Mozilla blocks Adobe Flash on its Firefox browser. Is this the beginning of FlashMageddon?
Mozilla is now by default blocking the Adobe Flash software/plugin across all versions of Firefox browser.
The block is due to vulnerabilities discovered on Adobe Flash that is currently been used by hackers. As Adobe Flash is widely used on many websites, these vulnerabilities exposes many website users to cyber thieves.
With the current block, Firefox users will see a default block message when they try to access a website that uses Adobe Flash.
Firefox users will see this block message when trying to access a website that uses Adobe Flash.
The good news is that Mozilla said the block will remain until “Adobe releases an updated version to address known critical security issues”. Meaning it’s not a permanent block which is in contrast to Apple’s stands on Adobe Flash.
Apple’s Steve Jobs was known for his staunch stand against Adobe Flash, calling it: the “past”. In his open letter “Thoughts on Flash” Jobs made the conclusions: “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short….. New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
Mozilla on there support page provides steps you can take to protect yourself and how to disable or enable Adobe Flash.
Now that Mozilla blocks Adobe Flash, here is our recommendation for website owners
Now that Mozilla blocks Adobe Flash, it’s an added reason why website owners should urgently consider upgrading their flash based websites. Besides this block from Mozilla, an added reason is that flash based websites are not user friendly on mobile devices, which will dramatically reduce your website reach especially to mobile users. In fact one of the new ranking benchmarks for your website/pages used by Google is how mobile responsive your web pages are.
We recommend:
- Upgrade/Convert your flash website to a responsive mobile friendly website.
If you need help converting your flash website or any of your static websites to a responsive mobile-friendly website, contact us. We’ll be glad to get this done for you.
Relevant Link:
Mobile-Friendly Test Tool from Google. – Test to see if your website/pages are mobile-friendly.
What do you think about websites that uses Flash? Is this the beginning of FlashMageddon?
