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Adobe to Kill Off Flash at End of 2020, According to Spokesperson

Formerly a mainstay among plugins, Flash’s days are officially numbered according to Adobe. The company announced that it would fully end support for the technology by the end of 2020.

A spokesperson said in a statement that Adobe “will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats [HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly].”

The statement continued “Several industries and businesses have been built around Flash technology – including gaming, education and video – and we remain committed to supporting Flash through 2020, as customers and partners put their migration plans into place. Adobe will continue to support Flash on a number of major OSs and browsers that currently support Flash content through the planned EOL. This will include issuing regular security patches, maintaining OS and browser compatibility and adding features and capabilities as needed. We remain fully committed to working with partners, including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla to maintain the security and compatibility of Flash content.”

Many prominent browsers have already disabled Flash by default or de-emphasized the technology, so most users will not feel the impact. Flash has long been subject to vulnerabilities, issuing a “critical” security update as recently as February 20.

What are your thoughts on Adobe’s announcement? Let us know in the comments.

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14 Comments

  • Thank you for the news. I am looking forward to the company I work for having to switch all of their apps to non-flash.

  • And a special thanks to WordPress, for giving all of us a great reason to ditch our ponderous and barely editable (non-editable?) Flash-based websites. As others have noted here, I doubt many will mourn for Flash . . . I was thrilled when I junked it 5-6 years ago, and used WP to take control of my own website.

  • I have been using Flash for almost as long as I have been using Macs (since 1987), long before Adobe bought out Macromedia, and Flash has always been buggy, from the beginning to the present. I learned early that, no matter the version of Flash I used or the version of the Mac OS, sooner or later Flash would crash (under OS 9 it used to crash spectacularly).

    If I need Flash to see a Web page, I switch from Safari to Chrome, and back to Safari as soon as I possibly can. I will not miss Flash. I will also not miss the annoying “We’re Sorry…” messages I get at Web sites that require Flash. Hasta la vista, Baby!

    • Wow! I remember back in the day in college I had a Multimedia professor that taught us Flash and Dreamweaver and said that he had stock shares in Macromedia. I’m a Mac person too! “Your Mac and you were made for each other – Says so in on the box” lol

  • A number of people will not be sorry to see Flash go; me included. I read great number of European newspapers and many times Flash does not work.

    I have tried to replace Flash with a different plug-in with hardly any success.

    Now you have announced its demise could you offer a listing of plug-ins that could replace Flash?

  • I shouted a long, loud, and enthusiastic WOO HOO when I saw this news! Finally, finally, finally! Good riddance!

  • Hmm.. maybe Photoshop and Premiere Pro next. You guys really don’t need my money anyway.

  • Given the number of security advisories which Flash generated, I’m surprised it has lasted this lone.