So my Edge Browser (Chromium-based beta) threw up an message when I first opened it, leading to a Google Blog post. Apparently Flash support is being phased-out by the end of 2020. For those of you who don't care to visit Google's blog, here it is:

Today, Adobe announced its plans to stop supporting Flash at the end of 2020.

For 20 years, Flash has helped shape the way that you play games, watch videos and run applications on the web. But over the last few years, Flash has become less common. Three years ago, 80 percent of desktop Chrome users visited a site with Flash each day. Today usage is only 17 percent and continues to decline.

This trend reveals that sites are migrating to open web technologies, which are faster and more power-efficient than Flash. They’re also more secure, so you can be safer while shopping, banking, or reading sensitive documents. They also work on both mobile and desktop, so you can visit your favorite site anywhere.

These open web technologies became the default experience for Chrome late last year when sites started needing to ask your permission to run Flash. Chrome will continue phasing out Flash over the next few years, first by asking for your permission to run Flash in more situations, and eventually disabling it by default. We will remove Flash completely from Chrome toward the end of 2020.

If you regularly visit a site that uses Flash today, you may be wondering how this affects you. If the site migrates to open web standards, you shouldn’t notice much difference except that you'll no longer see prompts to run Flash on that site. If the site continues to use Flash, and you give the site permission to run Flash, it will work through the end of 2020.

It’s taken a lot of close work with Adobe, other browsers, and major publishers to make sure the web is ready to be Flash-free. We’re supportive of Adobe’s announcement today, and we look forward to working with everyone to make the web even better.

Do you believe this will affect e621 and/or furry animators at all? Just want to hear y'alls thoughts.

This has been known since 2017.

Even the source you linked is dated for 2017.

NotMeNotYou said:
This has been known since 2017.

Even the source you linked is dated for 2017.

As it's getting closer to 2020, I wanted to hear people's thoughts on the ramifications (or benefits) of this.

Sure, here are few:

https://e621.net/forum/show/262091
https://e621.net/forum/show/255687
https://e621.net/forum/show/243774
https://e621.net/forum/show/240667

You can find even more if you search for html5, as it usually splits into some remarks about flash support ending in 2020.

21-Shades-of-Faux-Pa said:
Do you believe this will affect e621 and/or furry animators at all? Just want to hear y'alls thoughts.

Majority of the content last several years have been using less and less interactivity and vectorized graphics, meaning that flash has been getting less and less relevant naturally I guess? Even if you are doing hand drawn animation, there are so much effects that aren't possible with flash technology without tanking users CPU like simple bloom effect.

Not going to do the math, but if you do search for animated content, there's usually handful of flash thumbnails in hundred posts.

With games I have seen bit more push towards just regular desktop downloads with portable executables, as most games nowdays are mobile to begin with and with mobile you download game as app, you don't play it inside browser there. There is also HTML5 which does allow more fancy stuff, but you do require bit more than simply .swf file which to embed on webpage and let plugin on browser handle it.

I wouldn't worry too much about games with e621 as that's not even exactly the main goal of the site, I'm still bit unsure how we can have text only games here when tagging is not supposed to be done based on text.

Wider general format support would however be nice, from stereograms to 360 videos and 3D model viewers.

HTML5 anyone?

I think it'll affect E621 pretty negatively if the artists don't migrate to something newer like HTML5. Posts will probably become unavailable, artists will have to animate in something else than Flash, (obviously) etc etc. The end of Flash honestly feels like the end of an era, in my opinion. I should probably finish Super Mario 63 before it's too late, lmao.

I disabled Flash when it kept causing trouble for me on certain streaming sites, it's only whitelisted for a select few and hopefully those sites will support HTML5 in the near future.

Just because it's less common doesn't mean they have to phase it out...
It's gonna be real annoying to have a second browser just to view flash animations/games.

Oh for fucks sake, this feels like it's once again thread that is turning into people talking about the headline instead of actually reading or even knowing what's going.

Hamster6041 said:
I think it'll affect E621 pretty negatively if the artists don't migrate to something newer like HTML5. Posts will probably become unavailable, artists will have to animate in something else than Flash, (obviously) etc etc. The end of Flash honestly feels like the end of an era, in my opinion. I should probably finish Super Mario 63 before it's too late, lmao.

Here's the thing: majority of content here are mirrored from other websites. Us not supporting or migrating to HTML5 stuff ain't the issue, but issue is that no other website which artists use does this.

Even something as simple as video support is only on handful of websites. Only website I know to have some level of HTML5 support is Newgrounds.

Also last like 5 years, I have seen almost nothing being animated or made in flash, flash has been used just as container for video files and maybe a button to change the video. No assets are being moved with flash and all are bitmaps instead of vectors - and flash is bad at handling bitmaps. Animations themselves are usually done with After effects, SFM, SAI, Blender, etc. and then flash is simply way to have the video loop and be able to upload to furaffinity.

Lunacy said:
Just because it's less common doesn't mean they have to phase it out...
It's gonna be real annoying to have a second browser just to view flash animations/games.

1. They aren't phasing it out because it's less common, it's being phased out because it's outdated, highly insecure, resource hog and now even the owner of the product, adobe, is saying they will stop supporting it, meaning it will only worsen the situation over time.

It's this relic from the past that nobody knows how to improve upon properly nor how to get rid of.

Correct me if I'm being completely wrong, but browsers have already gotten rid of NPAPI support, the plugin support that flash, silverlight, java, etc. relied on, so they have had to seperately build a support for flash in newer versions of the browser.

2. This will effect ALL browsers! Absolutely none of them will play flash for you after 2020. Most browsers have already taken steps towards this by disabling flash by default on all and every website and directly trying to open .swf links makes you download it and ask if you are sure you want that to avoid malware from links to flash files.

Only exceptions are the browsers which stream the flash content for you, but quality is pretty abysmal and you are relying on the browser manufacturer to keep your data safe and for them to keep servers on and running somehow.

A sad sad day.. Pretty much the end of many types of web/browser content.. also a huge win for control freaks and big media/advertising. :/

Drkfce0 said:
A sad sad day.. Pretty much the end of many types of web/browser content.. also a huge win for control freaks and big media/advertising. :/

I get by just fine without Flash. Not sure why you think this is such a big problem. The world's not ending and we'll get by with something superior.