Hi,

You probably already know about this but on the chance you
have not already heard then here it is. And please pass it on.

I went to the Adobe Flash player download site to get the
latest Flash version (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/)
and I saw the following note there. Go check it yourself
from your Linux machine.

NOTE: Adobe Flash Player 11.2 will be the last version to
target Linux as a supported platform. Adobe will continue
to provide security backports to Flash Player 11.2 for Linux.

Since Adobe is always changing Flash this means that Flash
content will soon start showing up which cannot be played
by 11.2.*.*. For all intents and purposes Adobe Flash will
be dead on Linux. Without a Flash player we effectively lose
access to YouTube and may other websites. An inability to
play Flash content WILL BE A SERIOUS BLOW to Linux on
the desktop and mobile devices.

I understand there is an open source Flash player in the works,
Gnash. It's blurb says this, as of the moment:

Gnash is a GNU program to play Flash movies. Flash is an
animation and multimedia file format from Adobe. Gnash is
based on GameSWF, and supports most Flash (SWF) version 7
as well as some of versions 8 and 9.

That's not nearly good enough. There are probably other efforts
out there to get an open source Flash player. I don't know. If so
then how can we get our collective act together on Flash content
and stop competing with ourselves?

And what is Google doing about this? After all Android is basically
a Linux distribution and surely Google wants users of Android to
be able to use all Flash content.

Furthermore with Flash for Linux going away the various Linux
distributions are going to have to start bundling alternatives to
the Adobe Flash player into their distributions by default and the
open source browsers will have to start using them by default.
Neither Gnash nor any other alternative to Flash is included in my
Linux distro.

One wonders why they are doing this? Is Adobe under pressure
from Microsoft?

Jeff B.

Adobe is doing this because flash format is terrible. HTML5 and the next generation of web content are going to make flash a thing of the past. In regards to your android comments, here ya go: http://www.pcworld.com/article/25857...hdraw_app.html

Slowly weening myself off flash content - the only thing I really use it for is Youtube but a lot of that is HTML5 compatible now.

If you also see articles that state "Linux users are safe for probably the next 5 years with the current flashplayer", think again, because a lot of sites check your version of flash player and if you're not running a recent version it will kick you out and tell you that you need to upgrade your flashplayer - sadly that won't be an option. However having that, will flash be around in the next few years or will it truly give way to HTML5 or, something else?

>> a lot of sites check your version of flash player and if
>> you're not running a recent version it will kick you out
>> and tell you that you need to upgrade your flashplayer

I am beginning to run into some of that. However, I am
wondering if the sites are checking the Flash player version
or if it is the Flash player itself which is checking the
version. The reason I ask this is that at some sites I can
view most videos, but some shut down with a version error.
That leads me to believe that it is not the site which is
checking my Flash player version but, rather, it is my Flash
player which is seeing new videos produced under a higher
version. If it was the site checking the version wouldn't
we lose access to all Flash content the moment the site
bumped their minimum version number past what we have?

Given either of the above scenarios is there any way to
hack the version number built into the Flash player?

Flash is not going away any time soon. The current Flash player will be good for some time to come. Adobe ending development is not due to Flash "going away", but rather to the amount of effort it takes to support a platform that has a small user base and generates very little revenue. The large number of Linux implementations, some of which don't even want to include Flash functionality, causes a lot of dilution of effort for Adobe. HTML5 is not a "replacement" for Flash, I really don't know why people keep claiming that, they obviously don't know what they're talking about. HTML5 can't do anything without a scripting environment like Java, Ajax, etc., to manipulate elements. HTML5 is not a scripting language. The biggest problem is that there is no real authoring IDE for HTML5/java implementations the way there is for Flash. Flash has some excellent tools available.

Have a look at my old thread concerning this as it has some suggestions in addition to what you have been told here.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...on-4175413931/