After the attempt made by Chrome to move over to HTML5 as the default player over Adobe Flash, followed by Mozilla blocking the Flash content in Firefox, it is now the turn of Microsoft to turn its back on the multimedia plugin that seems to be already dying.
Microsoft has announced in its official blog post that the next release of its Edge browser will be blocking Flash content by default, and will use HTML5 wherever it is possible.
HTML5 over Adobe Flash
The content player from Adobe Flash has been an important and an integral part of the web for ages, which has enabled rich content and animations in the browsers since the time before HTML5 was even introduced. The modern browsers, whose web standards are being pioneered by the tech biggies like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Adobe, Apple, and many others, are now allowing the websites to eclipse all those experiences, with better performance and improved security, without having Flash. With the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10 coming up soon, Microsoft is all set to the users a little more control over Adobe Flash player, which will allow them to selectively pause content like ads that is played by Flash, which is not a part of the main content of the page.
Default HTML5 to Windows Insiders
Microsoft said that they will be extending this functionality with their next release and will encourage the transition to the HTML5 alternatives, by providing more control to the users over the Flash content loads. The people who have signed up for the Windows Insiders program will get to try their hands first at the earliest implementation of this feature, which is likely to be out soon to them in the upcoming preview builds. As the user experience evolves, the company will be moving towards a stable release of the updated Windows 10 Creator sometime in the next year.
The websites which have been supporting HTML5 will be defaulted to have a clean and a better HTML5 experience. In such cases, the Flash player will not even load which will, in turn, improve the performance and battery life, and also offer better security. For the websites which are still depending on Flash, the users will be given an opportunity to decide if they wish to load and run Flash, and this preference will be remembered by the sites for their subsequent visits.
Ease the Changes
Microsoft said that it was completely aware of the fact that Flash has been an integral part of most of the web experiences to date, and so the transition to HTML5 will be eased initially with these changes not affecting the popular sites that rely on Flash. In the upcoming months, Microsoft is bound to monitor Flash consumption by Edge and will shorten the list of all the automatic exceptions gradually. By the end of this process, the users will have more control and will have the ability to choose Flash for any website which they might visit.
Microsoft had also advised the web developers to move towards working with standardized content delivery mechanisms that include JavaScript and Media Extensions that are encrypted by HTML5, Canvas, Media Source Extensions, RTC, and Web Audio in the upcoming months.
This change is bound to provide all the users with improved performance, stronger security and a greater stability. These changes are similar to the updates that are coming from the other tech giants like Google, Mozilla, and Apple. Microsoft said that it is looking forward to continuing its work with these tech partners, and also with Adobe so that they can improve the security and capabilities of the web for all the users.