Finally, Google has announced that starting September, Chrome will block behind the scenes Flash content. Chrome 53, which is scheduled for a September release, will be the first web browser from Google to block Flash content by default. Chrome is expected to set HTML5 as the default medium for games and videos by December. However, sites that exclusively support Flash will be unaffected. “Flash helped make the Web a rich, dynamic experience, and shaped the modern set of web standards. We continue to work closely with Adobe to ensure that your web experience is as fast and secure as possible and to help the Web transition to HTML5,” says Anthony LaForge, curator of Flash in Chrome. “In December, Chrome 55 will make HTML5 the default experience, except for sites which only support Flash. For those, you’ll be prompted to enable Flash when you first visit the site.” The change adopted by Google is to create a quicker and more responsive browser that saves your battery life in the process and gives a better end-user experience. These changes are all part of Google’s effort to “de-emphasise” Flash in favour of HTML5 across the web. These efforts began in September 2015, when Chrome 42 automatically began pausing less-important Flash content (ads, animations, and anything that isn’t “central to the webpage”), which Google claims improved battery life. While blocking Flash in Chrome 53 completely is a more aggressive move, it will lead to a better internet experience for all users. Clarifying things further in a blog post, the Chrome team says that most Flash content on the web these days is loaded “behind the scenes to support things like page analytics”, which slows down the web browsing experience and is the primary aim of Google’s Flash-blocking efforts in Chrome 53. Further, with Chrome 55 slated to launch in December, the new changes in the browser will make HTML5 the default over Flash for all websites that support both technologies. In other words, unless a page has no other way to display content, even the larger Flash plugins will not load at all. With the world’s most popular web browser looking to remove Flash before the end of the year, it is expected that Flash would be completely dead in the next two years, which would be the final nail in its coffin. On the brighter side, the introduction and adoption of HTML5 could see faster loading times, a more efficient battery usage and better security in general while online. While Internet users may miss seeing Flash content in their browsers, it is equally true that Flash had emerged as the single biggest threat vector. So somewhere down the line, Google’s decision to block Flash in Chrome from September is good for users from security point of view.
