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Flash: End of Life

Posted: 26 Jul 2017, 12:05
by yogi
We've talked about it here previously and now Adobe made it official. Adobe Flash Player will be dead and buried in 2020. I've abandoned use of it nearly two years ago and frankly do not miss it. Some multimedia will not display in my browser now, but that's rare and not my problem. If the content developer wants me to see their work, they need to cater to MY needs and not push their own on me. Admittedly it will be a problem for a lot of people, but the writing has been on the wall for a few years now. Adios Flash Player. It was nice knowing you.

https://www.wired.com/story/adobe-final ... lash-dead/

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 27 Jul 2017, 00:41
by Kellemora
They've already ruined flash player a long time ago. Which is one reason I continue to run Google Chrome version 55 on one of my computers, with the 2015 version of Flash Player or PepperFlash actually. Problem is if you close Google Chrome, it reloads the current version, so you have to go in and reinstall the old version, and some websites won't let you use an older version.

Slashkey is one of the largest game providers on Farcebook, so is Zynga which most of us wish would dry up and blow away.
People have invested a lot of money with Slashkey for virtual items in their games, and their game can only work the way it does on Flash Player or equivalent. The game cannot be converted to another system without drastically altering how the game works.
For this reason, the rumor is, Slashkey is developing their own version of Flash Player, much in the same way Google has developed their own version and call it PepperFlash.

As you pointed out several times, HTML5's video display is simply that, just a simple display program, not a multi-level graphics presentation package.

We all realize the Flash Player technology is now ancient and has so many patches and work-arounds it looks like a patchwork quilt with lots of rags attached to the sides, hi hi...

Personally, I don't think a multi-million dollar corporation with over 6 million daily players is going to abandon their source of income and walk away with their hands in their pockets. They'll fix it somehow for sure! Even if it means having to install their own version of Flash Player, which will probably self-load anyhow when you launch the game.
They've already reached the limits of Flash Player and found work-arounds for those limitations, which does cause a lot of problems from time to time. But I doubt they will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 27 Jul 2017, 01:15
by yogi
Although Facebook (fb) doesn’t operate a web browser like other tech companies, many developers and companies have built video games for the social network that use Flash.

Facebook said that Flash-based video games will continue to run until the end of 2020, but the company is urging “developers to follow the timelines set by browsers, as this may impact your decision to migrate sooner.”

For these game developers, Facebook wants them to migrate their Flash-based games to HTML5, which it said is “quickly becoming the best path forward for web game development.”
So much for golden goose eggs.

https://fortune.com/2017/07/25/apple-mi ... ook-flash/

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 27 Jul 2017, 18:12
by Kellemora
Unless they make some MAJOR CHANGES to HTML5, there is no way the former Flash Games could run on HTML5 graphics.

HTML5 graphics are single layer. While Flash uses over 20 layers of depth.
Comparing HTML5 graphics to Flash, is like comparing the single layer Windows PAINT program to multi-layer PhotoShop, hi hi...

Those of us playing Farm Town have farms layered 9 levels deep with farming plots, then have flowers on top of that, and trees on top of the flowers, and then all the building on top of those. Like using a good graphics program, you have to turn off all the layers and then turn on the particular layer you want to see. Want to harvest flowers, turn off crops, buildings, and trees so you can see them. Can't do that in HTML5, no way, no how. And almost all the games available for flash are multi-layered games.

The only way game companies can use HTML5 for their games, is if they write the code that emulates the things flash can do. This will make their programs huge and wieldy to say the least. But at least they will then not have to worry about a 3rd party company, as they create the image that gets displayed themselves.

Ironically, this is one reason I try to do things that are not reliant on some other companies software, up to a point.
When you someone else's proprietary program and can't afford to keep up with their changes, before long all of your work becomes obsolete and unreadable by their new programs, as happened with my genealogy files. Fortunately, I found enough work arounds to get them copied and upgraded enough to load them onto Ancestry, and then back that up to the current GEDCOM, which is also changing. Family Tree Maker, changed to Family Tree for Windows, then upgraded several times, changed hand from Broaderbund to someone else, who has now dumped it to someone else. FTW cannot read FTM files, not even those upgraded from FTM to FTW, to FTW before the changeovers. Thank goodness for GEDCOM, as crude as it may be.

