Adobe Flash has been around for a long time now. Back when the internet was lacking any real interactivity, Adobe stepped up to the plate with a solution. Flash had been almost a standard in the web ecosystem. With websites such as NewGrounds and other portals hosting seemingly exclusive Flash content created by users. Many game designers and media creators got their start with Flash.
However, it wasn’t without its flaws. Flash was insecure, bloated, and generally hated by developers. Apple going as far as boycotting it and refusing to support it on their mobile devices. This caused Adobe, along with the advent of HTML5, to stop supporting Flash by 2020.
It hasn’t taken long for the welcomed standard of HTML5 and Flash going EOL in 2020 to have an effect. The percentage of Flash usage has been drastically reduced from 80% in 2014 down to a meager 8% at the beginning of 2018 for Chrome users. Firefox has reportedly seen very similar statistics.
The current model for browsers is to not have Flash auto run, rather, most use the click-to-run policy. That is also changing and by 2019 Flash will be disabled by default in Chrome 87.
While Flash will still hit a nostalgic cord for many, due to the countless hours some of us have spent playing silly Flash games, it seems to be a welcomed departure. HTML5 and HTML5’s Canvas tag, WebGL, and WebAssembly are the new kings. At least for now, who knows what the future may hold.