Sorry if this has been discussed before (this news is half a year old!), but what is the site's plan for when Adobe finally nukes Flash?
If browser support is lost and Flash files can't be played are we going to just delete Flash files en masse from the site, or is e621 looking to keep and archive them?

You don't need the Flash plugin to deal with SWF.

There's this thing called the "Standalone Player" that can be used instead.

I believe e6 will keep the Flash files. Flash files can still be played with the standalone player as KynikossDragonn mentioned. There’s also a few open source Flash player implementations such as Lightspark, but I don’t know how well they work because I don’t use them.

If e6 was going to delete every Flash on this site, a) there would be a riot, and b) it would have been announced ages ago when Adobe announced the discontinuation of Flash.

BlackLicorice said:
If e6 was going to delete every Flash on this site, a) there would be a riot, and b) it would have been announced ages ago when Adobe announced the discontinuation of Flash.

Very true. I was thinking about what it would be like if you didn't have the Flash plugins and so every search was cluttered up with Flash files you couldn't view, but I guess you should follow the classic e6 advice and blacklist "flash".

There are already apps such as Swivel that can convert flash videos to MP4.

As for flash games, one web-based option is to include javascript that can interpret and run a SWF file, or one could also use software that can convert existing SWF files to javascript or something using WebAssembly.

There has been many threads over the year, like forum #243774

KynikossDragonn said:
You don't need the Flash plugin to deal with SWF.

There's this thing called the "Standalone Player" that can be used instead.

I do still hate how adobes own thing is literally standalone, it's just .exe which you run, so I had to mess around with registry and do some manual copying to make it possible that .swf files have icons which I can double click to open them.

Installing Adobe Animate CC does this for you, but installing gigabytes of software for that is bad.

Volphied said:
There are already apps such as Swivel that can convert flash videos to MP4.

Swivel is useful if the flash animation is using vector assets and animation is done with flash. Several last years, flash has been glorified video container, so I would strongly suggest ripping the files directly instead in those cases with something like JPEXS instead as this means one less step in whole convertion process and if you only need to store the file yourself, then having original FLV file is the best scenario (zero re-encoding, meaning extremely much faster to do and highest possible quality).

Swivel is still extremely good tool and one of the best. Absolutely zero frame drops and exports in lossless format if needed.

Yeah, a sad sad day.. and a step back for the web, user control and web games in general..

Drkfce0 said:
Yeah, a sad sad day.. and a step back for the web, user control and web games in general..

No, getting rid of Adobe flash is important for the internet at large, mainly because Adobe couldn't program a safe sandbox if their lives depended on it. There are replacements already available, and chances are those will become more widely used as 2020 draws closer.

As for us, we'll still offer the files as always, but it will be up to the user to find a way to play them. We might make a wiki page or something with some recommendations, but it's not exactly rocket science to find a standalone player that works with the games.

I should note we are looking into/are considering/i have brought up a pure javascript solutions such as shumway.
In theory, this would be safer than Adobe's flash player.
It isn't confirmed yet, but we may be able to implement this as a fallback for browsers that kill support for flash.

NotMeNotYou said:
No, getting rid of Adobe flash is important for the internet at large, mainly because Adobe couldn't program a safe sandbox if their lives depended on it. There are replacements already available, and chances are those will become more widely used as 2020 draws closer.

As for us, we'll still offer the files as always, but it will be up to the user to find a way to play them. We might make a wiki page or something with some recommendations, but it's not exactly rocket science to find a standalone player that works with the games.

The problem is that all the talk about the replacements always focuses on flash as a video player and especially for ads. But when it comes to actual things like games, people tend to get real quiet. Or you here a lot of "in theory you could do most of what flash could do with ____, _____ and if the right kind of ______ was developed.

Knowing a few game devs, and spending a lot of time at places like NGs and playing R2 and GT arcade games.. I could tell you straight out that web/browser based games are going to pretty much be a shell of what we have now..

As for the "issues" with flash.. While I'm not saying I buy into it completely, it's pretty funny how the biggest haters of it and pushers of its death, happen to be some of the biggest control freaks (who conveniently have gated systems for content that things like flash could easily help circumvent), advertising stakeholders (fun time to mention that HTML5 offers much less control, by design, on the user end), and other companies who benefit from it's death.

Dark days ahead.

Drkfce0 said:
The problem is that all the talk about the replacements always focuses on flash as a video player and especially for adds. But when it comes to actual things like games, people tend to get real quiet. Or you here a lot of "in theory you could do most of what flash could do with ____, _____ and if the right kind of ______ was developed.

Knowing a few game devs, and spending a lot of time at places like NGs and playing R2 and GT arcade games.. I could tell you straight out that web/browser based games are going to pretty much be a shell of what we have now..

As for the "issues" with flash.. While I'm not saying I buy into it completely, it's pretty funny how the biggest haters of it and pushers of its death, happen to be some of the biggest control freaks (who conveniently have gated systems for content that things like flash could easily help circumvent), advertising stakeholders (fun time to mention that HTML5 offers much less control, by design, on the user end), and other companies who benefit from it's death.

Dark days ahead.

