Adobe Flash

ELI5 - What exactly was Adobe Flash and why was it disabled?

Adobe Flash, introduced in 1996, enabled video playback, interactive website components, and animations. It spurred a digital renaissance, popularizing flash-based games and cartoons, such as those on Newgrounds.com and Homestar Runner, during the internet's early years. However, Flash has become obsolete, plagued by security vulnerabilities. Despite Adobe's efforts to patch these issues, the industry has evolved, with newer technologies like HTML5 offering superior functionality for tasks previously dominated by Flash. Continuing to use Flash not only poses security risks for websites and their users but also represents a technological step backward. Adobe, recognizing the shift, has discontinued Flash, focusing instead on more contemporary solutions. The discontinuation reflects a broader industry consensus that Flash is no longer necessary, with its maintenance deemed more troublesome than beneficial.

By drollparadox7655 10 months ago

Adobe Flash

ELI5 - What exactly was Adobe Flash and why was it disabled?

Flash was mainly used years ago to enable rich web content, such as video playback, to be placed into web pages when it couldn't be done using web standards at the time. It also was largely used to develop online web browser games, such as those found on Newgrounds. Many of its uses, such as video playback, were later superseded by modern web standards (such as HTML5 and its video element). As it has fallen out of common use and is prone to security flaws, Adobe has decided that it is no longer worth maintaining.

By Alex 10 months ago