Flash Player article review

In the Beginning 

Adobe Flash made the internet more interesting with web-based video and animation. It's a visual tool with no coding required. It also guaranteed, with its plugin, that everyone could see the same thing no matter what browser or computer they were using.

The Fall

In 2007, Apple decided not to support flash in their new iPhone. Steve Jobs said that he believed that HTML5 would be the new standard. Although the iPhone wouldn't have it, Android devices still supported it. Both Facebook and Youtube still used flash heavily, with Youtube still using a video player made from flash.

Adobe finally acknowledged the change and ceased production of the Flash Player. To replace it, they released a product called Edge to create HTML5 content. It didn't last long and in 2015 Adobe discontinued Edge in favor of their newly branded Animate CC "for developing HTML5 content while continuing to support the creation of Flash content".

Flash still has a hold on one last major company. Facebook still uses Flash heavily for it's Flash-based games. Although Flash isn't totally dead, Google won't be helping it survive any longer.

Google announced that in its next update of Google Chrome, Flash will be blocked by default. You will still be able to unblock it in the settings, but this is just a small foreshadow of what is to come. The Internet Archive and Archive team see the direction that Flash is going. They are making efforts to save the creations of Flash by using emulators of vintage browsers that support Flash.