browsers or their slim browser.

[MetMan]

So stop playing the game. Got it.

[Gwalben]

Google like to troll people, but their immediate plans seem to be just a small nuisance. They will disable Flash in all but 10 websites by default (including Google-owned YouTube of course). If you want to enable Flash on a site, you need to agree to whitelist the site. I have no problem making IE my primary rather than secondary browser if it comes down to that, but I don't think it will. This is potentially a bigger problem in the long term but doesn't seem to be much now.

[MetMan]

I'm on Ubuntu, but haven't fired up Firefox on here for years. Also, it's not trolling, it's trying to push people to HTML5.

[BB_Sarrunah]

Hello Settlers,

It seems the "blocking" of Flash can also be seen as an end to the "autoplay" function of Flash.
According to this original post, "if a site truly requires Flash, a prompt will appear at the top of the page when the user first visits that site, giving them the option of allowing it to run for that site".
Not only does this sound easy to enable, but prompting users to enable Flash on a site-to-site basis (instead of running Flash by default) raises user awareness when it comes to which Flash applications are running on their machine.

There are many websites that will continue to use Flash. The post mentions the plan comes with a default white-list. Youtube, owned by Google, is at the top of the white-list, so it's safe to say that Flash will be around for quite a while.
Because of this and also because changing the technology would mean a huge amount of work, there are currently no plans to port the game to a different technology such as HTML5. The focus is currently on providing support and content for the game instead of diverting a massive amount of resources to rewrite everything.

In conclusion, there is no actual reason for concern. It is possible that reducing the number of Flash applications by requiring them to be white-listed could actually be an upside as it might improve loading times in certain cases.

Happy Settling
BB_Sarrunah

[Wimpy]

My grand-daughter-in-law just went to work for Google in some management job. She always moves fast, but this...?

[EpsilonSilver]

@BB_Sarrunah Thank you for your comprehensive answer.

[ThePro]

@BB_Sarrunah if there is no cause for concern why has all support for flash been discontinued for all mobile devices? In that "orginal post u linked it states in there that they are pushing away from flash for HTML5. They are saying the only reason they are keeping flash in play is because of how big it is.. It like when dvd's replaced VHS and now VHS doesn't really exist anymore. Flash player is the VHS it will stay around for a while. What makes me nervous is that Bluebytes will wait till flash is really not supported anymore and we are all left without a game to play. All the big boys are cutting out flash or back seating it.. Microsoft, Mozilla, Chrome. Can you atleast assure us that IF flash goes unsupported The settlers Online will be recoded and playable?

[TboneX]

Here's the statement that concers me:

"Looking ahead, we encourage content creators to build with new web standards."

That's from Adobe, not Google in this article: http://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-b...bsites-exempt/

I'm confident that I can find ways to run Flash for a long time but what about getting new players who aren't already vested in the game enough to find ways to make it happen?

Is TSO going to die on the vine? I get it, a recode is HUGE. It may be an expense that isn't going to be recouped - or for other reasons something that's simply not an option. But I'm beginning to wonder also, if a conversation about future proofing should exist and information be shared if it does.