Flash
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