Adobe Flash Player discontinued support?

twopenny

Just had this message and do I want to uninstall.

Can anyone tell me what this is about? I thought many videos on BBC news etc were Adobe Flash. I sometimes get asked if I want to play it - always/once etc.

Neil_Jones

This was announced years ago:  https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html - "As previously announced in July 2017, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player after 31 December 2020"

twopenny

Thanks Neil. I've been reading what I can online but don't know how this will affect me..

Seems it will be discontinued by a Windows update. As I have W7 there still seems to  be the odd rare update. Because of what I use it for I just save to hard drive or usb and not the cloud. Would I benefit from not allowing any updates, I'm just guessing that wouldn't make any difference to these videos not working though.

Neil_Jones

Most modern videos on the BBC News website don't use Flash, in fact they haven't used Flash for video since at least 2015.  Even the iPlayer doesn't use Flash, it used to, but that now uses the same player as everything else.

In Windows 8 and later Flash was built into the web browser (Internet Explorer).  In Windows 7 it was an entirely separate thing.  Its more likely the update of which you speak will only apply to 8 and 10, since in 7 it was never supplied out of the box in the first place.

Realistically Flash is only used now for legacy web games, like Pool and occasional "just for fun" games, and some website used to be totally made out of Flash, but the point of announcing the scrapping of support for Flash was to give sites like those time to adapt/rebuild.  If they haven't done it after three years they're never going to.

twopenny

That's reassuaring Neil.

I admit that I rarely get the box saying 'run Flash Player?' can't remmember the last. Good to know.

I just hope some old games will play. I was lucky enough to download them while you still could when they were loaded by a company for Christmases. Elf Bowl and Smack the Penguin

But at least day to day should be ok. As I use my computer mostly for browsing & research stuff it works just fine as it is.

stragglebod

All mainstream browsers will end support for Flash. If you have a game that runs as a self contained executable then that will include a Flash player within it, so should carry on working.

Money_Grabber13579

I got the message that I need to enable flash player on a mainstream website the other day. However, I now can’t remember what that website was, so I realise that’s not very helpful (other than to illustrate that flash still exists in places I wouldn’t expect it to)

Farway

Money_Grabber13579 said:

I got the message that I need to enable flash player on a mainstream website the other day. However, I now can’t remember what that website was, so I realise that’s not very helpful (other than to illustrate that flash still exists in places I wouldn’t expect it to)

I've had the same, but also can't remember the site but it was a common one used by many

No doubt when Flash ceases the site will have to fix it or lose their paying subscribers

I did update Flash and it worked OK W10

ste1234

I use WiFi file transfer pro which asks for flash permission before transferring files, I hope they update this before the end of the year however this seems unlikely,

Also partial to a game of miniclip pool!