Technorama

Be it security exploits or crashes, there are multiple practical reasons not to install Adobe Flash.

The best reason to avoid Flash is that it's a counter to the openness of the Web. Each Flash item embedded into a page isn't being displayed by the browser, but by the Adobe plugin, it's a comprehensive alternative to the Web. Flash ignores all the privacy and security settings in the browser, sending secret cookies to websites, and if there is a bug or security in the Adobe plugin we're powerless to spot that or fix it as they don't warn you.

What's far better for consumers in the marketplace is for technologies to complete against each other. However, as Flash is just a proprietary system developers can't even see the specification they would need to implement to play a Flash files (without signing an unreasonable license agreement and payments).

Flash isn't compatible with many devices, as Adobe only release it on select 32bit OSs. Flash doesn't work on mobile devices, and when it does it's the Flash "Lite" incompatible subset. Webmasters don't realise they shouldn't put Flash files on public pages as defaults, for users it is better to just have Flash as a secondary option to open web standard pages.

Adobe marketing spin will tell you 98% of desktops support Flash, but what they don't tell you is that includes Windows95 machines running Flash5. YouTube, BBC, Facebook all necessitate Flash9.

Adobe have also added DRM, compulsory adverts and prevented people downloading content recently; all very anti-consumer.

The problem for Adobe is that they won't open up Flash while they have a de facto monopoly, and so they'll only open up to widen their base when MS have taken the monopoly with Silverlight, but that will be too late for Flash and Adobe unfortunately. If wise, they would open up now, standardise and secure their dominance for longer.

Others have posted similar to me I see. I like the quote from Tim Berners-Lee:

Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

It is a shame so many people now embed YouTube Flash files and others into their pages as the default choice when services like blip.tv also offer in modern open web formats.

Flash does show what can be achieved though, take this Flash 3D web UI demo. We just need open web standards to achieve the same, AJAX and an OpenGL|ES binding would be a good start :)

Labels: Adobe, Firefox