Adobe Flash Walks The Plank!

W00H00!

Note to Web Weenies: Buckle up! – you will have lots of work to do. This is going to trash a lot of WordPress templates. If you did not develop or choose your templates carefully, you’re going to have some scrambling to do. If you developed ‘mobile first’, then you’re probably ok. 😉

Google this week began rolling out the latest update to its desktop Chrome web browser ahead of schedule, with Chrome 55 fixing multiple security vulnerabilities and defaulting to HTML5 on the majority of websites.

Although Google did not flip the Flash switch with Chrome 55, the update did add options to the macOS browser’s Preferences page that hint the company could bar Flash content in a future refresh.

Google Chrome has been phasing out Flash support since September, when version 53 of the browser started blocking Flash-based page analytics and background elements. Version 54 brought a YouTube code rewrite that forced YouTube Flash players to switch to HTML5.

Chrome 55 brings the most visible move away from Flash by defaulting to HTML5 across the board. Users are now prompted to enable Flash when they visit sites that still use it, exempting 10 of the most popular sites on the web, including Facebook and Amazon.

Chrome 55 should be available to download for most users now. Existing users can update by selecting Chrome -> Preferences via the menu bar and clicking the About section. Users downloading Chrome for the first time will automatically receive the updated version from the Chrome download page. An update for the iOS browser app is expected soon.