Adobe Flash will be killed by 2020: Here’s what it means for websites, browsers

Adobe has confirmed that 2020 will be year when Flash finally gets killed. Adobe issued a statement on the same, and there's a long blog post explaining this. Google, Microsoft, Mozilla have all issued a timeline by when they will stop supporting Flash plugin.

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Adobe Flash has confirmed that 2020 will be year when the plugin finally gets killed.

Adobe has confirmed that 2020 will be year when Flash finally gets killed. Adobe issued a statement on the same, and there’s a long blog post explaining why this is happening. The post says “open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured,” and these are providing the same features as Flash. Also with browsers directly integrating open web standards, the need for plugins has been eliminated in many cases. Thus, Adobe will eventually end Flash and no longer provide security patches or updates to this after 2020.

Adobe will stop updating, distributing Flash Player by the end of 2020. It is asking content creators using Flash to migrate to the newer, open formats. However, the company will work with its partners Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla to support Flash on major operating systems, and issue regular security patches till the end of life for the product. “Adobe will continue to support Flash on a number of major OSs and browsers that currently support Flash content through the planned EOL,” adds the blogpost.

Now where Apple is concerned, it had stopped supporting Flash natively since 2010 on Mac. Also the software is no longer pre-installed on Macs, while iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch never supported Flash. The Safari browser is powered by the WebKit engine, which supports latest standards for media content including HTML Canvas, WebGL, and WebAssembly. On Safari, even if a user installs flash, it “remains off by default.”

Facebook has also issued a statement on the same, asking developers on Flash-based content to move to other standards soon. Google’s announcement also points out that today only 17 per cent websites are using Flash and this number continues to fall. The company says Google “Chrome will continue phasing out Flash over the next few years, first by asking for your permission to run Flash in more situations, and eventually disabling it by default.” After 2020, Flash will be totally removed from Chrome. Users who are Flash sites won’t face trouble if the developer moves to open standards.

Microsoft has also put out a detailed timeline on how it will phase out Flash from its Edge and Internet Explorer browsers. By mid to late 2019, Microsoft will disable Flash by default in both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, though users can re-enable them. By end of 2020, Flash will be removed entirely from both browsers on all Windows versions. Mozilla has said Flash will be disabled by default for most users in 2019, and after 2002, no version Firefox will load the plugin.

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