When it comes down to browser based games, then yes, there's really no easy way of doing things, because flash had everything in one single file which was then embedded. Even Unity3D files became deprecated which was another format of having whole games in single file and playable inside browser. So at least right now, there's no easy way of just having a single file which you could upload everywhere and have it work.

However if talking about furry content, like I mentioned before, every single flash file is essentially just used to have videos inside it to be able to post them on sites like furaffinity or to have one button to toggle to next video, but then the videos are usually so compressed and use inefficient format that they are just filled with compression artifacts everywhere. And if talking about e621 specifically, the main point still is to store artwork, It's essentially side effect that everyone can upload games here, simply because flash files are acceptable format.

But let's talk about Flash and Adobe AIR in general for second. Adobe already dropped AIR support for Linux years ago and flash haven't been supported on mobile for even longer and there are people out there who only use their phone or linux desktop. I have several games on my Steam which use these as game engine and all I can say is that it's always clear that these things could be far better than they are. Fixed frame rate, not maintaining that fixed frame rate means tons of issues like slowdowns, extremely bad performance to the point that 2D game running at 1080p on high end gaming machine struggles to maintain 30 FPS, save file dissapearing after temp files being deleted and controller support is at the level of "just use joy2key lol" just to start my list. Is this really the kind of engine you want to rely making your games on? I'm also really happy that many of the better games have updated to custom or other engines afterwards, making the games much more enjoyable to play and generally more playable when there's less issues.

Also many games which would've been shared as flash game in past are now being just shared as standalone downloadables, which I don't think is necessary a bad thing? This also means that they can use engines which are easier and more suitable for the content created, like ren'py for visual novels or if you are doing HTML5 version, you can now forward people to your own site as many engines like GameMaker and Unity does support exporting HTML5.

I would be all in on having format similar to flash, standalone file which you can just run inside browser and/or something which has ability to use vector assets. Flash how it currently is, really needs to die out.

Drkfce0 said:
The problem is that all the talk about the replacements always focuses on flash as a video player and especially for adds. But when it comes to actual things like games, people tend to get real quiet. Or you here a lot of "in theory you could do most of what flash could do with ____, _____ and if the right kind of ______ was developed.

Knowing a few game devs, and spending a lot of time at places like NGs and playing R2 and GT arcade games.. I could tell you straight out that web/browser based games are going to pretty much be a shell of what we have now..

As for the "issues" with flash.. While I'm not saying I buy into it completely, it's pretty funny how the biggest haters of it and pushers of its death, happen to be some of the biggest control freaks (who conveniently have gated systems for content that things like flash could easily help circumvent), advertising stakeholders (fun time to mention that HTML5 offers much less control, by design, on the user end), and other companies who benefit from it's death.

Dark days ahead.

Web browser developers have seen flash as a thorn in their side for a long time now, as have various security developers.This is just one of the many, many issues that happened over it's lifetime.

Kongregate also has a boatload of data about already existing alternatives, and apparently html5 is already doing great, and will get better with time (better 3D renderers and full UDP support are already on their way).

As for playing games even after flash is no longer supported in the browser: Offline players such as Adobe's own Flash Projector can handle all games, that thing -as well as similar players- aren't restricted to videos only.

So, no, flash needs to go, it's bloated, a security issue, and absolutely abysmal performance wise. Newer tech is being coded and will improve further. Maybe there will be some hiccups, but progress needs to happen and Adobe simply hasn't managed to keep up with the rest of the internet.

Is there something replacing Flash or is it just Flash calling it quits and leaving peeps without a way of using Flash style biz anymore?

Notkastar said:
Is there something replacing Flash or is it just Flash calling it quits and leaving peeps without a way of using Flash style biz anymore?

I believe Adobe are ending support for flash in 2020.

NotMeNotYou has said in previous threads that they aren't removing the old SWF files, but it'll be up to the user to find a way to play them.

I'm pretty sure you can find a stand-alone flash player from a quick google search, and you can click "download" on a flash post then CTRL+S to save it, and open it with the stand-alone player.

Quick Edit:
To answer you asking about replacements, Adobe aren't planning on replacing it with anything, but I believe HTML5 offers a similar thing, for interactive content, though I haven't looked into it.

Pupslut said:
I believe Adobe are ending support for flash in 2020.

NotMeNotYou has said in previous threads that they aren't removing the old SWF files, but it'll be up to the user to find a way to play them.

I'm pretty sure you can find a stand-alone flash player from a quick google search, and you can click "download" on a flash post then CTRL+S to save it, and open it with the stand-alone player.

Quick Edit:
To answer you asking about replacements, Adobe aren't planning on replacing it with anything, but I believe HTML5 offers a similar thing, for interactive content, though I haven't looked into it.

Don't worry about it dood, Already go a private flash player on my
end already installed and all that wonderful biz and yeah, Really
should get around to downloading those SWF though.
"What use it the console without the game"
Ya know? ◠‿◠;)

And that sounds promising if you don't mind me saying, Sure it may
not be compatible with SWF to the extent to play Flash on the fly;
but hey, There's Hoping it will be when the time comes am I right?
╹‿╹)

We already had a thread about this recently. Why you thought it was a much needed thing to necro this old discussion when you could have asked the same question in the other thread is beyond me.