Why Adobe Flash Player is on borrowed time

Stephen McCance August 21, 2015

Following the announcement by Amazon that ads on its network will be unable to use Adobe Flash Player from September 1, we take a look at the demise of the once integral multimedia player.

Just a few years ago, if someone mentioned online video, the word flash would also have appeared in their sentence. However since the launch of HTML5 in October 2014, major browsers and websites have steadily been dropping the video playing giant.

With the success of Adobe’s Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc) showing no sign of slowing down, the rejection of Flash is unlikely to cause too much damage to their profits. Nonetheless it still signifies a major changing of the guard in the internet world, and a likely impending doom for Flash player.

Following a huge security breach, this July Mozilla totally disabled Flash support in Firefox, requiring users manually enable it. Apple has also turned its nose up at the video player, requiring Safari users to have the latest edition installed in order to use it on their browser. Even Google Chrome, a browser that automatically installs Flash when you download it, has taken steps to cut down on flash usage, citing battery draining as a reason for pausing it in the background of Chrome. The most significant pie in the face of Flash was its dropping by Youtube earlier this year.

Step forward HTML5 (the man with the moustache). HTML5 is a code that sits within a website which enables multimedia content to be displayed. Most websites are now written in the programming language HTML. Using HTML5 to display video is quick, uses less storage than Flash, and is mobile/SEO friendly. Importantly HTML5 is less susceptible to security breaches, currently a major concern in the tech industry.

It may be a while before Adobe Flash Player finally disappears to the bottom of the sinkhole but with giants such as Google, Amazon and Apple lining up to bury it, the once mighty media player is on borrowed time.

If your website uses Adobe Flash Player and you are worried about visitors not being able to watch your videos, contact us. We can do a quick assessment and provide a solution to fit your budget and time limit.