Mobile version of IE10 won’t run Flash by default

http://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/10/11/did-microsoft-just-kill-flash-ie10-wont-run-flash-unless-your-site-is-on-a-microsoft-whitelist/

by Rabidgremlin • 14 years ago

45 63 14 years ago

blog.rabidgremlin.com

Cached link since my poor server is dead: http://blog.rabidgremlin.com.nyud.net/2012/10/11/did-microsoft-just-kill-flash-ie10-wont-run-flash-unless-your-site-is-on-a-microsoft-whitelist/

cryptoz• 14 years ago

Apple and Adobe killed Flash. MS is merely a "me too" Flash-killer here.

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

Videos chugging along at -1fps to 10fps on phones is what killed flash.

Edited...

lysol• 14 years ago

Flash killed flash. Video runs just fine on phone hardware.

fruchtose• 14 years ago

What's killing Flash is 10 years of buggy, awful software. No other multi-platform VM has had so many performance issues, so many security holes, and so many bugs that significantly degraded the user experience. JavaScript interpreters have never been as terrible as Flash. Java has never been as terrible as Flash. Flash's only claim to fame is its ubiquity. It will not be missed.

JimmaDaRustla3• 14 years ago

I made another reply here - MS will be packaging Flash automatically with IE...so it may be a little bit of a helping hand for Flash, while trying to keep it secure.

Metrop0218• 14 years ago

Wouldn't surprise me. Everyone is trying to kill flash; HTML5 has filled in the gaps.

Turing_Machine• 14 years ago

If your video delivery company isn't already supporting user-transparent alternatives to Flash at this late date, you should probably be looking for a different video delivery company.

It looks like Brightcove does support mobile (at least they claim to) so what's the big deal? Can't they just deliver different content for the new IE, the same way they are presumably already doing for the other non-Flash platforms?

I'd be royally pissed if they told me it was my responsibility to get my site whitelisted with Microsoft.

Rabidgremlin8• 14 years ago

Its all about the DRM. Flash is the only viable way of streaming with enough protection that keeps rights-holders happy :(

Video on the web would be a lot simpler if DRM/content protection would die die die...

threedaymonk• 14 years ago

I'm not even convinced that these supremely ignorant "rights holders" really exist, except in scary tales handed down from one generation to the next. I mean, surely they don't think their "protection" is actually working, do they? Have they never been on the internet?

RTMPE was cracked years ago (the handshaking consists of little more than sending an HMAC of a magic string and the player file)[1].

It's all just obfuscation. Putting a transparent layer over the video and obfuscating the file name will achieve the same effect, that is, preventing casual downloads. That's all they've got at the moment, even with Flash "DRM".

1. http://lkcl.net/rtmp/RTMPE.txt

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

This is just because html5 doesn't have a way of hiding the video stream from the html source, right?

Hasn't anyone figured out how to proxy it, or only allow a connection to the hosting server if the browser has a specific cookie, or some other way of obfuscating the video's URL?

objclxt2• 14 years ago

Yes - the problem really lies with the rights holders here. Because when constrained by the restrictions put in place by content holders you're really faced with two options for mobile DRM video: use Flash (which few devices support, and none well), or use a native app (Netflix, etc). But since it's rather unlikely a DRM solution through the <video> tag is going to be supported by all (any?) browser vendors, the buck really does stop with the rights holders.

wwweston• 14 years ago

> Flash is the only viable way of streaming with enough protection that keeps rights-holders happy :(

Silverlight seems to work out for Netflix.

> Video on the web would be a lot simpler if DRM/content protection would die die die...

Let's say it did. What web standard (particularly that IE10 implements) makes it relatively easy to implement even non-protected streaming?

cjbos2• 14 years ago

HBO and pretty much any major Network all have iOS apps.

HLS streaming can be protected, you can encrypt the chunks and decrypt on the player. Ironically enough for my previous job I built a HLS prototype solution that did exactly this... in the Flash Player.

JimmaDaRustla3• 14 years ago

Probably mostly a security strategy, with a side of merciless.

efsavage• 14 years ago

That's funny, because I won't use IE10 unless your site is on a whitelist.

azakai• 14 years ago

Can't tell because the page won't load, perhaps MS indirectly killed the webserver of the blog ;)

bunderbunder5• 14 years ago

Cue stanard Betteridge's Law remark.

The whitelisting only applies to the "mobile" version of their browser. To that end, Microsoft's policy is markedly more Flash-friendly than what's happening on other Mobile platforms. After all, at least some Flash content will be permitted. By contrast, iOS and (as of recently) Android are effectively Flash-free platforms.

I think the fact that there's no restriction on desktop, combined with their published requirements for how to get whitelisted for mobile, make it pretty clear that this isn't really meant to be an attack on Flash. It's more an attempt to deal with the large number of websites whose Flash content is fundamentally incompatible with touchscreens because it assumes the presence of a mouse. Blocking Flash on those sites hopefully results in a better user experience because the site is theoretically degrading to a Flash-free version instead.

Far from being a Flash-killing move, in hindsight the other mobile platforms adopting a similar policy might have been the one thing that could have saved Flash for them.

Leon• 14 years ago

The headline did not end in a question mark.

bunderbunder5• 14 years ago

"Did MS just kill Flash?"

alexanderh• 14 years ago

Flash can be downloaded and installed on Jellybean. Sure it doesn't come standard anymore, but it works just fine. Android is far from a flash free platform. In fact I'd say its still the superior mobile flash platform.

Its kind of crazy to me Google doesnt include Flash with jellybean when it works just fine. I'm all for killing flash asap, I hate it... but when it works... why deprive people of that bullet point feature?

