Just a few months back, Google announced that they would soon move the HTML5 in place of Adobe Flash in Chrome, in order to to offer a safer, more power-efficient browsing experience. The company has reminded users that this change will disable the Adobe Flash Player, until and unless there is an indication by the user, that they would like Flash content on a particular site, and sooner or later, all websites will require the user’s permission in order to run Flash. In order to ensure a smooth transition, the company states that not all users and site will be affected immediately. HTML5 by default along with the associated users’ prompts will gradually be introduced.
“The feature will be rolled out to users over a few months. HTML5 By Default will be enabled for 1% of users of Chrome 55 Stable in the next few days. The feature is also enabled for 50% of Chrome 56 beta users. With Chrome 56 stable in February, we plan to enable it for all users.”
Starting in January, users will be prompted to run Flash on a site-by-site basis for sites which they have never visited earlier. Google states that it wants to avoid over-prompting users, hence they will tighten this restriction by using
Site Engagement Index –
‘a heuristic for how much a user interacts with a site based on their browsing activity.' By October, all sites will require user permission in order to run Flash.
Google is, however, not the first company to block Flash content. It was just last year when Facebook made every video available on its website play in HTML5 by default, across all browsers. Adobe too has informed people to stop using Flash, hence it seems that this update by Google is for the best.