Flash
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
What?
The Adobe Flash Player is commonly used on the web for videos, animations, games, banner ads, and "utility" functions not available in standard HTML+JS (like Gmail's file uploader and GitHub's clipboard button).
Mozilla is working on a number of projects to reduce the use of browser plugins like Flash.
Why?
Plugins can be responsible for security bugs and instability, and can create a poor user experience for Firefox users. Moving this functionality to open standards can help alleviate these problems across many platforms.
How?
- Reduce the need for Flash content by improving web platform alternatives:
- bug 1083588 - Media Source Extensions (MSE) for YouTube's HTML5 video
- bug 1015800 - Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) video for HTML5 video
- bug 1121280 - Improve full-screen user experience for HTML5 video
- RTMP.js, JavaScript client for Adobe's Real Time Messaging Protocol for streaming video
- asm.js, Emscripten, and Unity to run C++ games on the web at near-native speed, without plugins.
- Reduce instantiations of the Flash plugin:
- Make plugins click-to-play
- Shumway for Flash videos, ads, and games
- bug 1120676 - Add plugin power-saving mode to pause off-screen or inactive Flash content
- Someday remove support for NPAPI plugins. Google plans to remove Chrome's NPAPI support in September 2015.
- Reduce stability problems caused by the Flash plugin:
- bug 1116806 - Asynchronous Plugin Initialization: An Introduction
- bug 1123755 - Gecko NPAPI sandbox
- Experiment to measure the effects of Disabling Adobe's Protected Mode
Who?
Many people are involved. Here are contacts for different project areas:
- Planning
- Benjamin Smedberg <bsmedberg>
- Sheila Mooney <smooney>
- Chris Peterson <cpeterson>
- MSE/EME
- Anthony Jones <ajones>
- Chris Pearce <cpearce>
- Full-screen UX
- Jet Villegas <jet>
- Shumway
- Till Schneidereit <tschneidereit>
- Michael Bebenita <mbebenita>
- Sandboxing
- Bob Owen <bowen>
- Jed Davis <jld>
- Brad Lassey <blassey>
- Emscripten/asm.js
- Alon Zakai <azakai>
- Luke Wagner <luke>
- RTMP.js
- Yury Delendik <ydelendik>
Where?
When?
- March 2014: Mozilla and Unity Bring Unity Game Engine to WebGL
- December 2014: Flash Performance Improvement Plan's kick-off meeting at Mozilla's 2014 All-Hands in Portland
- January 2015: Flash Performance Improvement Plan begins