Either way, its beyond false to call Android (even jellybean) a "flash free platform". You have to download and install flash on a desktop computer, just like you have to download and install Flash on Jellybean. Still works like a dream though.

bunderbunder5• 14 years ago

It can be installed. But it's not supported, and Adobe has specifically recommended against doing so, and is telling everyone to uninstall Flash before installing Jellybean. So while sideloading it might work for now, most people probably won't bother. And sooner or later it's going to break, anyway. Meaning anyone who's looking to support a mobile browsing experience on Android needs be thinking of it as a Flash-free zone, on pain of being alienated from their userbase.

bradleyland4• 14 years ago

Maybe you meant this by putting quotes around the word mobile, but this applies to IE10 on desktops as well; when running IE10 in Metro... I mean Windows 8 UI. In the official documentation [1] they refer to it as "Windows UI". I think it's a bit misleading to claim it only applies to "mobile" [sic].

1 - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/jj193557(v=vs.85)...

bunderbunder5• 14 years ago

Right. IE 10 Metro being the mobile version of their browser.

It's true that it runs on desktops. But it's also true that it's primarily intended as the version of the browser that's used on touchscreen devices.

dpark• 14 years ago

That page refers to it as "new Windows UI", not simply "Windows UI". Sorry to nitpick, but there's enough ambiguity around the naming for the new/modern/metro/Windows 8 UI already.

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

IE10 in RT mode. Title is a bit misleading.

rlu• 14 years ago

Exactly. If anything this is more lenient than most other mobile browsers

ashmud• 14 years ago

Beat me to it. Hasn't this change been known since early Win8 information was available publicly?

Here's the MS page linked from the article, since the site is currently unresponsive: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/jj193557(v=vs.85)...

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

>Hasn't this change been known since early Win8 information was available publicly?

Yes.

ryanisinallofus• 14 years ago

This article should be edited-away by the moderators. Not just link-bait garbage but the title is an actual lie.

cyber• 14 years ago

NoScript under Firefox, and ClickToFlash* under Safari can help the transition to a Flash-free environment.

* hoyois.github.com/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/

riffraff• 14 years ago

disabling plugins in chrome works fine too (which ends up being clicktoflash). But it also makes it needlessly difficult to whitelist sites.

cmccabe• 14 years ago

I hope Ballmer issued a memo about "cutting off their air supply," for old time's sake.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Isn't this old news?

Rabidgremlin8• 14 years ago

Oops my server went boom (I really need to toughen it up)...

Here is the link to the Developer guidance for websites with content for Adobe Flash Player in Windows 8: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/jj193557(v=vs.85)...

filipncs• 14 years ago

That document clearly states that the desktop version of IE isn't affected.

Rabidgremlin8• 14 years ago

But the Windows UI version is and that is the default for Windows 8...

bradleyland4• 14 years ago

I'm afraid the issue isn't all that clear.

There's some confusion of terms going on in this whole discussion. Traditionally, when people hear "desktop version", they think: "the version that runs on desktop and laptop PC, as opposed to mobile devices like tablets and phones." This distinction doesn't hold for Windows 8, because the "desktop" version of IE10 isn't alone on Windows 8. Windows 8 UI will run the "mobile" version (loosely speaking) of IE10.

Based on this, we have the following:

                        Windows UI  |  Desktop
    ================================+================                    
    Tablet or phone :   Affected    |  N/A
    Desktop or laptop:  Affected    |  NOT affected

Rabidgremlin8• 14 years ago

Cached link since my poor server is dead: http://blog.rabidgremlin.com.nyud.net/2012/10/11/did-microso...

27182818284• 14 years ago

http://blog.rabidgremlin.com.nyud.net/2012/10/11/did-microso...

Instead of a mortal wound from Apple or death by a thousand cuts, it seems like Flash is dying from a series of maiming injuries.

Although DRM is often cited for the main reason Flash still exists, from my experience it exists because it is still being taught at community colleges and universities to graphic design students. They enter the workforce, do something at their new job in Flash like a restaurant menu or whatever, it looks good on a desktop and so Flash persists.

franklaemmer• 14 years ago

Windows is getting better and better.

I recently committed a website to a design review site. FLASH pages are not allowed any more.

These pages used to be called FLASH–award, now they are called CSS-awards, what comes next?

jiggy20113• 14 years ago

Somewhat OT and tin foil hat:

I was talking to a friend the other day about whether it was best investing time into getting really good at developing for the web vs native mobile/desktop.

My argument was that the big advantage of web dev was that you not only had more choice of backend tools but it was also the best way to get your apps to run on any platform including locked down ones without having to worry about app store policies etc.

His counter argument was that the browser is becoming the new target for malware etc especially as the new HTML5 APIs become more sophisticated. He thought that it might be likely that some browser APIs would become locked down by platform vendors. In other words if you want your web app to do stuff like WebGL/Local Storage etc you would need to be explicitly whitelisted by the OS or browser vendor. In which case there could be rules like "your web app cannot do xyz, your website must not have content related to abc".

Outright website blocking would seem out of the question, but perhaps things like this are the first sign of a move in that kind of direction?

alrs• 14 years ago

Wishful thinking says that they're taking a kick at Adobe because they're aware of an effort to port Creative Suite to Linux.

Rabidgremlin8• 14 years ago

Sigh... title got edited... somebody didn't read the article.

This effects desktop windows 8 too not just mobile

JimmaDaRustla3• 14 years ago

I think this is occurring because of some news released by Microsoft on Monday - Flash will now be packaged with IE by default. This provides a better user experience - never need to download and install/update Flash, but they provide a way to keep it secure. Heard it on today's Security Now.

http://twit.tv/show/security-now/373

Mobile version of IE10 won’t run Flash by default

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