Web Browser News: Firefox to Block Flash Starting Next Month

By Nazrene Lagrimas, CP Contributor Friday, July 22, 2016

Mozilla Firefox is now planning to block Adobe Flash contents on August to reduce browser crashes.

Benjamin Smedberg, Manager of Firefox Quality Engineering at Mozilla confirmed that the Firefox browser will begin blocking non-essential Flash contents as a step on its improvement and efficiency.

On Mozilla's blog, Smedberg mentioned that browser plugins have become very important in every user's browsing experience for they enable them to watch videos and play games on the web. However, there had been certain issues that these plugins are facing which blocks the convenience of users in internet-surfing. "Mozilla and the Web as a whole have been taking steps to reduce the need for Flash content in everyday browsing," Smedberg wrote on his post, followed by their announcement on their initial plan.

In the data shown in Mozilla's blog, when websites such as Facebook and YouTube have switched from Flash to other web technologies, the rate of plugin crash in Firefox had also dropped. It is therefore expected that the changes to be done will lessen plugin crashes by up to 10 percent. Mozilla also aims to give users enhanced security, improved battery life on some portable devices, faster page load and better browser responsiveness in their browsing experience.

The plugin blocklist GitHub is being used by Firefox to determine which plugin content must be prevented from loading. The list contains Flash SWF files that are either supercookie SWFs or fingerprinting SWFs. Blocking these contents won't be noticed by Firefox users.

The company also continues to convince developers who are still using Flash or Silverlight that they should adopt and convert to HTML5. In 2017, Mozilla says that click-to-activate will be added on Firefox, in which users will have to click Flash content before it automatically starts playing.

Aside from Mozilla, other browsing companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft have already started dropping Flash plugin in their browsers earlier this year. Although Mozilla will be blocking Flash contents, they said that they will still continue to support legacy Flash content. In checking content in advertising, Firefox is planning to use Flash in measuring viewability. And in addition to that, Firefox will also be dropping all NPAPI plugins, except Flash on 2017.