Vice: Tracing the Sprawling Roots of Flash Preservation. “Once the platform for kooky animations and experimental games, Flash is no longer a staple for weird digital art, having just completed its stagger towards its end-of-life—with the long march towards its decline finally coming to a head.”
Jalopnik: When Adobe Stopped Flash Content From Running It Also Stopped A Chinese Railroad. “Adobe’s Flash, the web browser plug-in that powered so very many crappy games, confusing interfaces, and animated icons of the early web like Homestar Runner is now finally gone, after a long, slow, protracted death. For most of us, this just means that some goofy webgame you searched for out of misplaced nostalgia will no longer run. For a select few in China, though, the death of Flash meant being late to work, because the city of Dalian in northern China was running their railroad system on it.”
Fast Company: Adobe Flash is about to die, but classic Flash games will live on. “While the official version of Flash is going away, there are still plenty of ways to relive the plug-in’s glory days. Taking a little nostalgia trip might be one of the most comforting ways to wind down a brutal year.”
Reddit: Italian newspaper’s online archive is going to get lost because Flash won’t be supported anymore. “Italian newspaper’s online archive is going to get lost because Flash won’t be supported anymore – edit: might get lost, they are actually working on it but my hopes aren’t too high.” I am linking to Reddit instead of the original article because a) the original is in Italian; b) I liked the Reddit discussion.
Internet Archive: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive. “Great news for everyone concerned about the Flash end of life planned for end of 2020: The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection.”
Engadget: ‘FarmVille’ is shutting down for good on December 31st. “If you don’t remember, FarmVille was a farming simulator that let friends work together as neighbors — and post all about it on their Facebook timelines. As Eurogamer notes, it was the most-played game on Facebook for years. But with Adobe planning to stop distributing and updating Flash Player for web browsers, the FarmVille developers have decided to sunset the game.”
The Register: Microsoft: We’re getting rid of Flash by the end of the year – except you can still use it. “Microsoft confirmed that it plans to end support for Adobe Flash Player in its three browser variants at the end of the year, but the company intends to allow corporate customers to keep the outdated tech on life support beyond that date.”
ZDNet: Adobe wants users to uninstall Flash Player by the end of the year. “Adobe plans to prompt users and ask them to uninstall Flash Player from their computers by the end of the year when the software is scheduled to reach End-Of-Life (EOL), on December 31, 2020. The move was announced in a new Flash Player EOL support page that Adobe published earlier this month, six months before the EOL date.”
COGConnected: Flashpoint Project Archives 36,000 Flash Games Offline. “Flashpoint is a colossal offline archive of every Flash game the team can scoop up, preserved and protected from ultimate destruction. Flash is vanishing from the internet forever, you see. Adobe is officially killing the system on December 31st, 2020. That means BlueMaxima has less than a year to save every game they can from the slowly sinking ship.”
Ars Technica: After a decade of drama, Apple is ready to kill Flash in Safari once and for all. “Release notes for the latest version of the Safari Technology Preview, essentially the beta version of the macOS Web browser, explicitly state that the update ends support for Adobe Flash. This marks the end of the line for that Web technology on Macs.”
The Register: Google goes full Anti-Flash-ist, boots Adobe’s insecure monstrosity out of web search index . “Google plans to help Adobe’s Flash exercise its right to be forgotten – by gradually stripping the animated content from its search index, starting some time later this year.”
Motherboard: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet’s Most Creative Era. “A new book highlighting the visual evolution of web design paints a picture of a risk-taking creative culture that hasn’t been quite the same since Steve Jobs stuck a knife into Flash.”
Make Tech Easier: Why Are Browsers Ending Flash Support and How to Access Flash Content Afterwards. “Major browsers have been slowly pulling support for years now, and Adobe itself has announced that it would be stopping development and support in December 2020. This means that within the next year, pretty much no mainstream browsers will be able to access Flash content on the Web. No videos, no games, no vintage Flash sites, nothing. So why exactly is this happening, what’s the timeline, and what do you do if you really need to access some kind of flash content later?”
Neowin: Microsoft will remove Flash from all of its browsers by December 2020. “Microsoft posted an update today on when Flash will finally stop working in its browsers. The answer is, you guessed it, the end of 2020. In Edge Spartan (the current version of Edge) and Internet Explorer 11, everything will work as it does now throughout the rest of 2019. It will be completely gone by December 2020. The timeline really isn’t any different from the original announcement.”
How-To Geek: How to Play Adobe Flash SWF Files Outside Your Web Browser. “Web browsers are dropping support for Flash, but what if you have an SWF file to open? Never fear: Adobe offers a hidden Flash Player download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can open an SWF file outside your browser.”
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