Will Flash player be supported after 2020? Topic is solved

[Aleksi]

That would be great so i can enjoy my flash games longer

[athenian200]

I don't think we're planning to drop support for NPAPI plugins any time soon, but there's a chance Adobe will take Flash player downloads offline after 2020. So if you have a Flash player, it won't stop working, but it might be hard to obtain Flash Player in the future.

[Aleksi]

Thank you!

[Moonraker]

Some people are still using v11.2 on some gamesites,I use half a dozen sites for my 5 year old son and don't intend to stop using flash except if the gamesites quit using it of course.

[moonbat]

except if the gamesites quit using it of course.

That's the bigger worry..if they do that then having it won't matter anyway. At this point I don't think there is any other popular NPAPI plugin left. Flash and Java were the 2 main plugins in use, now the Java plugin also won't be supported beyond version 9.

[Moonchild]

There are literally 10s of thousands of creative projects using Flash, that can't easily and won't be rewritten to anything else. There will always be a need for it if you want to continue to be able to view/play these Flash games/movies/interactive pieces of art/novels/etc.

NPAPI is a very mature, solid plugin system and there is no intention whatsoever to drop this in UXP.

[moonbat]

There are literally 10s of thousands of creative projects using Flash, that can't easily and won't be rewritten to anything else. There will always be a need for it if you want to continue to be able to view/play these Flash games/movies/interactive pieces of art/novels/etc.

The concern more is whether these Flash game sites will continue to stay up after that date, given that the majority browsers in the market will instantly truncate their audience.

I feel bad that all these initial technologies the old Mozilla developed are robust as they are (XUL/XPCOM/NPAPI/XPI installer) and live on under UXP, but there's no hope for any large scale new development using them other than a few extensions that we have here. With plugin development especially, since the biggest ones Flash/Java are ceasing further development.
Unless Pale Moon grows in usage enough for big companies and developers of popular extensions to again take notice.

Off-topic:
Back in the day, I used to open Flash/Shockwave games/animations in IE, look up the name of the embedded object and save it from the browser cache. Desktop media players can play Flash files, so I'd be able to play the game offline without having to go to the site each time. Of course this was only for self contained games that didn't need any network access to function.

[Moonchild]

We can't predict the future.

The sites might fold, or we might see a surge in our usership, or maybe the websites find other ways to present the flash content to their audience (although any such system is very likely going to be a lot less performant).
What Adobe should do is open-source Flash if they no longer want to maintain it, since its internal structures have been largely unknown and having to work from reverse-engineering of the SWF format for alternatives has been preventing proper alternative development. But it's very unlikely they will.

[letmeindude]

There is BlueMaxima's Flashpoint, the webgame preservation project (28 000 games in v6.3):
http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

[Moonraker]

There is BlueMaxima's Flashpoint, the webgame preservation project (28 000 games in v6.3):
http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

Nice looking project and i admire the effort taken but unfortunately the linux version seems a bit of a pain and im not prepared to install wine at all,

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Linux DOES have flash and atm it is just as up to date as other operating systems.

[Moonraker]

Linux DOES have flash and atm it is just as up to date as other operating systems.

Thanks im aware of that as i have benn using flash on linux for years.My concern is if the googlemeister cracks his whip and puts an end to flash gamesites etc.
I run flash in pale moon disabled "until" i use my specific sites.I don't see the harm in this even with a out of date flash player unless of course some of the gamesites go to the darkside etc.

[Pentium4User]

Code: Select all

 Nice looking project and i admire the effort taken but unfortunately the linux version seems a bit of a pain and im not prepared to install wine at all,

You DO NOT need Wine, Flash is natively supported on Linux, see https://get.adobe.com/en/flashplayer/

Some distributions have packages, e.g. Ubuntu.
This is the easiest way to install it.

[SpockFan02]

Q: What operating systems do you support?
A: Windows 7 and up, as thoroughly updated as possible.

Linux support in Flashpoint is currently experimental due to a lack of maintainers.