Safari 10 puts another nail in Flash’s coffin

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Apple still doesn't like Flash.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s next Safari update will arrive with new ways to handle legacy plugins like Adobe Flash to provide users with a better browsing experience, improved performance, and greater battery life.

Safari 10 will also use the speedier and more stable HTML5 over Flash whenever possible.

Apple has never been a fan of Flash, which slows down your Mac, reduces battery life on notebook machines, and comes with all kinds of nasty vulnerabilities. It’s no surprise, then, that the company has been trying its best to kill the aging platform.

Its latest move makes life harder for Flash on OS X (soon to be macOS) without eliminating it altogether, so it’s there when you really need it, but inactive and unable to waste any resources when you don’t.

When you visit a website that supports both Flash and HTML5, Safari 10 will use the latter by default — simply because it’s much more efficient. You’ll notice content loads faster, doesn’t bog down your Mac, and doesn’t sap so much power.

When you visit a website that requires Flash, you’ll see a “Flash isn’t installed” message and a link to download the player from Adobe. However, when you click this link, Safari will then inform you Flash is available, and you’ll be able to load it.

You will then have the option to use Flash once on that site, or to automatically load it every time you visit. If you choose the second option, the plug-in remains enabled for that website so long as you visit the site more than once a month.

Safari 10 makes all this possible by fooling websites into thinking you don’t have legacy plugins installed. Not only does it block Flash, then, but also Java, Silverlight, and QuickTime, so that you only have to load them when there is no other option.

Safari 10 is already available inside the new macOS Sierra beta, and will be available for testing on OS X Yosemite and El Capitan this summer.

Source: WebKit.org

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