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 27 Jul 2017, 23:36
by yogi
Like anything else in computer technology, the game developers will have to move up to the current level or die. Flash is going away no matter what they decide to do.

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 28 Jul 2017, 20:11
by Kellemora
Agreed! I like the idea of gaming companies having their own internal platform to not rely on 3rd party products.
As I mentioned in the other post. Slashkey as bought the programming for a virtual gaming platform so they can modify it to work with their games. It's supposed to have nearly unlimited potential compared to Flash. A billion times more secure than Flash also.

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 28 Jul 2017, 23:48
by yogi
Don't know anything about Slashkey, but if they can do all the animation and graphics on their server, more power to them. And, they WILL need a lot of power to do that. Flash gave developers direct access to the OS, just like Active X, and that's the security risk. If all that access is limited to the server side, then it will indeed be much more secure than what Adobe is currently selling.

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 19:09
by Kellemora
I don't know for sure since I don't play them, but apparently many of the virtual games out there are running on their own servers, because the players don't need to have 3rd party software to play them. The game my step-son plays has it's own way of connecting, probably something similar to a web browser, but you don't have to open a web browser to get into the game after you've joined and downloaded their start module.
My wife plays a lot of Big Fish games, and as long as she has their control module on her desktop, she doesn't need to open a browser first. Although at one time you had to have Flash installed, that has not been the case now for a number of years. It only works on Windows computers though. Probably a good thing or I would be wasting time playing their games myself, hi hi...

Although you need a web browser to connect to my bank, once you are connected, it takes you to a secure server they run. I'm almost certain it totally bypasses the actual web browser because I accidentally closed my web browser but did not lose my connection to them on their secure server which was in a different window, not a browser tab. When their window does open, you don't see what you normally do if you open something in a new browser window. Other than my top and bottom Linux panels, I see nothing like a browser. But when I do close out of their program, I'm normally taken back to my browser, except the time I accidentally closed it. When I exited out of the banking system, I was back to my desktop.

Things change so fast these days, this old man has a lot of trouble keeping up.
Rented a car, there was no place to put the key, even though they gave me a key. As long as the key is in my pocket, you can start and drive the car, open the doors, etc. at the push of a button.
Sure beats having to hand crank the old tin lizzie, hi hi...

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 29 Jul 2017, 19:42
by yogi
I'm fairly certain that a lot of the "secure" financial transactions done over the Internet are sandboxed. They use a kind of virtual machine with everything encrypted. Thus there is nothing to hack once you log off. Google's G-mail is exactly that. They can embed their virtual machine in your browser or it can stand alone as an app on a mobile device. It's a great idea but causes delays and display conflicts from time to time.

Gamers use something called Steam. There are several Steam-like servers for gamers, and like the virtual bank teller windows you don't need a browser after you are connected. In fact you don't need a browser to connect in the first place with Steam. The big time games install on your local machine and run from there, but the FarceBook types may not. All you need is an interface to their game server and FarceBook is all to happy to provide that. With the demise of Flash the working innards of the games will be eliminated from the client computer. It could be replaced with a Steam-like window and run from the server side. When you have a million players logged in all at once, that would be one hella server needed to run all that animation.

You're right. It IS all very complicated. I used to play Pinball off a CD on my WIn98 machine. Those were the good old days. I still regret recycling that 16 bit machine :mrgreen:

Re: Flash: End of Life

Posted: 30 Jul 2017, 18:46
by Kellemora
I wish I kept a couple of the Trash-80 portables. The one with built-in monitor, and the keyboard was in the lid.
Did you see how much money they fetched recently?
Don't know who are why someone wanted them, but they paid big bucks to get some of the old early computers.

Maybe the game companies lease space on the mega-farm server arrays?

We have some massive Solar Farms here in TN, some of which are used to power Server Farms.
Both Google and Amazon have huge server farms here, and I know they lease server space to a lot of game providers through their AWS program.