Plugins expand what Web browsers can do, but they also open up new security holes and crash problems. This latter category is particularly important since so many programmers are concentrating on mobile apps for Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Now as the Web enters its post-Flash era, it's more powerful, better suited to everything from tiny smartphone screens to start TVs, and increasingly adept at running interactive Web apps, not just static Web pages. Flash was ascendant during the years when Microsoft's Internet Explorer was overwhelmingly dominant but Microsoft wasn't interested in improving it. Yes, it's only a baby step, but it's an important one in the history of the Web. "The Shumway team has been improving compatibility with Flash video players and will whitelist more Flash video sites soon."
"The Firefox Nightly channel now uses Shumway to play Flash videos on ," said Mozilla programmer Chris Peterson in a mailing list message.
CNET ADOBE FLASH PLAYER FOR FIREFOX WINDOWS
On Thursday, Mozilla programmers enabled Shumway, though only for product tour videos on Amazon, only on Windows and OS X, and only in the cutting-edge Nightly version of Firefox that's not stable enough for regular folks. But there is still plenty of Flash used in the real world, so Mozilla's Shumway is designed to keep Flash-infused websites from breaking even when Firefox doesn't have Flash. Such browser plugins now are on their way out, with Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs banishing them from the iPhone, YouTube moving to the HTML standard, and Microsoft calling them a relic. Through a Firefox project called Shumway, Mozilla on Thursday took an important early step toward building a Web that works without Adobe Systems' Flash Player.įlash spread widely more than a decade ago so website developers could embrace games, streaming video, animation, graphics and other features that were hard or impossible with a regular browser.