Adobe Announces Flash Distribution and Updates to End

Adobe has announced it will stop distributing and updating Flash Player at the end of 2020 and is encouraging web developers to migrate any existing Flash content to open standards. Apple is working with Adobe, industry partners, and developers to complete this transition.

Apple users have been experiencing the web without Flash for some time. iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch never supported Flash. For the Mac, the transition from Flash began in 2010 when Flash was no longer pre-installed. Today, if users install Flash, it remains off by default. Safari requires explicit approval on each website before running the Flash plugin.

To display rich interactive content in the browser, WebKit—the engine that powers Safari—supports the latest standards, including the following:

• HTML Video and Media Source Extensions support a wide range of video experiences, including short clips, longer content, and live streaming.
• HTML Canvas and WebGL provide fast, dynamic graphics for games and interactive experiences.
• CSS Transitions and Animations add polished animations to web interfaces.
• WebRTC enables real-time peer-to-peer video.
• WebAssembly allows games and other compute-intensive applications to run faster.

The WebKit Project is excited about the future of the open web. We invite you to follow this blog to learn about new technologies as they’re implemented in WebKit.